How to Troubleshoot a Cell Phone

Series Summary

These days, more and more people carry cell phones around with them. People are slowly getting away from land lines and calling cards. Although some still use older devices, newer devices can prove to be difficult without familiarity of how they work. Some people may still ask themselves, what's the difference between a land line and a cell phone? What's the price difference between the two? And telemarketers are starting to call cell phones, as well. How does one go about getting rid of those phone calls? Technology is supposed to make life easier. In this free video series on cell phones, the store manager of a cell phone broker explains cell phone information. Learn how to send messages with a cell phone, text messaging etiquette and how to get out of a cell phone contract. Find out about using Bluetooth to connect two different devices and send files. Get information on smartphones and how to troubleshoot cell phone problems, all with this free video series.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ben from the Cellphone Broker in San Jose, California, and today, I'm going to show you how to troubleshoot problems with your cell phone. There are a few simple things that you can do to troubleshoot problems with your phone. The first thing you want to do is take the battery out of the cell phone and check for a small, white indicator. Sometimes this indicator, which is right over here next to the antenna, will have some little X's on it -- maybe a red or a purple color. And this shows indication of water damage. So on this phone, it has a white circle with X's on it. And once this circle becomes completely red or completely purple, that shows...that shows that this phone has been dropped or submerged in water for an extended period of time. Sometimes you can also find it on the battery. This one does not have it on the battery, though. If it does have water damage, you need to take it to a cell phone repair center or you need to purchase a new phone. Usually, phones that have water damage won't last more than two months. It's better to take the phone in, I mean, as soon as you discover that water damage because after two weeks, the device gets really corroded and it's pretty hard to fix it after that. The second most common thing that we see in the cell phone repair industry is a cracked LCD screen. As you can see on this one, it looks like an ink pen has exploded inside of the screen. Usually, to replace an LCD screen on any type of phone will be between 40 to 200 dollars, depending upon the model. I mean, if it's an iPhone or something like that, it's going to be cheaper to just purchase a new one because the cost of that part is about 400 dollars. On this particular Nokia model, it should be about 100 dollars to replace this LCD screen. You can tell that the LCD is definitely damaged because there's, like, an ink pen explosion in there. Just you see a bunch of black liquid just in these. The other thing that we see a lot would be the flex cable. Flex cable is what connects the top portion of the screen to the motherboard, which is what controls the entire phone. It's kind of like the brain for the phone. And that's the small cable that runs in between here all the way to here. So on this type of sliding phone, it's pretty common for that to break really easily if you're sliding it way too much or you're sliding it too hard. That cost of that repair would be about 45 dollars. And you can usually tell if it's the flex cable instead of the LCD if you do not see any of this leaking, you know, ink blots inside of the LCD screen. Normally, the LCD screen will just show solid black or solid white, and that indicates that the flex cable needs to be replaced. I'm Ben from the Cellphone Broker in San Jose, California. To find out more about cell phone repair, log onto our website at myspace.com/cellphonebroker."