...And I Thought it Would Never Happe

Question

I've had my black zen micro for six months now and I've been reading about the well known headphone jack problem, although I just brushed you all off as being careless :P!!!!!!!! But nope, boy was wrong ! Just walking to work one day I started to get the problem. It has to be said something is wrong here as my player is in mint condition and I only carry it in my pocket for an hour or so a day! I would understand if it had broken under misuse. I even had headphones with an L shaped plug .
Anyways, it's now been RMA'd but to top it all off they are sending me a DARK BLUE one instead of black. I think creative are clearly just getting rid of all the old stock to people who make returns ! I can see this happening again in another 6 months. On a good note though they do respond to emails quickly and I loved my micro whilst it worked!

Answer 1

I'm an electronics tech by trade, and this is something that is an epidemic among 95% of electronics produced today. It's not just creative, it's everyone. The problem is that jacks are soldered directly to a circuit board and as the plug is jiggled around by everyday use it eventually fractures one or more of the solder connections that solder the jack's legs to the board. I repair this kind of problem probably 0 times for every one problem of all other types i run into ! It's done like this for ease of production. Also because most companies have whats called a "built in obsolesence" policy to insure that you are in the market for another of the same product soon ! Sad but quite true. If it's out of warranty and you're thinking of simply trashing it, it's worth a try to see if you can open it and re-solder the jack if you have soldering equiptment and a bit of competence at this kind of thing. I've repaired some extremely ting connections like this using a small soldering iron tip and a magnifier. Might just save a $00+ device for a few minutes work.