Headphone jack problem in nano clone

[Kosh]

Hi everyone.

Recently I bought my girlfriend a 4gb nano clone, having had my 1gb flash mp4 player (not a nano clone!) for many months without any problems.

It was a bit annoying how we had to purchase an adapter for her to use normal (read: not crap) headphones. But we used it anyway and she said it was working perfectly fine. The device itself is lovely, much more precise and advanced than mine, and it has Tetris. I tell you one day I'll get one of those for myself...

In any case, she told me that this week, one of the headphone channels stopped working. She tried using both regular headphones with the adapter, and the small-plug headphones that came with the player, to no use. To me it is evident that something is wrong on the player's end. And so I come to you for advice.

How delicate are these players? My father has years of experience with sound devices, yet little to zero experience with mp3/4 players. Plus, I don't think the thing has any screws. How risky is it to open it to see if something is wrong? Could something have possibly gone wrong software-wise? Has anybody encountered this problem before?

Later on I am going to try and reformat it and upload music to it again, but I'd like your input on the matter. Thank you very much!

[tadad1]

Kosh,
If you bought it as a 4GB player the problem could be memory chip related.
At present these players only support a maximum of 2GB but some manufacturers hack the chips so that they read much larger than their true size. In some cases 4GB chips have in fact been hacked 128MB chips.
Hacked players tend to run fine for a while but as you start loading more and more files or add and remove files they start playing up, generally with file corruption and player restarts.

Once you start having problems you need to format them which will remove the hack and your players memory will then read it's true size.
They can however be difficult to format so if you have trouble try this method HERE.

If you have tried different earphones and and the audio problem still exists it may be a lose connection in the players audio jack so you may need to open the player to check that. If you do open the player you can verify the memory chip size against THIS list of Samsung and Hynix chips.

[lattesurf]

Kosh , it is likely a solder connection broke off at the point connecting the earphone socket to the board. You will need to open your player and check for the solder connection visually. There are 5 solder connections from the socket to the board. It may appear connectted, but may have fine cracks causing the discontinuity.
After locating the broken connections, you will need to resolder it back (maybe get your dad to help you).
You mentioned that there are no screws, then probably your player's casing is a snap-on catch type. Use a thin flat-head screwdriver to slowly wedge around the casing to find the catch, in a way that you can locate all the catch points. Then you need to patiently un-catch each catch slowly working your way around the casing.

Good Luck.

[Kosh]

Thanks guys! I'll try your suggestions (mechanical first, then software one if it doesn't work), and I'll report back as soon as I can, probably next weekend or something!

[Kosh]

Hi guys. Just wanted to let you know the story. We opened the player, all the contacts seemed fine. However, my father noticed that by pressing the plug towards a certain direction, stereo sound is restored. We can rule out software problems, it's almost certainly a mechanical fault. However, the thing is so tiny that I doubt we can repair it. Ah well. I still have my 1gb mp3 player that I've had for months and I've had no problems with it so far, I guess these things are hit and miss eh?