Re-soldering on my left shoulder button

[larry]

My Pandora jumped out of my pocket, fell several feet to the concrete below, and bounced a couple of times. It hit so hard that the SD cards jumped out! The Pandora booted up fine afterwards, but the shoulder buttons were tweaked.


I opened it up and discovered the actual hardware buttons were bent back a little bit. I bent them forwards; the right one is now fine, but the left one snapped off at its solders.


I'm not terribly good at soldering, sadly. So what might you advise? I'm guessing you'd suggest one of the following:

• It's not too hard, just put the button back in place (with the tines bent back into place) then hold the soldering iron on top of each contact just for a moment.
  
• If I know someone good at soldering they could probably do it.
  
• I better send it back to ED. Or Link!
  

Advice?

 

[mcobit]

It is not too hard to solder them back in place. what you need is a soldering iron, solder and flux.


I made a video on how to do it:





If the points in the middle are broken off you should be able to do it the same way. Just make sure you don't have solderbridges afterwards.


If you are not good with a soldering iron or unsure or afraight to break something, I think its best to send it for a paied repair, but if you are brave, you may attempt to repair it yourself.

 

[larry]

I take it the flux is to help the solder flow down between the tines and the board. Since the button is completely detached right now, what if I applied some solder to the undersides of the tines, then put the button down in the right spot and heated the tines from above? That'd melt the solder and it'd already be in the right place.


The thing is, I don't have any flux ;-)

 

[mcobit]

you can try this, but flux will help a lot. In normal solder there should be inegrated flux anyway but it can get messy without. I'd suggest you get some from an electronics store with a medium viscosity.


And don't apply too much solder or you may bridge some contacts.


Also if you use flux you can use lower temperatures, what makes it less risky to accidentally destroy anything else.


Please practice soldering before attempting this. try to solder something else like you want to solder the button and see, if it works before you do it on the Pandora.

 

[Ian J]

If you've never soldered before buy an old circuit board from a car boot or similar and practice on that.


I'd also recommend a flux pen, I have one and I wouldn't have attempted soldering the TV-Out cable without it.