Cell Phone LED Mod
The Situation:
I got this cool Nokia 8260, tiny little phone. The biggest flaw in the phone (if not the only one) was that. like other
phones, you can barely read the display in the dark (same goes for the numbers on the keypad). The reason for this is
that they use some super-cheap, dim, green LEDs inside. So I bought 2 strips of super-bright surface mount LEDs from
someone on eBay, half blue and half white. And then I went to work...
The Tools |
The Setup |
Keypad Closeup |
Phone Pieces |
We Have BLUE |
We Have WHITE |
EZ 2 READ |
The Hack:
Taking the phone apart was easy, only about 7 screws holding 9 pieces together. My official combination
LED polarity-determinator/tester was a couple of AA batteries with some wires soldered onto them. My protection
from death-by-alligator-clip-teeth was some torn up pieces of paper. The biggest PITA was that white stuff on the
keypad...it got really gooey when it was heated up or I bumped it with the iron tip. Lots of clean-up breaks.
|
Final Thoughts:
These surface mount LEDs are really really tiny, about 0.8mm long. Really hard to work with,
espeically with unsteady hands and a soldering iron not made for stuff this small. It took me about 9 hours to complete
this swap of 12 LEDs. The ones for the display lay on their sides, which makes it even more exciting to solder them on.
The brightness and added contrast of black on bright white vs. black on dim green made this very easy to read. To give
you an idea of just how BRIGHT this display is...it doubles as a halfway decent flashlight in the dark! I really think
cell phones should come with white displays like this to begin with, so what if they cost and extra $10.00 or so, it's
worth it. Of course, now that new phones are starting to come out with full color displays, this whole problem should
go away soon.
Go back to Dr. Cheap's House of Hacks!
