Is this even possible?

[jessel0001]

I have been wondering this for some time now. I have looked at the tear down pictures of both the Droid 2 and the OG Droid and noticed that the RAM chips are the same size in the same place. I know that it would be very invasive to the phones and require soldering, but would it even be possible to swap the RAM chips out between then phones? dancedroid

 

[brando56894]

It could probably be possible technically, but damn near impossible to do physically!

 

[jessel0001]

Yeah I'm there with you, seeings how the chip covers are soldered in place for the D2, I guess what I'm after more specifically is would the software recognize the new RAM and still function properly...

 

[tonydelite]

Never say never, but you would need extremely specialized equipment. That chip appears to be a BGA type chip (ball grid array). You basically need to heat it at a specific temperature, reball it, and then resolder it to the new board. Without xray equipment, it would be very hard to know if it was done properly.

On top of that, I don't know if the Droid firmware would automatically address the new RAM or if it would have to be specifically programmed for it.

It's worth a shot if you have a spare you don't care about, but you have an extremely uphill battle.

 

[Liderc]

Ram is pretty interchangeable as long as they share the same amount of pins, but soldering isn't easy. You mess up, you kill the PCB. I'd have to say don't try it.

 

[AngryHatter]

SMT - no way without a wave solder machine.

 

[jessel0001]

what is a wave solder machine?

 

[brando56894]

Ram is pretty interchangeable as long as they share the same amount of pins, but soldering isn't easy. You mess up, you kill the PCB. I'd have to say don't try it.

Isnt that the truth. I tried to JTAG my xbox360 last year and got some stray solder on the PCB and shorted out the southbridge.

 

[Liderc]

what is a wave solder machine?

A solder wave is simply a conveyor belt that runs PCB ( green boards in above pics) right above a vat of heated solder. As the PCB runs over the vat of solder, it solders each point instantly, without needing to individually solder each point.