I use the headphone jack multiple times a day, connecting my torch 9800 to the car stereo. Over the past year, the connection has gotten flaky, eventually past the point of frustration.
It seems like a loose connection (when I fiddle with the cable, I sometimes get right and left audio), and I assumed it was the connection of the jack to the PCB inside the phone. I was anxious to get my soldering iron hot, and void my (nonexistent) warranty.
I followed this tear-down guide, to the point where I had removed the back plastic. To my surprise, the headphone jack was a module that was part of the back plastic:
I was able to carefully pry this out with a sharp knife. The bottom is taped to the bezel, so it will take some patience, and a little force.
After that, I found that many of the connectors in the module were removable, and I was able to bend them a little bit to increase the likelihood that I would get a solid connection with my stereo headphone jack:
The only tricky ones, were the ones at the end of the module. I was able to use a paper-clip to gently bend the connectors to make a stronger connection.
After these modifications, my headphone jack is working well again – and my soldering iron is disappointingly cold.
I’d love to find a source/part number for the full module though, as I intend to continue to use this jack frequently, and this ‘bending gently’ trick will only work so many times. If you have a source or part number for the module, please leave a comment.