During our recent holiday I suffered from several unwanted incidents with my Lumia 640TE phone. It has happened many times before, but I have not got round to doing anything about it.
The source of the problem is that I keep my phone in a trouser pocket and that the phone has two buttons protruding from the right side. A large one at the top which controls volume and a smaller one underneath which is used to wake the phone up and instigate putting it to sleep. These buttons are a menace because they are prone to being pressed in my pocket which results in the phone being woken up, the volume altered or even worse the flashlight, WiFi, Bluetooth, data connection and other items being turned on without my knowledge. This has caused me to miss calls or run the battery down quite a few times.
I tried using a case for the phone – which helped - but the phone is already big and the case made it far too bulky.
Whilst we were on holiday my neighbour tried to phone me to let me know our burglar alarm had been set off – he had a key to the house and the alarm code - so he had gone round and switched it off. Although he could see no obvious intrusion he phoned to ask what else I would like him to do. I never got the call because the ringer volume had inadvertently been turned down to zero. I only found out 12 hours later when I looked at the screen and noticed I had received 2 text messages – one being from the neighbour the previous night.
The second inconvenience on holiday was when I decided to use my phone for photographing rather than my camera, when we went ashore in Speyer – only to find the battery almost flat and the flashlight on.
So today I decided to do something about it – which replicates a mod I have done to my hearing aids remote control which also has a protruding button to switch it on and off – and that was to surround the buttons with a guard to prevent accidental operation.
This is the procedure………
Take a piece of black plastic cable tie 7mm wide and just over 1mm thick and cut a piece 70 mm long.
Now stick the item down onto a piece of scrap MDF to hold it in place and clamp two pieces of steel strip over the item leaving a slot down the centre exactly 2.5 mm wide. Mark these strips with the start and finish points of the slots you must create.
Now use a small electric drill to carefully drill a row of 2.5 mm dia holes adjacent to each other to create a rough slot in both locations
Now remove the steel strips and take a very sharp craft knife and carefully trim the sides of each slot to a straight line. It’s a very fiddly job requiring much dexterity – you may need to go to the medical cabinet and put a plaster on your finger when it stops bleeding. You may also be required to put some money in the swear box when your wife hears your profanities.
You will hopefully finish up with something like this.
Now put some adhesive tape on the reverse side (not the thick foam double backed – just the adhesive web type) and carefully trim it to the profile. Its fiddly to remove the sections in the holes – you may need a second plaster.
Now strip off the backing paper and attach the guard to the phone
My phone is now guarded against accidental buttonology. It is easy to use my thumbnail to press the buttons when I want to - but gripping the phone as illustrated will not depress the buttons.
