Car Kit

How I broke my phone, then fixed it.


Biked home from work today through an intense summer thunderstorm. I had been dripping sweat in a hot kitchen for a few hours, so the automatic cold shower was thoroughly enjoyed. Upon coming home, I found that the shingles had been torn off of the front of my house, not by the elements but instead by some local handymen who had been hired to re-do that part of the roof. And this was no ordinary rainstorm. Buckets, seriously. Situational irony. After going 'round to the back door, (The front porch was covered by a blue tarp hosting a pile of shingles, blocking the way), I let myself into the kitchen and waited a few seconds as water poured off of me onto the doormat. I went into the bathroom and stripped off my soggy clothes and put them into the bathtub. After drying myself off, I went back to the bathtub to retrieve the contents of my pant pockets. Amongst the items retrieved was my cell phone. It was wet. Not too bad, but my pants were soaked. I dried off the phone, flipped it open, and *smile* It Worked!

It was my mom's birthday. We went out to the Cellar for some pizza. I grabbed my phone as we were preparing to leave. The LCD displayed some curious text: "Car Kit". After dinner, I investigated the strange new behavior of my phone. The microphone and the speaker were no longer working. The phone seemed to think that it was plugged into a car adapter. I queried the web and tried some soft hacks, but nothing seemed to be working. I took the phone apart. All the way apart. Completely. Dried it off with a hair drier. Put it back together. Still, no love. Again, down to the bare techno-bones. And again. Hours. I scraped a polymer residue from the wires that lead from the charging/data port to the circuit board. Reboot-- same thing. Some further soft-hacking: OK -> zero -> Code: all zeros -> Field test -> Clear Errors -> "ok" -> CLR -> Service Prog. -> Follow through, hit OK till you see "more", select more. OK through the remaining. Reboot to...

hallelujah !

NO MORE CAR KIT!! Indeed, perseverance furthers. Hack on it long enough and it'll work out. I don't know if it was the hard- or soft-hacking, or the combo, but somehow, I fixed it. It's nice to have super-powers.
;)