Akom's Tech Ruminations

Various tech outbursts - code and solutions to practical problems
Hardware Hacks

Fixing Sensitive Button on Motorola HS850 bluetooth handsfree headset

Posted by Akom • Monday, December 22. 2008 • Category: Hardware Hacks

The Motorola HS850 was a very popular bluetooth headset in its day. A lot of people seem to complain that their HS850's gradually develop one of the following symptoms:

  • Dials/hangs up, randomly
  • Redials on its own, randomly
  • Hangs up or dials at the slightest touch or handling of the unit



This is what is most likely causing the problem:


Correct with mucho tape
No Button.
The problem
Opening the unit

The unit is well put together, except for a very strange button design - it is a convex copper disc that is held down by a cross of clear plastic tape, right to the circuit board. The tape gradually detaches and the disc moves, causing, at best, a random button press (or an always pressed button) - and at worst - a short.



I took mine apart by following the instructions here: How to disassemble (This manual is for painting your bluetooth.... hmm... not doing that today).



The unit is held together with a single Torx screw, but if your screw is not too tight, a small philips/flat screwdriver will get it out. Unfortunately the unit remains on in this procedure (powered by the internal battery), so one must be careful not to short the circuit board with the button or any tools.



After pulling it apart the problem becomes easy to spot and easy to rectify with... well, more packing tape :-). It now works as it should. Should I cancel the order for the Jawbone 2?

0 Trackbacks

  1. No Trackbacks

2 Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)
  1. As they say, a picture saysa thousand words!! :-) Thanks to you, I could fix my HS850!!!

  2. Thank you for this!

Add Comment


You can use [geshi lang=lang_name [,ln={y|n}]][/geshi] tags to embed source code snippets.
Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
Markdown format allowed


Submitted comments will be subject to moderation before being displayed.