You may want to hold off plans to dispose of your aging smartphones too soon.
Tired of his Nexus 5's 32 GB storage, one resourceful Ukrainian modder decided to take matters into his own hands and upgraded the storage of his phone himself.
The Google-powered Nexus 5 was released three years ago by LG and was positively received by users and Android fans alike. The Nexus 5's Snapdragon 800 processor, 1,080p touch screen and long-lasting battery life made it as one of LG's top-selling handsets in 2013.
However, as technology moves too rapidly especially in the area of smartphone development, Nexus 5 is just as good as paperweight compared to the latest smartphones in the market today. According to the Canadian Ministry of Environment, between 60 and 70 new smartphones are introduced each year, and at that rate, consumers are having trouble keeping up.
Instead of purchasing a new smartphone, user KApetz2 of the XDA Developers forum managed to pull the logic board of his Nexus 5 apart, remove the old 32 GB chip and carefully solder a new 64 GB storage chip he bought for a scant $35.
KApetz2 initially consulted the developers' forum about his plans but he was not taken seriously by other members. As far as the experts were concerned, a Nexus 5 with 64 GB storage does not exist. Well, it does now, as KApetz2 successfully made one.
KApetz2 discussed in detail the steps he took to successfully upgrade the old Nexus. He said it was not an easy process, especially with having to solder the Ball Grid Array mounting of the phone. He also warned other users to be prepared to end up with an unusable device in the event that the internal hardware was damaged, or worse, melted. According to KApetz2, the device initially had a problem reading the chip's full capacity. The storage's partition tables still required further modification even if the hardware has been perfectly hacked.
His efforts paid off, as KApetz2 is now the proud owner of a 64 GB Nexus 5, the first and only one of its kind. The phone's upgraded chip now supports eMMC 5.0, thus improving the read and write speeds of the Nexus 5.
Photo: John Karakatsanis | Flickr
