After a period of time the audio started to become fractured and distorted; then from time to time the speaker would not work at all, there are two speakers; one for listening to calls once connected and one for the ringer.
It's this external speaker for the ringer which has broken. I purchased another handset, and eventually the same happened to that one. Aside from this it is a great phone which can also connect to a landline. I decided to open it up and see what the problem is. As the phones aren't cheap.
Here is what the phone looks like:
It was difficult to open up, but it separates easily into chunks. There are two torque screws at the base on the back, and it is surrounded by clips around the upper edges with a large hook clip at the top. I managed to break one of the side clips.
I'm assuming the '07' number in the battery compartment here is the serial number. A tricky part is to remove the circuit board you have to push the battery cell contact 'spring' through the black plastic backing.
Here's the size torque bit I used to unscrew it.
The backboard goes to the speaker with the black and red cables. The speaker is held into the back of the phone plastic with a form of glue and was easy to remove. It wasn't clearly evident what the problem was. Here is the offending speaker:
There were no evident dry joints; so although the speaker would sometimes work when knocked, it didn't seem to be an external problem. So we (that is my father and I) gutted the speaker to reveal the problem:
What you see here is the copper metal coil inside the speaker, behind the wafer. What you don't see clearly is that the two ends of the copper are glued to the wafer, this then connects outside of the wafer through a notch that connects externally and routes to the red and black wires to the phone. What was evident under magnification was that one of the copper wires had broke, presumably from being glued to the speaker wafer and having it at high volume, the constant flexing of the cable in a tight spot snapped it.
We attempted to partially shorten these cables and route them through a different part of the metal external of the speaker, but removing them from the glue of the wafer took a bit too much effort (should have used some solution to clear it and the copper wiring snapped. Else we wouldn't have to do the next step; which was to find a replacement speaker:
Tatty old headphones provided. However, they were a higher ohm rating, what the skype phone needs is 8 ohm. It was soldered in anyway:
The outcome? I can now hear the skype phone ring and beep; but it is very quiet. I will have to seek out a replacement speaker and fix it properly. Until I'm prepared to pay £4 per speaker (that's how much they are at maplin at present) it can stay this way.
