Repairing a Sidekick II

Anyone have two Sidekick IIs that work to an extent? I had an SK2 with a working unit but bad screen and another with a bad unit and good working screen. In this case, you need a T6 torx screwdriver and a place to keep the screws. Avoid the hex drivers, as they won't do the job. They will damage the screw heads and make it nearly impossible to remove. Finding the T6s may be difficult, though I found mine at a local computer store. Ebay will have them, but you may not find them at your local hardware store. If your SKII is still under warranty, this will most likely void it. So, do this at your own risk.

Most importantly, make sure the units are turned off.

Remove the four buttons on the four corners of the unit. Remove the screws underneath.

Open up the screen halfway to reveal two screws and remove those. These two hold down the screen turning unit.

Carefully remove the upper and lower bumpers, making note of how they went on. Remove the SIM card as well. Make note of which SIM card you normally use in a working SK and keep it separate from other SIM card(s).

You should now be able to carefully pop off the upper part from the lower part. Be careful of the screen assembly, as it can fall off. Put aside the lower part and carefully remove the screen from the upper part.

Now put it back together, screwing in the screen assembly first. You should be able to turn it on test it a bit. If all goes well and you can turn it on and use it, you've done a good job. Now turn it off and put the rest of the screws and buttons back on.

Repairing the bad unit yourself may be more a hassle due to all the tiny electronic parts in there. There's not much in the way of parts you can use except for the little vibrator motor on the upper left corner in the lower unit half under the circuit board. There's a lot of tiny surface mount parts including LEDs under the keyboard and other places.

I've not done this yet with an SK3 or SK ID. Remember to do this at your own risk. I can't take responsibility for mistakes if you do it wrong.