To Fit A New Casing To The N95
N.B. These instructions refer to a specific casing-kit, bought from HERE
!! I can no longer recommend this item !! The black coating of the face-plate is so poorly applied that it can easily be scratched off by a fingernail.
However, as the geneal procedure is the same for any replacement casing, the following instructions are still pertinent to the process.
N.B. The text in blue italics refers to procedures using items that may not be included in the particular parts-set that you are using.
Tools needed:
Torx-5 driver.
Opening-tool or strong, narrow plastic edge... Credit-card or similar.
Starting with the front plate first of all...
1. Remove the four screws from the back of the slider, ensuring that the Torx-5 driver you use is a good fit and not worn in any way as the screw heads are easily damaged. You may find that it takes considerable force to unscrew them as they have threadlock applied to them when factory-fitted. Take care that you support the phone by the frame edge and that you don't put pressure on the LCD when undoing them!
2. Using the plastic unclipping tool, slide it gently down each side of the frame to disengage the two clips in the centre of each side, it doesn't need excessive force to do this if you position the unclipping tool correctly, take care not to bend the clips! Lift off the frame assembly.
3. You now need to remove items from the OEM frame that you've just taken off and refit them to the replacement frame. I found that if this was done in a room at a comfortable temperature and the phone had time to reach that temperature, I was able to release the two components that were held in place by adhesive pads without disturbing the pads, so that the OEM frame could easily be re-used if needed.
4. First remove the most delicate item, the loudspeaker, from the centre top of the casing. Note that there are two tiny spring-contacts top and bottom centre of the speaker, take great care not to damage or distort these. Prising gently from alternate sides top and bottom of the speaker should release it from the adhesive pad that holds it in place without damaging either the speaker or the pad...
gently does it! Whilst doing this, I managed to drop the speaker onto the work-surface, so I was unable to be sure that I refitted it the right way around. I doubt that it matters actually but I'd advise you to keep it on one side in such a way that you can refit it with the same orientation. (I may just have been lucky to get it right!)
5. The next item to remove is the plastic housing incorporating the lens for the front-facing camera. Again, gently prising it free should hopefully leave the adhesive pad underneath intact for future use (note that it's located by two small pins, moulded into the frame on each side, so prise it up vertically, don't try and lever it out from just one side!). When it's removed you'll see, to the right of where it's been, a small transparent strip (the window for the light-level-sensor), that is still held by the adhesive.
You can leave this in place as the kit includes a new one.
6. Turning to the new frame... Now for a rather fiddly bit!
You will see in the kit, a small adhesive pad, with the centre marked to push out. Leaving the protective paper on it for now, remove the centre piece of the pad... And keep it on one side! When you've done that, Place the pad with the centre portion now removed & paper still on both sides, over the camera-location hole in the top frame. Being absolutely sure that you have it correctly orientated so that it will fit when applied and that the slots cut in it for the pins are in register. NOW you can remove the bottom part of the protective paper and position it, pressing down on the top paper surface to secure it in place. You can now remove the top paper cover, I found the best way to do this was by using a craft-knife or similar, scraping away carefully at the paper, just slightly in from one corner, until it lifted enough to peel it off. Trying to separate it by attempting to peel it back from an edge was a hopeless task!
7. Take the tiny strip of transparent plastic-moulding and place it in the new frame so that the lens part fits into the light-sensor opening, then take the plastic front-camera housing piece that you removed from the original frame and position it over the adhessive pad, ensuring that it slots over the two locating pins... and press down firmly.
8. And now for an even
more fiddly bit! The speaker needs to be refitted but
as you'll see, there's no adhesive pad supplied to hold it in place. Quite apart from the slight cushioning effect of a pad, it needs to be held in the frame when the frame is refitted, because both the keypad and the LCD are not secured to the base part of the phone and therefore the base needs to be level when refitting the frame by dropping the frame onto the base section. So... If you look at the back cover that came in the kit, you'll see that the chromed speaker grills are already installed in the case, obsuring the slots that the actual outer speaker grills fit into... The ones in the back cover are lightly held in place by adhesive and can be easily removed. Once removed, the adhesive coating on them can be scraped off by a craft-knife and as you do this, it will roll up into a small, sticky tube-shape. You need only two of these tiny sticky blobs, enough to put one top and bottom of where the speaker sticky-pad should be. This is enough to hold the speaker when the frame is inverted to fit it. It also appears to act as sufficient cushioning in place of the proper pad, as I've experienced no problems with the speaker, it still sounds as good as before.
N.B. Instead of scraping adhesive off the fake speaker-grill mouldings and collecting a couple of sticky blobs for the speaker-housing, you may prefer instead to cut strips to suit from the pad centre-section that you removed earlier... You did save it one side as instructed, didn't you? ;)
9. With the Camera-housing, the light-sensor window and the speaker secured, you can replace the frame. Position it carefully as the camera-housing needs to locate over the board-mounted camera and the two tiny spring-contacts on the speaker need to line up with pads on the circuit-board. Then press firmly on the centre of the frame-plate on each side to engage the clips and refit the screws to the back-plate. Tighten these untill they are firm and recessed below the plate surface slightly. Take care not to overtighten them though... Remember that they shouldn't be as tight as they appeared to be when you first removed them... That effect was caused by the threadlock 'glue' on them.
10. Now you can fit the back casing ... Instructions on how to remove it and refit it without damage are
HERE.