Well I just purchased one and I can shed some more light on how to get it open. Start with the ends and gently pry up the plastic with a small screw driver inserted into one of the various openings so you can lever the plastic end cap up enough to slide a credit card between the end cap and the top and bottom plastic. Slide the credit card along and it will release the retaining plastic clips as it goes. Once both ends are off then you need to do the same for the top and bottom EDGES, same deal small screwdriver then the credit card. Now you will find 5 screws, remove these. Now if you look at the back cover where it wraps over the end caps gently pry up the retaining plastic clips that are built into the bottom cover then again credit card and work your way around. Think of the back cover as having little plastic fingers with a little retaining ridges that grab over the edge of the end cap and top and bottom edges as well. Hope this helps. Looking at where a sim card is designed to go with a strong light it looks like the circuit board was designed to have a soldered on connector. I count what I think is 9 solder spots but cannot be sure without taking the circuit board off to look at it but would seem reasonable as in the first page of instructions with mine it talks about installing a sim card if you have one, and a data plan before turning on the tablet so for some market somewhere in the world it must be offered I just dont know where that market is. I am in Canada and its not offered here, I would guess Southeast Asia or Australia maybe.
Acer Iconia Tab A100 teardown
- Thread starter Zorrobyte
- Start date
Here is pic of the place the factory designed a sim card to go it is right next to where the memory card holder is. In the pic the red arrow points to the underside of the circuit board and what I believe are solder trace points for a surface mount sim card holder. Cannot tell for sure as you would have to unscrew the circuit board to be certain. Otherwise you would do what Zorrobyte suggested and install the no solder ribbon cable setup, the only problem I see with that is you would have to have a dedicated sim card installed in the device then and not use your phone sim card as it is just not easy enough to open the device to install the sim card when you wanted it. If you where to have it full time it would be fine. One other problem is phone software for 3.2, it is in 2.2 devices but I dont know if its available in 3.2 and Iam not bright enough in computers to figure that one out so somebody else will have to. You would also need to dremel a slot in the cover for the sim opening similar to the memory card slot but that is pretty simple. At this point I have returned my a100 and will wait for the samsung 7.7 which supposedly has every thing already in it, but I hate having to wait and with the ongoing fued between Apple and Samsung I am worried the 7.7 may get shelved. In either case it will cost a lot more than what this does. I am satisfied with the screen resolution and brightness the wifi sucks and with that the gps for me is useless, so unless I can get it onto 3g or 4g it will not do what I want which is making me sad at the moment as it would do everything else I wanted it for. I somebody has an answer to the phone software problem post a reply here as that may change my interest as the rest I think I can do.
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looking for some major help friends! I tripped and fell on my wife's a100 and cracked the lcd screen. I've scowered the web for a replacement screen and come up with nadda, so my questions.
1) can any 7" lcd be used
2) where can i get 1
3) how do i replace it once i hace a replacement? This thread seems to cover most of this Q but im sure I'll need to go farther than you've got laid out here
Despite my stupidity in breaking the screen in the first place, I'm comptent and if I can find a diy screen i'd love to not pay acer another $250 to do what I am sure is a $40 job.
oh and all functionality is fine other than the lcd
1) can any 7" lcd be used
2) where can i get 1
3) how do i replace it once i hace a replacement? This thread seems to cover most of this Q but im sure I'll need to go farther than you've got laid out here
Despite my stupidity in breaking the screen in the first place, I'm comptent and if I can find a diy screen i'd love to not pay acer another $250 to do what I am sure is a $40 job.
oh and all functionality is fine other than the lcd
