Fairphone 1 Motherboard Assembly Replacement

Written By: Andrew Optimus Goldheart

Comments: 24

Fairphone 1 Motherboard Assembly Replacement

Difficulty

Moderate

Steps

Time Required

No estimate

Introduction

Prerequisite guide to remove the motherboard. Used for motherboard, camera, and display assembly guides.

Tools

Step 1

Use tweezers to remove the volume rocker and power buttons from the display assembly.
During reassembly make sure the orientation of the buttons is correct. The rubber backings must fit into the channels in the assembly.

Step 2

Use the flat end of a spudger to disconnect the antenna cable connector.
Make sure to only disconnect the connector from its socket, and not the entire socket from the board.

If you´re replacing the screen you don´t need to disconnect the antenna cable. You can take apart the motherboard, the doughterboard and tha cable together.

Pacarlas -

Well, I actually broke the socket. Does anyone know if it can be fixed?

thanks

Yoel Schouten Moral - 25/08/14

I broke it too, what to do now?

jakob - 12/06/15

What is the thing left of the camera, below the CC \n TC logo printed on the board?

Luther Blisset - 10/09/14

Yep, no need to remove the antenna connectors if you're replacing the display.

Smorgasbord - 24/03/15

Step 3

Use tweezers to remove the adhesive foam tape from the top of the digitizer cable ZIF socket.

no adhesive foam on my fairphone

Sebastian Chica - 09/06/16

Thank you so much for this amazing tutorial! it works and looks great again!!!

Sebastian Chica - 09/06/16

foam tape is black on mine

Ron Ottervanger - 22/01/17

Step 4

Use the tip of a spudger to flip open the tab on the digitizer ZIF connector.
Use tweezers to pull the digitizer cable away from its socket on the motherboard.

Step 5

Remove the three 2.5 mm Phillips #000 screws securing the motherboard to the display assembly.

Step 6

Do not try to remove the motherboard just yet, as it is still connected to the display assembly by the display data cable.
Gently lift the top end of the motherboard up to expose the display data cable.
The rear-facing camera may be adhered to the display assembly. Try to pry it and the motherboard up together.

I had to use a spudger to take off the camera. Not an easy job since it was glued quite well.

Jan Boonen - 25/10/14

"mild" adhesive?? Camera is glued pretty well!

AJ Molenaar - 27/10/14

First: English isn't my mothertongue, so please excuse mistakes.

I also lost the camera. But it wasn't a problem. At the end of step 28 it was quiet easier to pry the camera without being careful about the motherboard. Only the reverse was done at step 18 again. I put the camera inside the hole and closed the connector for the data. After that I connected the motherboard again with the display and put all together back. So everything was at its right place.

At the End everything was perfect. I'm as pleased as punch!

Ulrike Jasmin Schad - 21/01/15

This was probably the toughest part. It took it's time to remove the camera from the old assembly. As mentioned in earlier comments, it was glued rather well. Be really careful since there is a data cable connecting the camera to the motherboard, and you won't be able to see it that easily.

Smorgasbord - 24/03/15

I took off the camera with the tweezers and thus I had no problem to remove it.

Werner Lauckner - 09/06/15

Possible camera fix after damage while extracting: I too had a well stuck camera, and I damaged the camera while separating it from its small metal plate. The tape holding the plate to the chassis was less strong than the tape affixing the camera to the small plate. The camera seems to consist of a sensor (housed in the silver cube), and its lens (the black plastic bit that separated itself from the cube). The lens is still attached to the sensor by four springy bits of wire which I'm guessing control a magnet which causes the lens to move a bit for focusing. I'm guessing that one of those wires have been damaged and therefor the lens is hanging in its most relaxed state. If you poke the lens carefully with the tip of the spudger you will see that it is kind of swimming in there.

Daniel - 05/01/16

The effect of this is that the lens is stuck in macro mode. Things that are very close will be in focus. A workaround to get the lens to have a fixed focus on around 1 meter to infinity, is to get the lens to push back as deep in the direction of the sensor as possible. This could be accomplished with crazy glue, or similar. I found a rubber washer small enough to not block the lens, which forces it back when the midframe is reattached.

Daniel - 05/01/16

You can actually fix the focus more towards infinity by screwing the inner lens part clockwise.

Samuli Kaipiainen - 06/09/16

Lifting the motherboard without breaking the camera module is the most critical step.

I used tweezers to loosen the camera module from the display assembly.

It worked best for me to lift the motherboard slightly (!), so I could see the base of the camera module, and then carefully separate the camera from the metal part that it is glued to.

Have a good lock at the pictures, so you know where the camera module ends and you don't end up breaking the camera module into pieces, instead of taking it off the base.

I had to push the camera module connector back in again, as it came loose slightly.

Everything worked out fine in the end.

Dino - 17/01/16

Step 7

Use the tip of a spudger to disconnect the display data cable from the back of the motherboard.

In this step I found the rear camera unit glued to the display part. It was easy to take it apart and connect it again to the motherboard but at te first moment I was scared.

Pacarlas -

Yeah, please make sure you don't remove the socket, cause I did it, and after that it's a pain in the !@# to put back. If unfortunatly it happens, remember that the two points on each side of the sockets should be align vertically (from the phone point of view) and the line to the side closer to the phone side.

clem - 23/06/14

In my case the camera also stayed glued to the display part. In fact that was no problem - just leave it connected to its metal pad and take both off together (in my case the metal pad was only midly adhesive to the display part). When reassembling just take off the metal pad from the new display and put in place the old metal pad with the camera on.

eml - 11/01/15

It was a good hint to take out the camera and the metal pad together. It worked perfectly well and in the end it was much easier to separate the camera from the old metal pad and to glue the camera on the new pad.

Mrs Adams - 25/01/15

when re-connecting the (new) screen to the motherboard, you have to watch out to carefully re-connect the display datacable. the two parts fit neetly together and is has to do a little "click"-feeling when the connection was succesful.

ksend - 23/01/17

I reconnected the screen to the motherboard by cutting a small rectangle of cardboard and slide it under the display connector to lift it a little bit. Then you can lay down the mainboard connector on top of it and press it down. It will click in place. Next, slightly lift the topside of the mainboard to remove the cardboard with a pair of tweezers.

jeroen.hilgers - 14/02/17