Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Best cellphone mod ever!

Earlier this year Sommer and I finally dived into the smartphone world.  We had taken baby steps and went from our old dumb-phones (Motorola v330) to Blackberry Curves.  But it was a bigger step going to our current cellphone.  We both got Samsung Galaxy S phones (we're on T-mobile, so we got the Vibrant variant).

A few weeks ago I ordered a front facing camera (ffc) as the Vibrant does not come with one.  But...after reading this thread in the XDA forum, I bought one...but never got around to installing it.  Until now.

Here is what the phone looks like naked:

On the top left you can see the old camera. Just above the back facing camera is the spot where the ffc will go.

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You can see the hole in the backing where the new ffc camera will go better in this pic (there is still paint on the inside of the screen that will need to come off):

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I pulled out the old camera (the ffc replaces the back camera in one unit) and used goo gone and some q-tips to slowly and gently remove the paint on the inside of the glass (soak the q-tip, then rotate it in the hole, "rinse & repeat" until the paint comes off...took about 20 minutes and about 10 q-tips).

Once done, soak another q-tip with windex and clean the "hole"...

Now I have a clear area in the front glass for the ffc to look through:

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Installed the new ffc (the chip for the ffc snaps into place where the chip for the old camera went).

Now I have a new ffc on my phone! best mod ever!!!!

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Here's some other guys pictures that might show what happened better:

Old camera on the left, new one (with ffc) on the right:
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The new camera snaps into where the old one used to go:

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