Change Pandora Shell


kingoddball

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Joined
Oct 26, 2009
Messages
1,687
Hey!

Just a quick question - Does anyone have a guide on how to swap the Pandora's silver shell to a black one?

I have a spare black shell (complete), and I'm not a fan of the silver case of the Giga.

Is it possible to do a complete swap (LCD and all) - With relative ease anyway ;)

Thanks!
 
Relative ease? Depends what you're relative to ;)


It's easier than changing the case on your phone, but there are a couple of sticky points. Getting all the screws out defeated me, and I ended up drilling one out to get in, and knocking the hinge mechanism through to get the back of the lid out can be tougher than it feels it ought to be the first time.


Someone will be along shortly and link the video of ED disassembling a unit, but that unit's been disassembled before so that hinge is a lot less tough than yours will be.
 
I opened my GHz Pandora to replace the LCD cable. I wouldn't say it was very hard, but it did take some amount of patience to do it without breaking the plastic (much).

Had to look for a small screw driver that fit the screws well, the standard size screw drivers (like one would use on PC screws) won't work. Luckily my bro had some I could borrow.

Once the screws are removed, the bottom of the case (where battery sits) didn't want to come off for me. There's a clip at the front of the unit (between the SD cards) which didn't want to cooperate. Had to fight with it a bit, carefully, to get it to release.

Then there was the plastic cover that's over the LCD. That one took good amounts of patience. The clips require quite a bit of force to get out. Specially the two near the first corner one tries to pop out. It took a special kind of pushing/pulling to get them to release. It takes patience to get it out right.

After that there's the whole twisting that same plastic cover to detach it from the lid's back plastic part. ED did that with such an ease, it is not. The clips at the bottom didn't want to release for me. And even when they did release, they broke the plastic a little.

So, in summary, it's not very hard, but it will take quite a bit of time and patience. It would be easy to get frustrated and try force things causing them to break.

Reassembly is a much easier process, though.
 
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a hint so as not to damage the screw threads in the plastic is to turn the screw backwards a little. this will let the threads drop into the track of the originals, then tighten the screw. this will help prevent you from cutting new threads and weakening the plastic or chewing it out.
 
a hint so as not to damage the screw threads in the plastic is to turn the screw backwards a little. this will let the threads drop into the track of the originals, then tighten the screw. this will help prevent you from cutting new threads and weakening the plastic or chewing it out.
I always do that for whatever screws I'm trying to tighten. Turn them backwards slowly until I feel/hear the "tick" of the screw falling into the original thread and then tighten.
 
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