This may help you if your HTC hero has a permanent headphone icon on and has ' not recognised' error when plugged into a PC. EVEN WITH LATEST ROM.
I have an 8 month old orange HTC Hero which developed the above faults. tried resetting and multiple headphone cycling but nothing worked.
I also had red water indication strips (despite no wetting of phone!!) so HTC wanted a fortune to look at or repair it. BE WARNED LIGHT RAIN IS ENOUGH TO CAUSE THIS IN THE BATTERY COMPARTMENT AREA = NO WARRANTY!!!!
I decided to open up the phone. PLEASE DO NOT OPEN YOUR PHONE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT TO EXPECT AND DO NOT BLAME ME FOR ANY PROBLEMS RESULTING FROM DISASSEMBLY - ONLY SIMPLE DISASSEMBLY REQUIRED TO FIX THIS ISSUE FOR ME.
I only needed to remove battery cover then remove the 6 screws and remove upper cover. All other parts of phone were left in tact.
By studying the headphone and USB area (internal water stickers were white by the way!!!) I noticed that the inner part of the headphone socket and USB connector are protected with a brown clear polyimide tape to stop dust ingress I assume.
The fact that the underside of the tape is sticky, however, means that any dust getting into the phone sticks to this tape like a magnet so ths headphone contacts and especially the USB contacts were covered in light dust and debris which were potentially shorting across all the contacts.
I cleaned the two areas with a soft toothbrush using a x10 eye loupe and strong light, holding back the tape as I went along.
the phone was then tested and both problems immediately disappeared.
After reassembling the covers the phone is as good as new and connects to the PC and the headphone socket responds as it should. hope this helps someone
bobetski
I have an 8 month old orange HTC Hero which developed the above faults. tried resetting and multiple headphone cycling but nothing worked.
I also had red water indication strips (despite no wetting of phone!!) so HTC wanted a fortune to look at or repair it. BE WARNED LIGHT RAIN IS ENOUGH TO CAUSE THIS IN THE BATTERY COMPARTMENT AREA = NO WARRANTY!!!!
I decided to open up the phone. PLEASE DO NOT OPEN YOUR PHONE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT TO EXPECT AND DO NOT BLAME ME FOR ANY PROBLEMS RESULTING FROM DISASSEMBLY - ONLY SIMPLE DISASSEMBLY REQUIRED TO FIX THIS ISSUE FOR ME.
I only needed to remove battery cover then remove the 6 screws and remove upper cover. All other parts of phone were left in tact.
By studying the headphone and USB area (internal water stickers were white by the way!!!) I noticed that the inner part of the headphone socket and USB connector are protected with a brown clear polyimide tape to stop dust ingress I assume.
The fact that the underside of the tape is sticky, however, means that any dust getting into the phone sticks to this tape like a magnet so ths headphone contacts and especially the USB contacts were covered in light dust and debris which were potentially shorting across all the contacts.
I cleaned the two areas with a soft toothbrush using a x10 eye loupe and strong light, holding back the tape as I went along.
the phone was then tested and both problems immediately disappeared.
After reassembling the covers the phone is as good as new and connects to the PC and the headphone socket responds as it should. hope this helps someone
bobetski
