HOW TO: Motorola q9h housing replacement

[ventivent]

For anyone interested,

I dropped my q9h in a parking lot a few weeks back, and scratched up the housing pretty badly. I ordered a new housing off of ebay, and installed it today. If any of you are planning on doing this, it's not nearly as easy as changing the housing on the old Motorola Q. The new housing was from a seller called "gsm4world." It appears to be an all black OEM housing, and cost $17.99 + $5.00 shipping. It shipped from Hong Kong, and took about 2 weeks to arrive. If you buy from them, realize that they only ship you the front faceplate with the LCD lens and keyboard, not the back battery cover or camera lens.

Pictured below is the old housing on the left, and the phone transplanted into the new housing on the right.





The basic process is as follows: (You will need a Torx #5 screwdriver and a pocket knife or plastic cellphone opener)

1. Remove the battery cover. Remove the battery.

2. There will be four Torx #5 screws, three blue ones and one silver one that will need to be removed.

3. Then comes the hard part. The top back cover has to be removed. First, use a penknife or xacto knife to take the transparent lens cover off the camera/flash area.

Then, use a plastic cellphone opener or a pocketknife to carefully pry off the top back cover. There is a small amount of adhesive holding the cover to the unit, so start from the bottom and work your way around. There are about four clips holding the back cover onto the unit, and you should feel them snap open. Be careful not to break them off.

4. Once the back cover is off, there will be two more Torx #5 screws at the top that you will need to unscrew. Then use your penknife to carefully pry the unit away from the front faceplate. Start at the bottom and work your way around.

5. There will be a small connector which connects the keyboard to the circuitboard. Carefully disconnect this.

6. The LCD will likely be sitting pretty tight in the LCD lens; use the penknife to carefully pry it off and then transplant it into the new faceplate.

7. There is a small metal box-like apparatus up by the top speaker that also needs to be transplanted from the old faceplate to the new one.

8. Take the old side-buttons and put the in the new faceplate.

9. Connect the keyboard connector from the new faceplate to the circuitboard of the unit.

10. Carefully snap the unit into the new faceplate. Screw in the two top screws. Put the top back cover back on. Put the camera/flash lens cover back on. Screw the four bottom screws back in. Put the battery, SIM card, micro-SD cards back in, and put the battery cover back on.

That's it. I would test it to make sure your speakerphone and vibrate settings are working properly. Also, I would check to make sure all the keys work properly. One thing I've noticed is that the new housing makes the phone slightly lighter than the old housing. Also, the keyboard is not smooth plastic, but rather rough plastic which gives it a much more tactile feel.

[Technician]

Thanks may make a good post for a sticky.

[spec7]

black is pretty slick, i might have to do this.

[smiller2076]

WARNING!!
I learned this the hard way with my old phone. If you open the phone casing, it automatically voids the warranty. I'm not sure if the insurance would still cover it, but I wouldn't take the chance.

[puckrazy1]

I cracked the screen on mine within two weeks of receiving it. Great info! Thanks!

[markLR]

How would you rank the quality of your phone case? I'm looking into picking one up too. Is it OEM feeling, kind of OEM, pretty bootleg, etc.?

[drait]

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread, but I just received my black housing and it's top notch. The keyboard buttons have a different texture than the ones on the stock silver housing, and I couldn't find an easy way to separate it from the faceplate so in it went. They aren't bad, just more of a rough texture instead of the smoother stock ones.

All in all, the quality of the housing is well worth the ~$20 or so. And the black is much better looking IMO. Not to mention a slimming color ;-) Anything that makes the chunky Q9 appear thinner is A-OK in my book.

Many props to the OP for this brief how-to. It was very good info for those wishing to do the swap.

[zenkinz]

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread, but I just received my black housing and it's top notch. The keyboard buttons have a different texture than the ones on the stock silver housing, and I couldn't find an easy way to separate it from the faceplate so in it went. They aren't bad, just more of a rough texture instead of the smoother stock ones.

are you referring to the rubbery texture in the new keyboard instead of the smoother plastic-ky one? If yes, I actually prefer this "rougher" texture because it gives a more 'posh' feeling.

and I didn't know there's a different material used in Q9h for different region.

[drait]

I wouldn't describe the black housing keys as rubbery, since they still feel like solid plastic keys. But the surface is just rougher/tackier than the stock ones. It would've been nice had the keys felt like the surface that's on the battery cover.

[gazment]

Does anyone know for a fact that this housing wouldn't fit a q9c? All of the buttons seem to line up perfectly with the q9c's buttons (albeit the difference in shape of the softkeys. I know that the mic location is wrong but that could be modified easily enough. I hope someone has an answer.