Nexus 6P Antenna Connector Repair

Recently we were sent in a nexus 6P for a broken antenna connector.

This connector is known as a micro coax connector.

In this device is serves as a antenna connection to bridge the top and bottom board together to allow cellular service to function as shown below highlighted in red.

Nexus 6P Antenna Connection

Nexus 6P Broken Antenna Connector 

As you can see the connector has been broken off the motherboard and pulled 1 pad for the signal.

The most common use of the micro coax connector is using 2 or more anchor-points which are typically grounded (shown in green) in the circuit then a center pin also known as the "hot wire" is what carries the signal and is mounted to a center point and runs either to other points on the board and/or through a via to connect to another layer. 

In this case the signal wire pad was pulled from the board when the connector was broken. Luckily we can see the trace leading up to the pad (in red) going to a few other components, presumably capacitors. By having access to the trace leading to the signal pad we are able to jump from the micro coax connectors hot pin to the left over copper trace. 

The fist step to rectify the broken connector is to solder the ground anchor points to the board for strength. (This is shown in green)

Once we have the connector secured back into place we are left with the most important task of all which involves isolating the center hot wire pin from the connection and then bridging (jumping) the wire back to the left over trace. (shown in red) 

The trace is very fragile at this point due to not having a pad to attach to so we determined the best method would be to bridge the gap to the other components in the circuit so that the connection would be properly and permanewtly attached. 

After micro soldering the jumper to the appropriate paths we then needed to ensure the hot signal wire was not grounded accidentally which would cause attenuation and a lack of signal. This can be done by touching any ground point such as the metal casing of the plug to the hot center pin. If continuity is found then somehow the two would have been touching possibly by even a little bit of solder.