Unique Blackberry Priv Restoration - Android slider with keyboard

hi guys welcome back to another huge video in this video i'm going to be restoring this blackberry proof slider phone from 2015. it can be said blackberry didn't follow the trends in the designing of this phone with its slide-out keyboard curved high-res oled screen and carbon fiber back this is one truly unique and retro feeling phone that looks like no other modern smartphone unfortunately this phone has been hit with something very hard in the middle of the screen and this has caused a deep gouge in the glass with a large portion of the screen shattered and the screen underneath it dead the proof was blackberry's first android phone after they ditched their own bb10 software while they also released two other phones without physical keyboards they have since stopped making their own phones and released a few blackberry branded devices made by other companies such as tcl as i'm receiving this phone i've never owned a blackberry or a phone with a physical keyboard so i'm interested to see how repairable and useful the phone is i received this phone back in june 2020 in a phone line i won the listing for a total of 19.45 cents i later sold one of the working phones in that lot for 20 dollars for the proof cost me negative 15 cents unfortunately this tech lot was packaged really poorly and with no protection so our poor blackberry got pretty scratched up along the way while this is only cosmetic damage and i could easily live with this i will demonstrate how you can replace the back panel as well for our new display panel i purchased this one for 125 australian dollars you can find them without the sliding mechanism attached however this was the only one i could find in my country china is also selling them a bit cheaper but i didn't want to risk the high chance of getting scammed with a dodgy low quality display so i was happy paying a little bit more i did notice this was a used panel and had a slight chip at the top of the screen however that doesn't really bother me because this is a lot better than the one that's coming off of it to open this blackberry i'll need to separate the back panel from the rest of the phone using some plastic picks i can work my way around the phone releasing the clips the top portion of the back panel is thin and can be easily broken i damaged it slightly near the sim slot in the removal process overall though this is much easier than taking off the back of the samsung or even trying to do a housing swap on an iphone once we're in we can remove this piece of plastic and get a proper look at the internals of the phone front and center is our 3 360 milliamp hour battery which if you're wondering is more capacity than what you'll find in the iphone 11 pro you'll also notice the battery states it's non user replaceable a bit strange given how easy the bat comes off getting started with our repair i'll disconnect and remove the battery it is held down with some light adhesive although a pull tab is provided to make the removal a little bit easier this did take about 30 to 40 seconds to remove but didn't require any alcohol or heat to remove like many other android phones after removing the battery we can see two large dents on the inside which correspond to the huge impact to the front screen continuing on i'll need to remove the motherboard so we can get access to the screen and get that off of the phone all screw heads throughout this phone are torques while not as common as philips there's still quite a common type of screw that any good tool kit should have after removing the two antennas we can get a better look at that motherboard and you can see that micro usb port is unfortunately soldered to the motherboard in my case though it's working perfectly so there's no need to worry about that with the screen and keyboard connections disconnected i can start by removing all the torx screws holding in place our motherboard after all the screws are removed we can carefully lift up on our motherboard but being careful not to lift too far as we still need to disconnect the cable underneath with that out of the way we can see quite a lot of thermal pastes left behind which is quite dried out and will need replacing removing eight more torx screws we can finally separate the display from the mid frame with our display removed you can see how the sliding mechanism works the display is attached to a rail system which has a spring behind to help the display move and snap into place i should also note this cable is replaceable as it's only an extension cable going to the back of the screen this also means the display can be replaced without even opening the back of the phone that is if you can find a screen that's not already attached to a frame with our screen off it's a good time to clean the mid frame of the phone this includes the keyboard and parts of the phone you won't actually see when it's reassembled this phone isn't water resistant or dust resistant in any way which is quite obvious so dust can get in this phone quite easily i'll try my best to remove those dents as well while i'm at it this is also a good time to remove that crusty thermal paste which we'll be replacing later proceeding we can attach the new display assembly carefully routing the two cables through the mid frame this process is similar to an iphone 4 or 4s with our screens seated into position i can reinstall the eight screws in a star-like pattern we can now see our display is attached to the phone it's time to get some new thermal paste applied to the blackberry these phones are notorious for running quite hot so reapplying lots of thermal paste should help combat that heat we can reconnect the flex cable going to the buttons of the smartphone before carefully routing the motherboard into place being careful not to get our new display cables covered in thermal paste from the processor as you can see i took my time with this making sure nothing got caught or was damaged in the process i could reinstall that modular headphone jack get everything pressed down into position and reinstall all the screws into place next up we need to reconnect all of our connections going into place reinstall the two antennas at the lower portion of the smartphone before we can reinstall our battery and test out the device putting the original battery back into position i can reconnect it to the phone by screwing it into place i'll also clean the phone with some alcohol to ensure as much dirt as removed as possible testing out our blackberry you can see our screen is now fully visible and everything appears to be working just fine for an experiment i tried to add a heat pipe to the blackberry for extra cooling this phone can get warm when in use so using an old galaxy s8 housing i removed the heat pipe using some heat and a jimmy tool i then attached it to the blackberry using some heat resistant tape and reapplied some thermal paste i found this made no difference as the heat of the phone appears to be coming from the other side of the motherboard and i don't believe this heat pipe gets enough surface area anyway so i removed it and left the phone stock the last thing i'll need to do is install a new rear case you can see the replacement i have actually has a wireless charging module attached as some models of this blackberry come with wireless charging i brought this housing to see if i could add wireless charging to the phone unfortunately the little pins that are on the motherboard aren't there for the wireless charging and i'm not sure whether the circuitry is there as well and as i didn't want to break the phone i decided not to try and bodge in wireless charging into this model one rather interesting thing is if you shine a bright light from the back of the housing you can see it's somewhat transparent it's now time for the final step reinstalling the back panel onto our blackberry priv this is quite easy as it just snaps into place however you need to be careful not to damage any of the buttons while clipping the panel into place once it's all snapped together we can remove the protective films from the buttons and the rear flash i'll also install my new sim card and sd card tray as those were missing it is at this point i'll also install my daily sim card last thing i'll need to do is remove the protective film and we're done so this is it a restored blackberry priv from 2015. i've been daily driving this phone for over two months at this point and while it's not the latest or fastest phone there are many features keeping me using it running android 6 it can still run most of the latest apps as android has great backwards compatibility this five-year-old blackberry still holds up very well in the display and battery department in comparison to the latest iphone 11 pro this blackberry has a higher resolution display with more pixels per centimeter than what apple calls their super retina xdr oled display for the iphone 11 pro the same can be said with the battery this blackberry shipped with a 364 milliamp hour higher battery capacity than the iphone 11 pro this phone is equipped with 32 gigs of expandable storage three gigs of ram and a snapdragon 808 processor the phone is a little slow but manages basic tasks just fine remember this isn't a phone designed to run games or take photos it's designed to communicate i didn't replace the battery as it gets me between one and a half to two days on a single charge after pairing my galaxy watch i received a bit less with around one to one and a half days however the battery still has an estimated capacity of over three thousand milliamp hours on the phone itself i can sign up the keyboard and enter the settings app by holding down the s key that is something you can program with the blackberry launcher in the about section you can see it's running android 6.0.1 in the day of touch screen keyboards some might wonder what's the advantage of a physical keyboard this priv has many productivity features revolving around that keyboard beyond setting shortcuts to apps or tasks it's also touch sensitive so can be used for scrolling or gestures the keyboard also has basic cut copy and paste shortcuts similar to those found on a computer you can also double tap to scroll through text you can also swipe upwards while typing to select predicted words and swipe to delete the priv also has a touch screen keyboard although i wouldn't understand why anyone would want to use this and this was actually the first time i've used it in two months the back of the phone is made out of a carbon fiber plastic material which is grippy and doesn't feel like a wet bar of soap like most modern smartphones i've also just picked up a blackberry k1 which is made by tcl i look forward to repairing this in a future video so stay tuned for that it's true to say blackberry doesn't follow the trends and isn't influenced by other phone makers which is one of the reasons their modern phones are so different this phone has made me love the physical keyboard and i'll continue using this phone for now blackberry is set to release a new bb branded device in 2021 which i'm excited for and on that note this has been a huge jeffries video if you like what you saw hit that subscribe button and consider checking out the restoration playlist for more videos just like this one and if you're looking for any tips or what tools i use to repair devices be sure to check out my website link for which is down in the description that's all for this video and i'll catch you guys next time

Channel: Hugh Jeffreys

Views: 296,119

Rating: 4.9502869 out of 5

Keywords: Hugh, Jeffreys, Apple, iPhone, iPad, iPod, technology, repair, restore, restoration

Id: PnZDMJc8uMI

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/69hailsatan]

I wish more phones would use similar backing. I know it's technically plastic, but the carbon fiber feel makes it look and feel very premium.

[u/BBClassicuser2019_2]

Great video!

[u/e_boon]

Usually buying a spare PRIV is cheaper than buying the replacement OLED screen lol

[u/dproldan]

Nice video. Thanks for sharing.

[u/lisino]

Thanks for sharing

[u/Hlynzi]

I would not call this "restoration" just simply replacing the screen. But he shows pretty well how to do it (i have opened up my Priv since the mini jack needed replacement)

I have been putting my priv a bit back into use since i have been running a huawei honor 8 recently until it's speaker became bad, and i have to say, i do really miss the keyboard so it is a joy to write on (i avoid on screen keyboard writing in general), the only thing which is a tiny bit better one the new phone is the width is about 5 mm less, so it´s narrower and easier to hold.

Looking forward for the Priv 2 (or Priv 5G) or whatever it will be called.

[u/xtremetp]

Restoration and installs the same battery...