Every day, thousands of people are frustrated by the same problem: their headphone jack has broken. This can be a huge inconvenience because it means that your headphones will no longer work with your device. Fear not! There are many different ways to fix this problem without buying new headphones or spending money on something you don’t need. We’ll show you how to take care of this annoying issue so you don’t have to worry about it anymore!
How to Repair 3.5mm Headphone jack
- The first step will be to remove your phone’s case. If you have a large bulky case, it makes it much more difficult to take apart your phone and make the necessary repairs. The only thing I recommend keeping on your phone is a screen protector. You don’t want any dust or debris getting inside of your device as this can cause permanent damage. After removing all cases, you’ll need to locate where the headphone jack is inside of the device.
- Normally, there should be some screws that you will need to remove with a small Phillips screwdriver . Be sure that when you unscrew these parts that you do not turn them too far as this may strip them and make them useless in reassembling phone together later on.
- Once you have all of the necessary parts unscrewed, you can use your fingers to pull apart the top of your phone from the bottom. This will be easier if you are pulling on both sides at once with even pressure. You’ll then need to remove the battery cover, battery, SIM card, and any other small components that may get in your way when repairing your headphone jack.
- If you’re having trouble getting inside of the device because of how close together everything is, another option would be to use a heat gun or hair dryer . Carefully point either one toward where you want it to open up so it can soften up the glue holding everything in place. After doing this for a while it should come apart without too much force.
- After taking apart the phone, you’ll need to get rid of any glue that might be holding the motherboard and components in place. Some people like using a heat gun once again but I feel like this can leave behind some residue.
- The best way to use heat with electronics is to use an iOpener . This will allow the heat to dissipate throughout the device without causing any damage or leaving behind unwanted debris. You can find many different types of iOpeners on Amazon for about $10 here and they’re definitely worth it if you plan on repairing phones regularly.
- Once you have things open up, it’s time to assess what exactly has broken inside of your phone. If your headphone jack is completely missing or there are any noticeable cracks, this might be a lost cause. You can purchase a new headphone jack from amazon for around $10 , or you can continue to look for replacement parts. Before buying anything new, make sure that the replacement will fit your particular model of phone.
- If there is no obvious damage and everything still seems to be in place, it’s time to test out the old speaker and see if it works properly without headphones plugged into it. Once you’ve confirmed that the speaker itself isn’t broken, we need to move onto testing the headphone jack and seeing where exactly your problem lies.
- There are several different ways that we can do this but they all rely on the fact that electricity follows the path of resistance . This means that if we place something with resistance in between the two prongs of the jack (one is receiving power, one is sending power), this will complete the circuit and the electricity will flow.
- You can test your headphone jack with a multimeter . If you’ve never used one before, check out how to here to test if your phone’s speaker is broken as well. Once you’ve completed this step, it’s time to move onto soldering. You’ll need some thin gauge solder ($5) , some flux ($5) , and either a soldering iron ($15) or soldering station ($100) . Soldering irons are much cheaper but they may not get hot enough for sensitive jobs like this one. If you’re having issues with this, you could always use a soldering station instead.
- Cut the speaker off of your old headphone adapter and strip off some of the plastic so you have a good amount of exposed wire. You’ll need to do the same thing for the negative and positive prongs from inside of your headphone jack. It doesn’t have to be perfect since we’re just going to be connecting them together but it should look something like this when done:
- If you want to add more solder, go ahead but it isn’t necessary unless you accidentally connect the prongs together too much which happens quite often for beginners. If there is too much added simply heat up one side and press it up against the other side until you get a good connection.
- If your headphone jack is broken like mine was, you’ll need to create a work around so that you can get sound out of your speakers when unplugged. This means soldering the wires from the replacement headphone adapter onto the back of the motherboard instead of placing them into your device’s headphone jack. To find out where exactly to solder each wire head over here.
- After soldering everything together its time to place everything back inside of the phone and close it up! If you drilled all of your holes correctly than hopefully everything should fit together nicely without any gaps. To test the headphone jack out, plug in your replacement and see if everything works properly. If it does congratulations!
- If you didn’t drill the holes correctly than there’s a good chance that they may be too big or small and won’t fit back inside of your phone. This means you’ll need to find something else to put inside of the empty space, such as rubber from a pen cap or paper from a notebook. Simply place this into the unsightly hole with some super glue or hot glue and then re-drill afterwards to make sure it fits nicely this time around.
- Depending on how damaged your old headphone jack was, sometimes simply replacing it without any added solder will still work but this isn’t always true. If you tried out your new adapter and it still doesn’t work properly, time to break out the soldering iron one more time. Sometimes all you’ll need to do is add a little solder into the empty prongs on your phone’s motherboard.
Final Words
If you’re having issues with the new headphone jack not fitting inside of your device, simply take it out and put some more hot glue or rubber in there so that it forms around your replacement adapter and then re-drill afterwards. If everything went smoothly, congrats! You’ve successfully repaired your broken headphone jack for much less than what you would have paid otherwise.
Hopefully this guide helped you repair your device’s headphone jack without spending too much money in doing so. If I missed anything or there are any questions that you may have about something please leave us a comment below! Thanks for reading 🙂
