Rubber Rot

I've been given a Blackberry with a slightly faulty keyboard for free. I cleaned the keyboard and it now works perfectly, but the rubberized exterior is falling apart. There are two keys on the side that must be kept in place with tape, otherwise they fall off.

I'd like to give it to a friend who doesn't have a smartphone but would enjoy one, but I'd prefer not to have to pick up bits and pieces of it even as I explain to her how it works. Is there anything I can put on the rubber that'll make it kinda-sorta resistant to normal use again? It doesn't need to be bulletproof, it just needs to be halfway presentable.

A good quality packing tape (clear) might be useful. I've used it to cover a "touch" switch with a flexible over-lay that was damaged.

is that silicone elastomer turning "oily" ?
this happens with a lot of keypads of that construction .
the best fix (naturally) is replacement .
i bet there are after market replacements available .

Yeah what Larry suggested. I'm sure there are loads of chinese replacements out there for next to nix.

Damien

ya know ... from the title of this topic my first thoughts were "don't use vaseline ..."
however , i shall digress .

Man, my Nokia must be over 5 years old now, and that's after it was already an old phone. The pad is just starting to come up in one corner. Printing is all but worn off, of course.

Tim

Yeah, but this isn't an old Nokia, it's an old Blackberry. They are designed to last a few years, then nobody cares anymore.

I actually hate Blackberries, but my friend currently has some kind of proprietary-OS half-smartphone that doesn't even do 3G, so even this thing would be a massive upgrade. I'd love to give her something like a Xperia Mini Pro instead, but I don't happen to have one of those as a freebie and I don't have enough money that I can give out €150 phones for free.

blackberries here are like white crows...HTC,IPHONE,SAMSUNG are more usual.
however,smartphone looks luxury to me,i still have kept my V3 motorolla ...though all of the above smartphone brands are common in my family.
prefer to work with ARM boards for training instead
shoe makers son runs barefoot (facepalm)

These guys sell replacement keypads for $6.

http://www.everything4blackberry.com/blackberry-keypads.html

Damien

You might be able to make replacements from silicone RTV, but it's a lot of work.

The keypad's actually fine, the buttons that fall out are on the side. You can actually see the microswitches on the board through the hole.

RTVing a whole enclosure sounds like a complex and time-consuming task. Pretty sure it's not worth it for a phone I wouldn't bother eBaying even if it were working perfectly.

Did you check the site though? They do all the buttons/replacement parts.

Damien

I just read about this stuff Sugru, that is made for repair of gizmos. Worth a try?

TOK

You can buy the housing for blackberries on ebay for dirt cheap and they include the rubber on the outside.

I might do that, or I might just give up. I've read a few more reviews of the 8520, and while it was a half-decent phone when it came out it has not aged well; modern apps leave it lagging and the browser can't handle content-heavy websites.

I'll wait until someone gives me an old Android...