Disassembly of a Sharp TM150 cell phone

I have had a Sharp TM150 cell phone for a couple years now. It works well and I haven't had any complaints. But I recently thought, "hey, I don't have no games nowhere on here, nohow." Sometimes it's fun to think in multiple negatives, I highly recommend it.

The whole t-zones thing from T-mobile still somewhat confuses me. When I bought the phone I was under the impression that I could have games, but t-zones won't let me download any. Lame. So I searched for "Sharp TM150 games" and found some sites that would let you download things. The phone has java installed, so these games seem to be .jar archives. The weird, highly disappointing part is that there is no way that I can find to install a game. There is a removable memory card that is handy for moving pictures from the phone to my computer and vice-versa, so it seemed logical that a .jar could be moved likewise. Not gonna happen. Lame.

So the only way to get things installed seems to be to download them. To download them, you have to use some service not run by t-mobile, and it will cost you. But to have access to the Internet you'll need to pay t-mobile an extra monthly fee. Not sounding worth it for a Tetris knock-off I'll use only a couple times a month. Lame.

I would have hoped that the process for installing things on my phone would be more open... a bit naive maybe. So to get a little more to the root of the problem, I cracked the phone open. I wish I could have documented it better with some pictures, but my only camera is actually on my phone. Sorry. My main goal was to kill a half hour and find out what processor is actually in the phone. I achieved the first part, but the second part was a failure. The bottom half of the case (the half with the buttons, as opposed to the half with the screen) opened pretty easily. There are only four screws. You'll need to remove the battery and the little activation card thing that t-mobile supplies. And I think the memory card should be out also. Unfortunately, the processor is located underneath a bunch of casing for the memory card and the charger interface. Couldn't see the chip at all. Oh well.

If I find more info about the phone, I'll be sure to update it here.