[schmoozer#CB]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for anyone willing to share their experience, as sw-box.com customers - i.e. how was the overall exp.? How was it resolved (if at all)?


I'm having issues of my own w/them, & am curious of how they handle things.

[Ryan Trevisol]

I know this isn't what you're looking for exactly but I had a good overall experience with sw-box. I'll share because I couldn't find any similar info when I was shopping for a replacement housing.

I ordered a full housing for a Bold 9000 and it arrived in about as much time as you can expect coming from Hong Kong.

The housing was packaged extremely well in a little box covered with that impenetrable yellow tape they have in China. Inside each item (mid plate, battery cover, faceplate, keyboard, trackball) was packed in its own ziplock/bubblewrap.

The faceplate itself seems to be of very high quality. Interestingly enough they appear to spray paint each housing individually instead of using colored plastic. There was still a little masking tape on the back of some of the buttons, when removed the buttons were attached as normal - it wasn't holding the buttons in as I had feared.

The fit and finish of the entire case was very good. About as good as you can expect for not being OEM. Buttons worked well (even had better tactile response than stock on a couple of them), though the middle bar above the keyboard was not as stiff as on the OEM case. I feared it would gap but once the screen was installed it tightened right up. On the faceplate, they had sprayed right over the charging contacts instead of installing them after spraying the case. I checked with a multi-meter and the paint was not conductive. The good news was that the paint didn't stick well to the contacts. When I scraped it lightly with an Xacto knife, it flaked right off. I never did get a charging cradle but tested for continuity and it passed with my multimeter.

The midplate was of very high quality. It had a different manufacturer's insignia but the duplication was exact - you could convince me easily that they rolled off the same production line. I had no qualms replacing the original midplate with this one and I got the same performance from it.

The trackball was sealed in a blister pack as one would expect it to sit in a parts bin. Worked just as well as a new BB trackball would and seemed to be made of the same materials.

One thing that disappointed me was the quality of the keypad itself. I was looking forward to using a keypad with red numbers on it and one that didn't have any wear on the keys. However, when I installed the new keypad (both in the OEM housing and SW-Box's housing) the P was mushy and it activated but didn't have a satisfying click to it. I ended up using my original keypad instead.

All in all, I was satisfied with their communication, it was clear that the parts I received were new, and though the keyboard was misaligned or just not as high quality, the housing was surprisingly good.

[schmoozer#CB]

Thanks for the info.

Regarding your description of the housing, and other assorted plastic parts - I totally agree with it, and the well packaged bit.

I just can't figure out how the heck they shipped that crappy LCD and expect people to be okay with it.

[vanilla_thunder]

The Bold 9700 housing I ordered was very poor quality. Half the buttons on the keyboard didn't work and it jammed the trackpad down. And the 7 silver pieces in the BB logo on the battery cover were taped on, so when I took the tape off they fell out. Will never buy anything from there again.

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