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Palm Pre
Repair Guide |
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Welcome to the RapidRepair Palm Pre take-apart repair guide. Here we show (in nearly sickening detail) the internals of the new Palm Pre and how to safely reach them in a few easy steps. Be sure to check our repair tools page for easy to use toolkits for replacing screens, batteries and more on your Palm Pre.
Introducing Palm® Pre™, a phone so in sync with your life it feels like it’s thinking ahead for you. Pre pulls your different online calendars into one view, bringing you the information you want without having to search for it. Pre links your contacts from different sources, giving you one place to find what you need. And Pre delivers incoming messages1 and notifications in an intuitively subtle way, letting you react or respond however you want. People, events, information that matters. With Palm Pre, it'll come to you.
The Palm® Pre™ phone will be available on the Sprint network.
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Prepare
Tools required: Small Phillips Screw Driver, Small Flathead, Pliers, solder iron, exacto razor & Safe Open Tool
Repair Toolkit available HERE
Gather all neccesary tools and place your Palm Pre Phone on a clean flat surface, use a soft cloth or towel to place under it.
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Contents
What a nice looking phone! Manual, earbuds (not Apple), Pouch, USB Cable, and Charger.
You want to be sure to only use the OEM charger otherwise you will fry the phone.
The box has a slick design, reminding me of the 1st iPhone we opened.
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1st Phone view!
Check out the back of the phone, small and sleek.
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Step 1
To get started, push the tab on the bottom of the phone to remove the back panel. This should be pretty easy to do since the battery is user replaceable.
Total of six screws must be removed at this point. |
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Step 2
Remove the battery so we can expose the 2 clips on the side of the back panel bezel. You can use the razor blade or small flathead to push the clips out. These 2 clips are on the outer edge of the phone.
The tabs secure the top of the keyboard bezel. |
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Step 3
To remove the keyboard bezel you must use a nylon safe open case tool and spudge all the way around until the bezel pops up. This will remove the back panel partially. |
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Step 4
Before you pry the back panel bezel all the way off, you must 1st disconnect the communications board cable pictured. |
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Step 5
Now we can see the entire front panel with components revealed. |
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Step 6
Lets step back to the front bezel and remove the antennae wires to expose the comm board. This board houses chips for GPS, wireless, etc.
Remove the small metal plate with the razor (pictured) so you can unplug the antennae. |
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Step 7
We want to focus on removal of the front bezel slide with keyboard. There are 2 clips (bottom corners) to start removal of the keyboard.
Remove the one visible screw, then slide the keyboard in and out to reveal 2 more hidden screws. One hidden screw is located under the ribbon which connects the comm board to the system board.
Remove the two larger board clips at this point. (camera board and comm board clips) |
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Step 8
We can see the front panel internals now. There are 3 small flip clips to remove. Clips used for: Digitizer, ear piece speaker and mic/LED panel.
Remove the grey tape to expose the actual clip to the LCD.
After the clips are removed, remove the board to expose the Palm Pre LCD screen.
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Step 9
Now that the system board is removed, we can concentrate on removal of the heat shield. Use a pair of needle nose pliers along with a heat gun or solder iron to get started.
This step is very difficult, dont try it unless you need to identify the chips.
Chips seen here:
Texas Instruments CPU & power management chip TWL5030B/ 94A20PW C, The TI-SoC CPU is actually stacked under the Elpida 256MB Mobile Memory chip.
Elpida K2132C1PB-60-F/ 09100N024
Samsung 910 KMCMG0000M-B998, 8GB NAND memory for storage is suspected.
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Step 10
After removal of the board from step 8 we can clearly see the LCD/digitizer combo.
The LCD and capacitive touchscreen are permanently glued together. This means if either goes bad or is damaged, both must be replaced
Currently we have not found a way to separate the LCD from the digitizer. Looks like people will be paying for both parts if one should fail. |
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Completed!
Look at all the glorious parts and modules. Reverse this guide to put it back together, good luck. |
Tech Review:
After 3 days of using the Palm Pre as my primary phone, I absolutely love it! I wanted a phone with the ability to multi-task applications, and Palm has pulled it off perfectly. For example, now I can listen to Pandora while I send an email to a friend. The card system is an excellent way to organize open applications and feels very natural. The Pre has GPS and also features the built-in Sprint Navigation which works great. There are also a few 3rd party apps which effectively take advantage of location services. I also love the universal search function, which allows you to search for both web content and local content on the phone without having to open multiple searches. I was also incredibly happy that this phone has a functional browser because the last phone I bought (Samsung Instinct) had a poor web browser. However I do have a few complaints:
- The lack of flash support is borderline unacceptable.
- No Visual Voicemail, my Instinct had visual voicemail and I thought it was one of the best features.
- Application load times are bearable, but quite slow.
- The lack of an onscreen touch keyboard makes landscape browsing difficult.
- Also, my company doesn’t use MS Exchange so initially I could not sync the Pre with my outlook account. However, I downloaded Chapura Pocket Mirror and it works flawlessly, syncs to and from Outlook and the Pre.
Overall – The Palm Pre is a great smart phone and definitely blows sprints last touted “iPhone killer”, the Samsung Instinct, out of the water. For all the great features Palm has integrated into the Pre, there are a few features I wish it had, and it lacks a few things I liked on the Instinct, such as visual voicemail and an on-screen touch keyboard. As great as this phone is, it doesn’t quite live up to the “iPhone Killer” moniker. The bottom line is that it doesn’t feel as “complete” as the iPhone, where everything involved is well polished and works great right out of the box. It’s a great phone, but if you are expecting an iPhone, you should look directly to the Apple.
Carrier |
Sprint |
Operating
system |
Palm® webOS™ |
Network |
3G EVDO Rev A |
Display |
3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320x480 resolution HVGA display |
Keyboard |
Physical QWERTY keyboard |
Email |
Microsoft Outlook® email with Microsoft® Direct Push Technology
POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc). |
Messaging |
Integrated IM, SMS, and MMS |
GPS |
Built-in GPS |
Digital camera |
3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field |
Sensors |
Ambient light, accelerometer, and proximity |
Media formats supported |
Audio Formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV
Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
Image Formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP |
Wireless connectivity |
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, WEP, 802.1X authentication
Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support |
Memory |
8GB (~7GB user available)5
USB mass storage support |
Connector |
MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed |
Headphone jack |
3.5mm stereo |
Palm® Touchstone™
charging dock |
Compatible |
Dimensions |
Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches)
Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches)
Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches) |
Weight |
135 grams (4.76 ounces) |
images and descriptions used from sprint.com
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