heinitz-it » BlackBerry http://heinitz-it.de Dipl. Ing. (FH), MBA Valentin Heinitz - freiberuflicher Softwareentwickler Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:30:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Selfmade BlackBerry 8800 emergency charger http://heinitz-it.de/archives/196 http://heinitz-it.de/archives/196#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:42:14 +0000 admin http://heinitz-it.de/?p=196 Today I’ve got a kind of emergency. The USB-slot of my BlackBerry 8800 has broken. There was no chance to charge the mobile phone with a USB-cable. A broken BlackBerry is bad enough, but the worst thing was – it happened on a business trip. As I couldn’t find a cradle charger for BlackBerry 8800 in any shop around, I decided to make one myself.
My search in Internet for self-made charger HOWTO has brought no results. However it revealed, that I was not the only one owner of BlackBerry 8800 with broken USB-slot. All the question from my fellows in misfortune were in English, which motivated me to write this post.

BlackBerry 8800 has a power-connector on the left side. A multimeter told me, that upper contact was for plus and lower for minus (lower contact is connected to ground).

I’ve cut the Slim-USB ending of the USB-cable off and removed 10mm of cladding from power wires. Attention! There is no guarantee, that on your USB-Cable the red wire is + and black is -. Test the polarity with a multimeter first!
USB Cable

A piece of sticky tape did the rest of the job – connected the wires to the BlackBerry power connector.

You may ask, how I’d found out that USB on my laptop is just the source of power BlackBerry 8800 wants? Well the only thing I knew, was It wouldn’t harm my laptop as USB has built-in short-circuit guard. And for BlackBerry, well I gave it a chance and it worked.

Good luck with charging your phone!
Valentin Heinitz

ATTENTION! Try it on your own risk. I will not take any responsibility for any damage on your BlackBerry or computer.

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