So I accidentally spilled a cup of tea over my Blackberry. Fortunately, after drying it off most of it worked perfectly bar one of the most important components in a mobile phone – The microphone.

After doing a little research, it turns out that the mic is surface mounted to the keyboard PCB so to replace the mic I’d need a new (or working) keyboard PCB. The only place I could find this component new was on some American website, which after shipping and other taxes involved in importing stuff, would have cost about £70. Or, I could have sent it off to Vodafone for repair at a cost of £60 and a few weeks Blackberry-less no doubt.

I ended up grabbing what was described as a faulty 8800 from someone on eBay for about £40, the description said it had a software fault, so there was a good chance that the hardware was in good condition. It turns out that there was nothing wrong with it from what I could gather after messing around with it for a couple of minutes. But it was on the o2 network, so no use to me.

After disassembling one of my 8800s it turns out that the keyboard PCB is somehow permanently fixed to the chassis. I made several attempts to split the two apart, but was concerned as to how functional the PCB would have been afterwards, and how I was going to mount the replacement. I’m assuming that if I were to order the replacement part from America, it would arrive mounted to the chassis. The only issue with this, is that the sticker with the serial number, IMEI, BT MAC etc. is also permanently stuck to the back of the chassis.

There isn’t too much work involved in taking one of these things apart. After removing the battery, MicroSD card and sim card out there are four Torx T5 (or T4 – My precision Torx drivers aren’t marked) screws to remove. After removing the two chrome plastic side plates, which are just clipped on, the back cover comes off with a bit of jiggling.

After removing the back cover, there are a further two T5 screw to remove near the top which releases the clipped on front cover and keypad. At the bottom there is then a plastic cover that just pulls off, underneath is a small PCB which looks like it contains some form of antenna, possibly GPRS/EDGE based on what was printed on the cover.

The next task is to remove the frame that the loudspeaker is mounted to. This frame is just clipped on with two clips either side, and two clips at the top. There is also a wire linking the main board to the antenna board which is clipped to the frame, it’s easiest to unplug the wire at each end before removing the frame.

After the frame is removed, the main PCB should be fairly easy to remove after unplugging the ribbon cables from the display and keyboard. Flip the chassis over and remove the display by firmly pulling it away from the metal backing plate, it is only held on with an adhesive pad. At this stage I got the second 8800 to the same stage, and reassembled my original phone around the chassis with the working keyboard mounted to it. It’s always worth checking that it is functioning before putting it back in its casing – You don’t want to put it all back together only to find there is a bad connection somewhere!