[bookemdano]

About 3 weeks ago I was showing a few friends just how tough the torch is, and dropped it on a hard floor purposely like 3 times (I know, stupid, but I was drunk and acting stupid). No damage at all, but.... I've had less bars of service since this, and sometimes it loses service all together, which is something that has never happened before.

Last night I took my parts phone, in which the lcd got wet and fried the "cable mounted IC", and swapped the motherboard and camera/antenna ribbon cable.

Same signal issue....

Is there some antenna components on the slider flex cable? I noticed a small part on the top, opposite the ambient light sensor/lcd. A little round part marked 122, right at the very top which would be directly below the silver bezel to the left of the blackberry logo. I haven't had my screen apart yet, but I'm thinking this component could have suffered some "shock damage".

I'm just at a loss, being that I swapped out the mainboard and antenna/camera ribbon cable, what else is there that would affect signal?

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe, coincidentally, a tower around me is not working right, but I sorta doubt that....

Any ideas?

[bookemdano]

Here's the part I was talking about. Anybody have any idea what it is?

[dictoresno]

unfortunately, for once, i cant help. but all i keep thinking about is facepalm.

[bookemdano]

unfortunately, for once, i cant help. but all i keep thinking about is facepalm.

Heh, yeah, I guess I deserve the gesture of facepalm for that, lol. Looking back, I should have only dropped it once not 3 times! But honestly, I'm ROUGH on phones anyway, pocket all day at work, real accidental drops on a regular basis, etc, so it was inevitable, but I guess it didn't like being dropped on purpose, haha.

Really, I don't care because its only certain areas where my signal drops out, phone still works great, with either mainboard. I'm just uber-inquisitive about things, and when I can't figure something out, I perservere until its fixed (I'm an automotive diagnostician/technician, I suppose that's why).

I can buy a whole front slider, complete with main ribbon (suspected failure) for $50 on ebay, fix this phone (or at least get my diagnosis out of it), then ill have enough parts leftover to build a 2nd working torch. So its not all bad in the end always good to have a backup phone.

I will update this thread when I do that, not like anybody else will have the same problem, but ill close it out anyway, a few people might be curious

[faizakakak]

try to update the OS first

[waynetechberry]

OS shouldnt be a problem.... after all he did drop it...it wasnt giving any problems b4. As for the main ribbon, I dont think there are any RF components on it that deals with signal issues.......

When you get the entire slide assembly, let us know if it totally works.

[T�nis]

I'm thoroughly amused how you rise to the challenge and aren't afraid to tinker with these phones. Sorry I can't offer any help, but I'll be on the lookout for your update on this. If the signal didn't drop out completely from time to time I would say don't rule out a carrier issue. I had 3G ropping down to 2G on my phone and usb connection card. I called my carrier and it "refreshed" my devices on the network resulting in immediate better signal, but seeing that you say it drops out completely now and then I would venture to guess it's hardware and not a network issue. Good luck -- I'm sure you'll get it working properly again -- and do keep us posted.

[bookemdano]

Got my slider assembly today, just installed it, its nice to have a scratch free screen, a more responsive touch screen, and a trackpad that works again, ....but.... It didn't fix my signal issue, which now *totally* rules out a hardware problem. So it must be that at&t changed their infrastructure or something, coincidentally on the same day/night (or close at least) to when I dropped the phone. Oh well, it is what it is, but now I know it wasn't me acting like a jackass that broke my phone. Well, now I'm off to assemble all my spare parts into a 2nd torch.

[bookemdano]

try to update the OS first

Its definitely not OS, I have the same problem with either one of my mainboards, both of which have different OS versions installed on them.