My phone gave up the ghost, today, due to damage to the socket where the flex cable goes that transmits USB, audio and charging. Obviously I need at least to charge it somehow, so without the socket, I don’t see a way to keep the phone. I also don’t know how a new socket could be soldered into the motherboard.
I’m sorry it had to be this way - I’d have preferred something dramatic like falling into a volcano, burning up during reentry, or such. This phone has drowned in a half-frozen river (together with me) (sorry for non-dull), been dropped about a million times, and had the following bits swapped due to grievous damage:
- screen, 8 times (I had to count them in purchase history in AliExpress)
- the 1st screen drowned
- one just didn’t work
- one was damaged when I ripped it off to change the proximity sensor
- the rest just were broken during drops
- flex cable between daughterboard and motherboard (the phone didn’t charge)
- charging/speaker/audio jack daughterboard (the phone didn’t charge, but the culprit was the flex cable)
- battery (the phone didn’t charge, but the culprit was the flex cable)
- proximity sensor (collateral damage of screen swap)
- fingerprint reader (because I tore its cable during a screen swap


those fpcs are really damn hard to replace. possible, but difficult. if you have a microscope and really fine jump wire you can remove the old port and solder the cable directly to it. just be careful not to rip any pads while taking it off.
if you consider it dead anyways, there’s nothing to be lost trying!
Easiest is solder paste + flux + heat gun. No broken pads