The S4 just became my new favorite pocket tool. (Micra, with those sharp scissors, reigned for years!) The almost hidden and oft forgotten tweezers have emerged (literally) to rescue my..Blackbery Curve Trackball. This was an absolute desperate effort and anyone could and should make life much easier with a trip to the phone service center first! But for the determined and mortal tinkerer: the final deterioration of the track ball control was too much…I strongly suspected buttery fingers…but that was not the case. The Small (yes, capitalize SMALL) multi-axis controls just get dirty, hairy, fuzzy and clogged over with sweat, etc. So - First bend and fold a white paper tray to place on a solid, vibration and breeze free surface - like your WOODEN / METAL / FORMED Chipboard Desktop. Put your Blackberry in the paper tray and STOP HERE - if you are the accident prone sort OR if you have poor or moderate vision and light. A strong lamp or magnifier will be especially helpful. There are LOTS of SMALL Parts AND you will need ALL the parts returned to their place. Here's a short list of those parts: a plasti-chrome round collar or bezel comes off first, second the tiny nylon carrier housing with a nylon retainer clip holding four miniature (not Nano but VERY small wheels) and these bits of surfaced nylon will fall out if you even smile!

 

So now to start: GENTLY Use the back clip bend on the tweezers (or your own fingernails) and pull the tiny plastic chrome bezel straight up slowly and the use the tweezers bent back again for pulling the tinier nylon retaining collar in the trackball assembly. This will expose the micro wheels and axle sets. There are FOUR. AND they are either charged with magnetism or cosmic static that make for a headache and blessing in handling…… Clean em ( the small wheel serrations) with a business card edge or the finger nail file tip (not the rough). Reassemble with the Tweezers, add the nylon clip, re-insert the entire housing, carefully align the TINY nylon pins with the two holes left and right on the circuit card, and finally snap the plasti-chrome ring with the flat non-clipped surface up next to the screen.

 

TEST…Yes / No ???… .........I told you to take it to the service center! I got VERY LUCKY the Trackball WORKS again ------- Way to go Squirt!

 

Brian H.

Nashville, TN