Technology Android
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HTC Desire headphone jack fix

This morning on the way to work I got down to the road, plugged in my earphones to my phone and hit play on Spotify. Only for some horrible, tinny, quiet music to come out. It seemed that the phone just simply would not recognise that anything had been plugged in. Something that I confirmed when I got to work and confirmed with a pair of headphones and PC that it was the phone and not the earphones.

Well I’m not having this, so I tear off the back cover

Cover removed

Rip out the battery, SIM and microSD card. Before getting to work on the screws.

Screws and accessories removed

Turns out that the two screens in the middle are very small posidrives whilst the 2 visible screws (left side) are a very small 6 sided star drive. Fortunately these aren’t very tight, so I just used a small flat head screwdriver.

There were 2 VOID stickers covering the remaining star drive screws. But after 2 and a half hears and buying the phone 2nd hand, I figured the warranty wasn’t much good to me at this point.

Next was to lift out the battery bay cover

Levering the battery cover

There’s two little snap catches on each side. So get in with the flat head screwdriver. Lifting this also ejects the aerial module on the bottom of the phone.

Inside

The headphone jack is on the top PCB with the camera module. To get access to this requires the removal of one more tiny posidrive screw (shown at the very bottom of the above picture).

Once this is free you can pull out the PCB (I did so by the pretty robust camera module). Watch out that you dont lose your power button.

Close up of top

Now you can have a good inspection of the headphone jack from both sides.

Top viewed from top

I recommend getting in there with a can of compressed air just to blow out all of the pocket debris.

Once you’re happy, reassemble the phone in reverse order, turn it on. And Bob’s your uncle, my headphone jack is back in business.

Who needs a new phone when you can just dissemble and hack a 3 year old one?

This page previously appeared on morganbye.net[^1][^2][^3]

[^1:] http://morganbye.net/htc-desire-headphone-jack-fix [^2:] http://morganbye.net/2012/08/htc-desire-headphone-jack-fix) [^3:] http://morganbye.net/uncategorized/2012/08/htc-desire-headphone-jack-fix/

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LEADERSHIP, SCALE, AND THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Principles & Perspectives

How do you define successful engineering leadership?

The Philosophy

Many view technical leadership as being the “smartest architect in the room.” I see it as the opposite. My job is to build a room where I don’t have to be the smartest person because the systems, culture, and communication are so robust that the team can out-innovate me.

The Strategy

  • Alignment: Does every engineer understand how their sprint task impacts the company’s bottom line?
  • Velocity vs. Stability: We aren’t just “shipping fast”; we are building a predictable, repeatable engine that doesn’t collapse under its own weight at the next order of magnitude.
  • The Human Growth Curve: Success is when the engineering team’s capability evolves faster than the product’s complexity. If the team feels stagnant, the tech stack will soon follow.

What is your approach to scaling technical organizations?

The Philosophy

Scaling isn’t just “hiring more people” - that’s often how you slow down. Scaling is about moving from Individual Heroics to Organizational Systems.

The Strategy

  • The 3-Continent Perspective: Having managed global teams, I focus on “High-Signal Communication.” As you grow, the cost of a meeting triples. I implement “Asynchronous-First” cultures that protect deep-work time while ensuring no one is blocked by a timezone.

  • Modular Autonomy: I advocate for breaking down monolithic teams into autonomous units with clear ownership. This reduces the “communication tax” and allows us to scale the headcount without scaling the bureaucracy.

  • Automation as Infrastructure: At petabyte scale, manual intervention is a failure. I treat the developer experience (CI/CD, observability, self-service infra) as a first-class product to keep the “path to production” frictionless.

How do you balance high-growth velocity with technical stability?

The Philosophy

Technical debt isn’t a “bad thing” to be avoided; it’s a set of historical decisions that no longer serve you. Like any loan, leverage can accelerate growth when investments payoff. But if velocity and returns are slowing you need a payment plan before the interest kills you.

The Strategy

  • The ROI Filter: I don’t refactor for the sake of “clean code.” I don’t refactor a micro-service with no users. I refactor when the pain on that debt - measured in bugs, downtime, or developer frustration - starts to exceed the cost of the fix.

  • Zero-Downtime Culture: Especially at scale, stability is a feature. I implement “Guardrail Engineering” where the system is designed to fail gracefully, ensuring that a Series B growth spike becomes a success story rather than a post-mortem.

  • The 70/20/10 Rule: I typically aim to dedicate 70% of resources to new features, 20% to infrastructure/debt, and 10% to R&D. This ensures we never stop innovating, but we never stop fortifying either.