Removing Nokia E71's camera

Many companies do not allow their employees to use camera phones. Unfortunately my company was one of them. But the nokia E71 is such a great phone - I like the full QWERTY keyboard very much, SMS will no longer a chore like my old phones - that I decided to get one and just remove the camera myself.

One needs the T5 and T6 special screwdrivers, and some sharp plastic edge to dissassemble the E71. No metal tools for prying open some of the parts! I learnt too late from a forum that this is VERY unwise and will just damage your cover (which it did a little to mine)



1. First remove the back covers and battery and SIM card.



2. Use T5 or T6 tool to unscrew (RED)

3. Just depress the latches (BLUE) to push out the front cover

4. As there are metal latches at the head of the phone, you got to clear the latches a bit from the body first, then just slide it towards the head (maintain the angle shown in the next pic). Make sure that the latches do not hit the flexible PCB strip that goes to the volume controls. I was trying to slide the cover out so hard that I didn't notice until quite late that the latches were damaging flex PCB. Luckily the volume controls are still working in the end (I think).



You will get this:



There are two more screws at the upper left and right of the LCD that you need to unscrew using T5 or T6 before you can remove the back cover.

By the way, I am not sure if you need to take out the antenna cover at the base of the device in order to remove the front cover, but I did anyway.

5. Pry the PCB assembly off the back cover. Camera is highlighted in RED.



6. The 3.2 Megapixel camera is attached to the underside of the PCB by a simple flex connector, so its easy to remove. You do have to open up the two pieces of the PCB assembly a bit to remove the connector

See how slim the thing is :



Split to access the camera connector:



The camera, with the mechanical auto focus:



7. If you look closely, there is a pin hole camera (RED) at the head of the phone for 3G video calls. You can either desolder this or just seal it up with opaque tape or something.



8. Now assemble back. This is probably the most DIFFICULT part. You need to snap the PCB assembly into the cover, and you got to do it carefully so that you don't irrevocably damage some plastic. I find it easier to disassemble the PCB assembly. Put in the green piece first into the back cover then the LCD piece. When you put the front cover back, do remember to slide in the front cover from the top a bit.

Ta ta! Assembled back. The cool sticker at the back is from a recent Japan trip.




Just for curiosity, I disassembled everything in the process to see how the E71 is constructed. Surprisingly, most of the PCB is bare. Most of the electronics is at the lower half, shielded behind EMI enclosures.



You can see three antennas. The bigger one is for WCDMA (or 3G). The two smaller white ceramic-like antennas are for Bluetooth and WiFi. I believe the design is called folded dipole?



The back cover is carefully designed too. You can see a speaker, vibrator (the rectangular metal box - I know there's a magnet inside because it attracts the screws), the camera flash (PCB). The parallel strips thingy is the headset jack. No idea whats the circular object though.