What to do about a broken headphone jack?

[F11]

My Moto E5 Plus' headphone jack keeps cutting out, sometimes depending on where the cable is positioned. The only thing I think might've caused this was when I used my phone for a song request at a dance the other week (a friend forgot their phone so I was doing it for them). It was working perfectly before that, but now that I try to use it again (first time since dance) it cuts out and pauses the music, switching between the internal speaker and the headphone jack. It isn't the cable (I've tried 5 different cables so far, and it does the same thing with all of them) and it isn't the software playing the music. I've only had this phone since around the beginning of September.

Is there an easy way to replace the headphone jack, or do I have to get the whole phone replaced? I've done electronics work before, but nothing on quite the scale of a phone.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

I haven't had that happen on an Android phone yet but back in the PocketPC days around the turn of this century I borked the headphone jack on a HP Jornada. My headphone cable got caught on something when I was getting off a bus. The repair firm I sent it to said they'd never seen anything like it before. Somehow I managed to break the solder holding the jack in place. They fixed it for $99 USD. I don't think they actually replaced the headphone jack.
HTH

 

[F11]

I haven't had that happen on an Android phone yet but back in the PocketPC days around the turn of this century I borked the headphone jack on a HP Jornada. My headphone cable got caught on something when I was getting off a bus. The repair firm I sent it to said they'd never seen anything like it before. Somehow I managed to break the solder holding the jack in place. They fixed it for $99 USD. I don't think they actually replaced the headphone jack.
HTH

This is the first time it's ever happened to me on any device I've owned. Even my laptop from 2013 that has been used until 2017, been through multiple countries, and had the headphone jack tugged on countless times works perfectly. Not to mention my super old kindle fire which also has no problems.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

I meant in the 1990s probably.
I've used personal assistants since they were mechanical.

Welcome to the Android Fourms F11!

Can you open your phone to check?

 

[F11]

Welcome to the Android Fourms F11!

Thanks!

Can you open your phone to check?

For that I'm pretty sure I would need to use a heat gun to remove the back, and although I have one, I'm not confident enough to do it myself. If it were just a matter of removing a few screws, then I'd be fine with it, but I've never worked with a smartphone before.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

I don't think so. Screws went out in the 1980s. The jack is soldered to the board.

 

[mikedt]

Yeh, solder, lots of very strong glue, and some very small parts. See if there's any YouTube or Ifixit videos about disassembling and repairing this phone.

 

[svim]

You could try picking up an aerosol can of electrical contact cleaner and see if that will help. Just spray a small amount, a little is better and more effective than too much. But this is just a matter of cleaning the metal contact surfaces. The issue you've described does sound more like there could be actual physical damage, the headphone port itself is basically just a spring-loaded, mechanical switch (see below)

When you insert a headphone jack, it just pushes a spring-loaded metal contact over so the audio signal instead of going to the internal speaker it's redirected to the headphone. In some phones the headphone jack is modular and replaceable but that's not too common, most are soldered directly to the motherboard. Don't know just how the jack is set in place with an E5 Plus. Smartphones with any modular components are typically higher end phones, with budget and below using the most economical practices in design and manufacturing so I'm just assuming that model is going to have a soldered-in port. If this is the case, you might want to think about using a Bluetooth headphone.
This being a recently released model, a repair like this might still be covered by some kind of warranty. If yes, just don't let on what happened at that dance, just state that the headphone port is messed up.

 

[psionandy]

Or... treat yourself to a pair of shiny new Bluetooth headphones...