Taking apart a Nokia E61

I recently scratched my Nokia E61 quite badly. I decided to order replacement parts and to replaceme the cover and the case. I don’t like service points so I took the freedom to replace to cover on my own. The procedure will probably void your warranty, but then, how should they find out you changed the cover? As long you don’t brake things it probably wont void your warranty from an effective point of view.

In order to change the cover of my Nokia E61 I had to take it apart. I took a few moments to make pictures along the process. If you need instructions on how to remove the cover of your own E61, then follow the link to the E61 gallery.

An E61 taken apart

20 Comments »

  1. ed says:

    Hi Andres,
    Thanks for the message. I have to say that you are a very brave man ;-) I hope it worked when you put everything back together.
    Cheers!
    Ed

  2. Risotto says:

    Yes, it still worked fine. I didn’t slam it around, you know :) .

  3. shackk says:

    well this is good news that no matter what version of the device you get (in my case the arabic/english version) you can swap out the keyboards and change the firmware version to specify your keypad. good stuff risotto!

  4. Gustavo Flores says:

    Hi,

    I got the same problem. Where did you order the parts from? Thanks

  5. Risotto says:

    I found them on ebay.

  6. Prabha says:

    Hi,
    Can anyone post the photo of Arabic keypad layout?

    Shack/Gustavo, is it diffcult to operate under the Arabic/english keyboard? Please could u share ur experince. I wanted to order one phone here in USA, but they seems having Arabic/chinese keyboard layout.

    Thanks,

    Prabhu

  7. Activity says:

    Hey! Way to go. My E61 fell off a bike the week after i got it :(

    nokia doesn’t seem to be too helpful in wanting to get a new body for the phone. From the look of it, the e61 shell does not have a screen protector on it?? Is the screen exposed compkletely?

    tta on e61

  8. Risotto says:

    The screen has some kind of hard plastic cover. You can get replacement displays too. There was a blog entry about spare parts on another site: http://www.e61addicted.de/2006/08/06/ersatzteile-fur-das-e61/

  9. Pril says:

    Perfect!!! My E61 fell on the pavement the other day, I ordered a new front – and you helped save the day! Thanks for the perfect guide to “how to switch a frontcover”
    :-)

  10. Michael says:

    Risotto,

    Which keyboard layout is shown in your first picture in your linked gallery? What is the country of origin for your phone?

    Thank you.

  11. Alex says:

    @ Michael

    Its the german cover.

  12. Rado says:

    Thanks Risotto,

    I followed your steps and changed front cover on my E61 easily.
    I wouldn’t dare disassemble it on my own without reading your step-by-step ‘manual’ ;)

    Good job!

  13. mark says:

    did you buy the original cover or those in blue/black?

    im residing in singapore, will they ship it over?

  14. Risotto says:

    I got the original from ebay. I didn’t know there were other colors!

  15. Todd P says:

    Hello,

    Thanks for the insight on the E61. Where can I find the English keyboard and do you have advice on how to upgrade the firmware for the keyboard and where to find the firmware? I appreciate your help.

    Sincerely,
    Todd P

  16. Roman says:

    Cool, thanks for the tip! Now I’m a little less worried about all that dust “in” the display, under the protective plastic (which gets in there no matter how careful I am with the phone). When it gets too irritating I’ll just order a new screen. Heck.. hope I’ll manage to change it though… %-)

  17. Risotto says:

    Hi Guys,

    I’m sorry, but the only place I know for getting parts is http://www.afterbuy.de/afterbuy/shop/storefront/start.aspx?shopid=33097 which is located in Germany. You could try to get your spare parts there. But be advised, shipping (Germany-Switzerland, which are neighbouring countries) took more than 4 weeks in my case!

  18. Petar says:

    Hello folks,
    Does anyone know how to solve a ‘crazy’ going joystick; it went crazy few days ago, can not navigate up/down or left; it scrolls only clockwise, by itself… has anyone had similar problem. Is it software or mechanical issue?

  19. Palle says:

    Hi!

    I have problem that the courser moves to the left side of the screen by it self every now and then. Going to try the instructions on this site to remove the front cover and see if I can remove some dirt and see if it’s that what causing the problem. Keep you informed….

  20. Roger Currier says:

    My E61 screen is very scratched, can I just replace the ‘glass’ screen or do I need to replace the LCD display as well?

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Asus eeePC with Novatel Ovation MC950D HSDPA 3G modem

Asus eeePC with Novatel Ovation MC950D HSDPA 3G modem

I recently got myself an Asus eeePC 4G. I wasn’t that impressed with the pre-installed Xandros linux, so I went on installing a brand new Ubuntu 8.04. I also got myself a Novatel Ovation MC950D USB HSUPA modem, which allows me to connect to my local 3G carrier, Sunrise T@ke Away, Switzerland. I had no problems running the card with Ubuntu, since it was detected and auto-loaded immediately without any problems and allowed me to access the modem through the serial device /dev/ttyUSB0.

After a while though, I got a little bored with Ubuntu, especially by the fact that it took about two minutes to boot, compared to a mere 10 seconds that the original Xandros distribution required. So I decided to go back to the original Asus distribution and give it another try.

I then realized, that I wasn’t able to load the kernel module for my modem anymore and that the built in connection manager wouldn’t allow me to choose my Novatel modem for a GSM connection.

I know that the Huawei E220 would load without any problems and since the Novatel modem is just another USB serial device, I started tinkering with the usb-serial kernel module. After a while I found out, that loading the “option” module would load the device driver correctly. The only problem was to tell the driver, which device to connect to. The vendor and product ID for the Novatel modem is 0×1410 (vendorId) and 0×4400 (productId). I read on a forum post, that these settings could be supplied after the module had been loaded. So I went on and added the following two lines to my /etc/rc.local file, after opening a terminal with ctrl-alt-t:

sudo vi /etc/rc.local

Add these two lines before “exit 0″:

/sbin/modprobe option
echo "0x1410 0x4400" > /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/option1/new_id

For those not proficient in VI, just hit “ESC :wq” and the file saves and closes. Now, enable the execution of rc.local at boot time:

sudo echo "rc.local" > /etc/fastservices

Save the file and reboot your machine. You could also supply these two lines manually on the shell every time you restarted your machine. Now you’re able to select the Novatel USB modem in your connection manager and setup up a new 3G/GSM/HSDPA connection.

If you have another modem which uses the same option module, you can simply exchange the vendor and product id by your device’s ids. To find out your device’s id just look at this file:

less /proc/bus/usb/devices

Locate your device and use the vendor and product id that you find there. This should work for most Novatel devices, such as EVDO and 3G modems. Novatel devices should always have 0×1410 as their vendor id, so look for a device with that denomination.

After successfully installing the modem you can move on and configure your network connection. HINT: You might want to disable the PIN code on your SIM card before trying to establish a connection. I think the configuration wizard will not prompt you for the PIN, though I might be wrong.

The following pictures show you how this looks like (German version of the eeePC OS):

1. Select the appropriate connection type:

2. The modem is now showing up:

3. Scanning for GSM networks:

4. Select GSM network:

5. Select your provider’s network settings:

6. Name your connection:

7. Summary of your new connection:

8. Finally, the connection is set up and running smoothly. We’re online :

Thanks to “neilmc” to pointing out the option module behavior in his post on http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=940241&r=15131419#r15131419 .

How to reset a Nokia E65

To reset and wipe the whole memory of a Nokia E65 use this key sequence: *#7370# . You will be asked to enter the phone lock code. Contrary to the method used for the Nokia E61 holding down the “green” key, 3 and * while booting wont succeed in resetting the phone.

How to rescue a non booting Nokia E61

I just rescued a friend’s Nokia E61 which was not booting anymore. There was no way to flash the phone with the Nokia Updater since it wouldn’t boot and the Nokia Updater needs a working E61. A Nokia Repair center also told us they couldn’t do anything for us and that they would have to send the unit in to Nokia for repair.

Well, I happened to stumble across a site on the net which would describe how to reset a Nokia 6600 which is running an old version of the series 60 OS. It was using both *#7370# (hard reset) and *#7380# (soft reset) for resetting a working unit but further more it also showed, that you could format the unit by pushing the “green phone key”, 3 and * together while powering on the unit. Since the E61 powers up immediately when you insert the battery you will have to push those three keys before you insert the battery. As soon the battery is inserted to Nokia logo will show up for a while. You must hold the buttons until the pin code entry comes up. While you hold the keys the unit will reformat its flash memory and revert to a factory default state.

By doing this I was able to recover an apparently broken unit without having to send it in to Nokia for repair. I thought I’d share this as it might come in handy for someone else. Let me know if this worked for you too!

BTW: I think this works with other models like the E50, E60, E70, N-Series and others too.

Taking apart a Nokia E61

Taking apart a Nokia E61

I recently scratched my Nokia E61 quite badly. I decided to order replacement parts and to replaceme the cover and the case. I don’t like service points so I took the freedom to replace to cover on my own. The procedure will probably void your warranty, but then, how should they find out you changed the cover? As long you don’t brake things it probably wont void your warranty from an effective point of view.

In order to change the cover of my Nokia E61 I had to take it apart. I took a few moments to make pictures along the process. If you need instructions on how to remove the cover of your own E61, then follow the link to the E61 gallery.

MacBook Pro 17-inch taken apart

http://blog.petralli.net/photos/v/takingapartmbp/

I had a little accident on my notebook a few weeks ago. While I was working very late (5-am in the morning) I poured a substantial amount of very sugared liquid over my two week old system . While the liquid in question shall stay unnamed, the notebook was a MacBook Pro 17 inch! You might guess my reaction… I was lucky to turn the system off immediately and shook most of the liquid out of the notebook. I also used some compressed air to get the liquid out of some nastier places of the new MacBook. Finally, and luckily(!) the system was running again flawlessly… until the keyboard started to annoy me after two more weeks. It got sticky and keys were not responding well anymore. As I pushed a key it took 1-2s for the key to pop out again. Since I really like to write fast on my keyboard this was starting to become a bigger problem.

So I decided to take the MacBook apart, disassemble the keyboard and wash it under flowing water.

As I found out on googling about similar accidents with liquids, they seem to happen quite often. So I decided to document the process with a picture gallery. Maybe you found this page because you had the same kind of luck I had or maybe you’re just here to see the innards of a new MBP 17-inch. Which ever way, enjoy the pictures .

A word of caution: DO NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF UNLESS YOU ARE WELL-ENOUGH SKILLED. YOU CAN BREAK OR EVEN COMPLETELY DESTROY YOUR MACBOOK. IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH YOUR SYSTEM CONTACT APPLE SUPPORT FOR PROPER SERVICE. YOU ALONE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU ARE DOING WITH YOUR SYSTEMS!

http://blog.petralli.net/photos/v/takingapartmbp/