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    The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

    Most of you here know of the BGA solder balls issues plaguing laptops and netbooks, and to a lesser extent, desktop motherboards and GPUs as well.

    However, i doubt any one of you had any idea you could find the same problem in a phone. Neither did i until today. A friend of mine brought this HTC Desire in. Random reboots were plaguing it, especially when doing intensive tasks such as playing games or browsing the web. As soon as the device would heat up, it would reboot, sometimes multiple times in a row. The reboots would not cease until it was left to cool down. Obviously, the issue only appeared now in the summer. If you use it in a room with aircon it's fine.

    He bought it used so no warranty, and he's been quoted $117 for a replacement mainboard at the official HTC service center. Even on ebay, a mainboard is close to $100 when you factor in postage as well. He paid $200 for the phone about half an year ago, so spending $100+ on a new board wasn't an option.

    A little browsing around revealed this is a common issue, and as far as the reports and forum posts i found say, 4000+ people have had their motherboards replaced. Some worked fine after repair, some failed again after another couple months. A quote from a related topic reads like this:

    As I mentioned before in another post on some other forum. The chance of getting a perfect HTC phone after repairs is like 35%. The chances of getting a phone with the same problem is also about 35% and the chances of getting a phone with the same problem and extra problems is the rest.


    Among all those, there was ONE guy that said he took the mainboard out, removed a shield revealing the CPU, and used a heat gun to reflow it, and that fixed the phone. Here. Well, it was worth a try.

    1st time around, around 1 minute at 375C, keeping the nozzle at least 1cm away from the chip. That's my usual routine for laptops. It rebooted again after ~15min of Angry Birds. So i hit it again.
    2nd time, i kept the hot air on the CPU for around 3 minutes. This time, i played so much Angry Birds on it that i got bored. Seriously, i played more than an hour with no more reboots. Fixed.

    The board was very interesting in that i had to rely only on my nose when doing the reflow, as NO visible flux vapor came out while i was heating it. None at all. Seriously, it looks like they've used solder with no flux!

    Also, i found it puzzling that altho the shield (which is a fairly large piece of aluminum compared to the CPU) is touching the CPU, they did NOT apply any thermal paste between the CPU and shield. I mean, you have this here surface you can use to dissipate heat better, and you don't use it??? I put in thermal paste before i closed it up. Heck, it's possible that the supposed "new revision" boards have thermal paste or a thermal pad as the only change... I'm disappointed.

    Now to see if it'll make it thru the summer. Or maybe my friend will sell it to someone else.
    Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 05-11-2012, 09:10 AM. Reason: fixed link
    Originally posted by PeteS in CA
    Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
    A working TV? How boring!

    #2
    Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

    The shield is probably for EMI. If your mobile processor needs a heatsink, you're doing it wrong!

    So, why does it need reflowing... lead-free solder again?
    Please do not PM me with questions! Questions via PM will not be answered. Post on the forums instead!
    For service manual, schematic, boardview (board view), datasheet, cad - use our search.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

      Originally posted by tom66 View Post
      The shield is probably for EMI.
      I know. But still, it doesn't make any sense why not use it as a heatsink as well. I mean, it's there to begin with, it's of a decent size, to me it was obvious that a bit of thermal paste between it and the heatsink wouldn't hurt. Not sure how HTC missed this.

      Originally posted by tom66 View Post
      If your mobile processor needs a heatsink, you're doing it wrong!
      Or you live in Bucharest or Florida... Temps are about the same in the summer. This device gets pretty warm in use. Then again, my old Touch Diamond did too, and i had no issues with that one. I didn't like it tho - went back to Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

      Originally posted by tom66 View Post
      So, why does it need reflowing... lead-free solder again?
      Do you even need to ask? Of course... and it's one of the crappiest lead-free jobs i've seen so far. I said above - it's almost like the solder has no flux in it. Joints on larger parts look cold. It's awful. I guess they got their wave soldering profile wrong.
      Originally posted by PeteS in CA
      Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
      A working TV? How boring!

      Comment


        #4
        Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

        Use some liquid flux next time... You need a fine tipped needle to "inject" it underneath the chip, it will seriously extend the life of the repair. I used some very low viscosity (It's actually not "viscous" at all, it's quite fluid) flux I got a while ago on a USB stick which I oven reflowed yesterday. I thought the flux was worthless because I got it from China. But after reflowing, I could actually see the brown residue all over the stick Unfortunately, this didn't fix the stick - the memory chip is likely the problem, not the joints).
        it's almost like the solder has no flux in it
        Do they even use flux in machine reflows? In any case, it could be that HTC went to a cheap PCB company who used low-quality unleaded balls.
        "We have offered them (the Arabs) a sensible way for so many years. But no, they wanted to fight. Fine! We gave them technology, the latest, the kind even Vietnam didn't have. They had double superiority in tanks and aircraft, triple in artillery, and in air defense and anti-tank weapons they had absolute supremacy. And what? Once again they were beaten. Once again they scrammed [sic]. Once again they screamed for us to come save them. Sadat woke me up in the middle of the night twice over the phone, 'Save me!' He demanded to send Soviet troops, and immediately! No! We are not going to fight for them."

        -Leonid Brezhnev (On the Yom Kippur War)

        Comment


          #5
          Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

          I know i should have used flux, i've always used it on laptops. Unfortunately, i'm all out of it right now, and i'm broke. As in, there's something like $2 in my pocket. The parts i bought for my dv9000 ate up most of my cash, and the audio amp i've recently completed took care of the rest.

          I don't particularly care about this phone either, this guy owes me a bunch of beers since last year, and always seems to forget reading his texts whenever i ask him questions about classes i've missed.
          Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 05-11-2012, 10:32 AM.
          Originally posted by PeteS in CA
          Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
          A working TV? How boring!

          Comment


            #6
            Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

            The parts i bought for my dv9000 ate up most of my cash, and the audio amp i've recently completed took care of the rest.
            Not to mention all the girls.
            "We have offered them (the Arabs) a sensible way for so many years. But no, they wanted to fight. Fine! We gave them technology, the latest, the kind even Vietnam didn't have. They had double superiority in tanks and aircraft, triple in artillery, and in air defense and anti-tank weapons they had absolute supremacy. And what? Once again they were beaten. Once again they scrammed [sic]. Once again they screamed for us to come save them. Sadat woke me up in the middle of the night twice over the phone, 'Save me!' He demanded to send Soviet troops, and immediately! No! We are not going to fight for them."

            -Leonid Brezhnev (On the Yom Kippur War)

            Comment


              #7
              Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

              Originally posted by mockingbird View Post
              Not to mention all the girls.
              I only have ONE. And i barely spend anything on her, she's not the gold digger type. Stay on topic please. In the meantime, back to playing Geared.
              Originally posted by PeteS in CA
              Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
              A working TV? How boring!

              Comment


                #8
                Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                I found some flux, and i thought i'd do a proper job. While i was heating up the chip for the 3rd time, i heard a snap. I continued with my reflow, and when i put it back together, phone still works fine. So now it has flux too.

                Wanna know what snapped? Turns out the MicroSD slot won't click the card in place anymore. Not sure how that happened (it's on the opposite side), but oh well. The battery holds the card in place anyway, it gets recognized fine, all apps work... i don't care if it snaps or not.
                Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                A working TV? How boring!

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                  I've had a similar problem years and years ago with an old Motorola flip-style phone (Motorola V980 .. a Vodafone branded version of the V975).

                  This was one of the earliest phones to have 3G, MP3 playback capability and a TransFlash (now known as microSD) card slot.

                  The phone worked fine, but trying to play any audio files resulted in dead silence, despite the phone actually playing it (firmware didn't crash). Turned out that if you pushed hard on the bottom part of the phone (below the keypad), the sound would come back. If you didn't push hard enough, it would cut in and out.

                  One of the BGA chips was the problem. Not really sure how this happened, as the owner took care of the phone (always in a leather case ; looked like brand new) and in retrospect, the phone was old enough (2004/2005) to probably still use leaded solder

                  I ended up buying a totally beat up parts unit on ebay and swapping the boards after backing up his data. I also flashed the non-Vodafone-branded firmware from the V975. Huuuge performance increase.. No more waiting games lol
                  Last edited by Scenic; 05-11-2012, 05:17 PM.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                    I've played with it more today, also installed a ROM that supports undervolting. I could get it to reboot again, by playing Angry Birds while playing music and charging. At that point the device was feeling pretty warm, battery sensor reported 40C, so i used SetCPU to underclock the CPU automatically at that temperature.

                    I messed around with the undervolting script some more, and got it to work stable at 800mV on the highest frequency and 700mV on the lowest. The ROM was set to 1v highest, 900mV lowest IIRC, and stock voltage is 1.3v highest, 950mV lowest, so that's signficantly lower. No more issues since undervolting.

                    I think this is no longer a BGA issue. Most people have reported that under 900mV it starts to go wonky, while mine went all the way down to 800, so i believe it has something to do with the regulator feeding the CPU, maybe it's giving out a higher voltage than it should. It could be that they used cheap ceramic caps, and as you know ceramics have poor tempco, and their capacitance drops significantly with temperature rise. Either way, it's impossible to probe around this board, everything is ridiculously tiny, so the exact issue will remain a mystery. I'm happy with how it works now, i'm leaving it be.

                    It was also interesting how this CPU behaved when starved of power. I was actually wondering whether the undervolting was working at all - so i kept lowering the voltage expecting the device to crash. It didn't, but something else happened. It got stuck at the lowest frequency (128MHz in this ROM, stock would be 240), and lagged like hell until i got back into the terminal and bumped the voltage back up. Music was still playing fine all this time tho, so i guess it has a hardware MP3 decoder.
                    Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                    Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                    A working TV? How boring!

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                      That's an impressively low voltage. I wonder how much that processor draws? One thing that's always put me off smartphones is the 1-2 day battery life. I like my old Nokia's 2 week life.

                      I played around with overclocking some dsPIC MCUs a while ago. I was able to get them to go to 50 MHz stable (rated 40 MHz), but above that they crashed now and then (just a straight reset.) The onboard PLL would do 65 MHz but they wouldn't execute any code. I didn't try overvolting them (just 3.3V!) But I heard some guy got them doing 80 MHz with a 4V core (they have a 2.5V core and 3.3V main power), but he needed a heatsink or they'd latch up catastrophically. Fun times!
                      Last edited by tom66; 05-12-2012, 04:51 PM.
                      Please do not PM me with questions! Questions via PM will not be answered. Post on the forums instead!
                      For service manual, schematic, boardview (board view), datasheet, cad - use our search.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                        Originally posted by tom66 View Post
                        That's an impressively low voltage. I wonder how much that processor draws?
                        No idea. Unfortunately Qualcomm keeps quiet about datasheets. But i'm sure this WILL make a difference in standby time.

                        However, i doubt the values set are what the regulator is putting out. Anything under 800mV where stock was 1v or higher causes the CPU to drop down to the lowest frequency, regardless of what it's supposed to be running at. This just smells of a software switch somewhere. It also never crashes, hangs, or force closes apps, which is what most people reported when undervolting too far. It just slows down.

                        Also, this ROM i installed allows overclocking up to 1152MHz (from 1000 stock). And it works fine at 1152. A 152MHz overclock on an ARM CPU with half a volt lower Vcore seems too unreal. I think the regulator is putting out higher voltage than it should and overheats the CPU, which leads to its failure in the long run. But like i said, i have no way of measuring it, it's just too crammed. It's working fine now and that's all i care about.

                        Originally posted by tom66 View Post
                        I played around with overclocking some dsPIC MCUs a while ago. I was able to get them to go to 50 MHz stable (rated 40 MHz), but above that they crashed now and then (just a straight reset.) The onboard PLL would do 65 MHz but they wouldn't execute any code. I didn't try overvolting them (just 3.3V!) But I heard some guy got them doing 80 MHz with a 4V core (they have a 2.5V core and 3.3V main power), but he needed a heatsink or they'd latch up catastrophically. Fun times!
                        I tried software PWM generation of a sinewave (wanted a stable 50Hz sinewave for an inverter) with a PIC12F675. I found some code from Microchip which was originally intended for color mixing on a RGB LED. Quite messy. I could never get it to go past 30Hz, even with just one channel as supposed to 3 the LED used. Maybe i'll try to overclock the micro and see if it makes the cut.
                        Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 05-12-2012, 05:59 PM.
                        Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                        Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                        A working TV? How boring!

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                          Symptoms sound more like a processor OC with crappy heatsink contact. lol.
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                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                            Originally posted by RJARRRPCGP View Post
                            Symptoms sound more like a processor OC with crappy heatsink contact. lol.
                            Only this thing didn't have a heatsink to begin with. Like i said above, i added thermal paste between the CPU and the shield above it, i guess that helps a little bit.
                            Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                            Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                            A working TV? How boring!

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                              HTC Desire, or HTC Desire HD (aka Inspire 4G, which I have and hate)?

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                                The first Desire. Not HD.
                                Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                                Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                                A working TV? How boring!

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                                  Alright... While browsing the local auction sites for something cheap to buy & fix, i stumbled upon the same phone, with the same problem, for $90. I offered the seller $80, let's see if he'll accept.

                                  Matter of fact, i liked that phone while i had it. And i'm also tired of this cheap crappy nokia 6300 classic i've had since my N93i broke (got caught in heavy rain 2 months ago, keypad went bad). I want something with a half-decent camera, and preferably something that doesn't cut out the music if i put it in my pocket... stupid microUSB port.
                                  Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 08-05-2012, 06:45 PM.
                                  Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                                  Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                                  A working TV? How boring!

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                                    However, i doubt any one of you had any idea you could find the same problem in a phone.
                                    lol. Noob.

                                    I've been aware of this for a long time. Ball-grid arrays in general, are prone to faultiness if you consider the fact that Pb (lead) is no longer used due to congressional law, so weaker alloys are used in effect such as tin and silver.

                                    ALL ball-grid arrays will fail in time. Reflow is always a temporary fix, and ALL reflows will fail within 3 months. AT BEST.

                                    That's why it's good to learn the art of reballing (with imported chinese leaded balls, of course, otherwise the same shit is bound to ocurr)
                                    Last edited by thesloc; 08-05-2012, 11:04 PM.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                                      Originally posted by thesloc View Post
                                      lol. Noob.
                                      Hey, you learn something new every day.

                                      Originally posted by thesloc View Post
                                      ALL ball-grid arrays will fail in time. Reflow is always a temporary fix, and ALL reflows will fail within 3 months. AT BEST.
                                      I've done reflows that lasted 8 months. Bought a reballed board for my dv9000, failed within 4 months without being stressed at all. Had to reflow it about every 4 months since, but it's still working at this moment and that's all i care about; i'm not going to invest any more cash in this laptop. Reflowing it has become sort of a ritual for me.

                                      I've asked around at GSM centers since - and apparently reflowing is common practice there too, and there have been reports of phones that lasted for 2 years. It's not hard to see why tho - a phone has smaller chips so less area to flex and separate from the board, and they also run cooler.

                                      Either way, seller told me $80 is okay, so i'm picking up this Desire today.
                                      Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                                      Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                                      A working TV? How boring!

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Re: The BGA problem is not limited to laptops!

                                        Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                                        Hey, you learn something new every day.
                                        I've done reflows that lasted 8 months. Bought a reballed board for my dv9000, failed within 4 months without being stressed at all. Had to reflow it about every 4 months since, but it's still working at this moment and that's all i care about; i'm not going to invest any more cash in this laptop. Reflowing it has become sort of a ritual for me.
                                        It was probably reballed using non-leaded components, so you were given back the same product, not a better one. Make sure your future reballs are leaded. The chemistry here is very important.

                                        And reflowing is whack. I never trust it anymore. No offense.

                                        Comment

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