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Busted Charging Port

deacon303

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I have a Smok M80 Pro that the charging port is apparently loose or just not making contact anymore. I can't charge the device.

Taken it to several brick and mortar places and they all tell me to take it to a cell phone repair place. Well, I repair cell phones, so I opened it up and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what the heck is wrong with it.

I replaced it with the Coolfire IV and I flippin' hate this thing. I want my M80 back. Has anyone had this problem and is it fixable?

Thanks!
 
Deacon,

Your probably are not going to want to hear what I have to say, but I need to save you from yourself before you go any further.

It is really a bad idea to buy a device that uses a high-drain type of battery and not charge the batteries outside of the device, for two reasons.

The first is the battery has a finite life cycle; they are not long for the Earth, period. And the batteries used in this endeavor are being pushed pretty hard. They are like the tires on your car, and you don't want to have to replace your car every time the tires wear out. The second is an in-device charging board, which on face value is just something else to break rendering the device worthless if the batteries don't pop in and out easily. Not to mention it must be connected to a high-drain battery in order for it to function.

You fix cell phones, and I fixed radio equipment in the military as a young man. Your cell phone puts out 10th's of a watt (.1 to .6 watts say). A single 18650 can fire 50+ watts to these little coils. To put it into a cell phone perspective, you could probably get 2 watts transmit power out of a cell phone (I am guessing here), but your talk time would be in minutes before your cell phone battery was drained out.

We talk about Ohm's law, but most folks look at it in terms of numbers on a computer screen or a piece of paper. They don't quite grasp the concept of what an Ampere really is; they seem to get more fixated on Voltage as being the monster in the room, but it is the Amps that will kill you. Most circuit breakers in your house are but 15 Amp, and they will surely kill you if you get a hold of one in the wrong way. I got bit by 900 Volts by a power supply once messing around where I shouldn't have been; it hurt, and I shook for a couple of hours, but it didn't kill me. 1.5 Volts divided by .01 Ohms is 150 Amps, which is surly enough current flow to vaporize most anything in its way.

Most things only short out just long enough to open, but there are a whole lot of fireworks that can go on before it does...

I will tell you two funny stories that are true to the best of my knowledge so you don't think of me as a total pompous Ass. I knew a guy that worked as a tech at the tower of an airfield called EAF in 29 Psalms back in my service days. He tells me this story about an EA-6B pilot who flew in and got stuck at the stumps for a day or so because of weather. Being that an EA-6 is an all weather aircraft the pilot weren't real happy with the tower holding him up because of weather; lucky SOB probably had a date somewhere... At any rate, when he finally got cleared to leave, he supposedly came back over the airfield and turned on his wiz-bang boxes in the B model blowing out fuses and circuit breakers in retaliation. I always just figured it was a BS Jar-Head story passed down during beer drinking nights from one joker to the next.

It was probably 12 years ago, but I was sitting here in my house playing around with a ham radio with an 800 watt amplifier. Middle of the night, with a belly full of beer, I manage to miss tune the amp hopping from band to band. I key the the rig up and the amp squeals like a pig sending RF through out the house blowing out my home alarm system; that's right, the alarm went off and I could not shut it off! I couldn't shut it off and it wouldn't time out. I had to take my dumb drunk ass up on a ladder in the middle of the night to cut the alarm leads to restore peace in the house and the neighborhood.

Amps are the monster in the room, people. 800 Watts divided by 120 Volts is 6.66 Amps. That is all it took; just 6 .6 little Amps blew the piss out of a circuit board across the house wired to its own circuit completely independent and isolated from each other. I got to recon that pissing off an EA-6B pilot was a bad idea.

On to the next Caper,
CC
 
Last edited:

DevAuto

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
ECF Refugee
Reviewer
Vape Media
I have a Smok M80 Pro that the charging port is apparently loose or just not making contact anymore. I can't charge the device.

Taken it to several brick and mortar places and they all tell me to take it to a cell phone repair place. Well, I repair cell phones, so I opened it up and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what the heck is wrong with it.

I replaced it with the Coolfire IV and I flippin' hate this thing. I want my M80 back. Has anyone had this problem and is it fixable?

Thanks!

@deacon303 If you can figure out how to fix it, then it may very well be worth keeping. If you can't though, then @CarolinaChuck makes some very good points about batteries and their life cycle in vaping devices. I would suggest that any device (not necessarily vaping gear) that has a NON removable / NON replaceable battery should be considered a DISPOSABLE device. When that battery dies, the device is worthless. Vaping gear does tend to push batteries very hard, and thus the lifespan of a battery is far less than it would be in most consumer devices.

My personal recommendation would be to replace your M80 with something like an IPV D2/D3, or Joyetech eVic VTC Mini, and a set (2) of batteries, so that you can always have a second battery charged and ready to go when you need it. The initial buy in cost is likely to be a little higher, as you will need to pick up a charger as well, but with the prices falling like they are, you can get a mod just as powerful and comparable as the M80, plus the batteries and charger, for a pretty low price if you shop around. I suspect it will be cheaper than trying to find someone to repair your current mod, and if you can find someone to do that, how long until the battery is shot and you have to replace it anyway?

Just my $0.02 on the topic, good luck with whatever you decide to do.

HTH!
 

Heabob

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Member For 3 Years
All the replies are right on point.

The typical life span of Micro USB ports is not always so great.
(Regular USB Ports in Laptops & PC's will fail too)
Usually from too many plug & unplug cycles and/or cheap materials.
However it could also be the internal charging circuit has failed.
The risk isn't worth trying to repair it IMO.
The MODs with replaceable batteries are much safer.
And it's cheaper to just replace the batteries as needed.
You could always just buy another new one.
But, there are so many decent MODs available today, I'd just keep shopping around.
Lots of informative reviews on youtube, and lots of info here too.
 

Rhyno636

Silver Contributor
Member For 4 Years
If you can "fix" cell phones than you can resolder the usb port on your M80. If you can, you can. If you can't you can't. If you've opened it up and still don't know what's wrong with it, then it's outta your league. Buy something new.
 

James

Bronze Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Member For 3 Years
ECF Refugee
I have a Smok M80 Pro that the charging port is apparently loose or just not making contact anymore. I can't charge the device.

Taken it to several brick and mortar places and they all tell me to take it to a cell phone repair place. Well, I repair cell phones, so I opened it up and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what the heck is wrong with it.

I replaced it with the Coolfire IV and I flippin' hate this thing. I want my M80 back. Has anyone had this problem and is it fixable?

Thanks!
Does that mod have a 2 part board ...is the charging board separate ? If so there are a few places to get replacement charge boards . I beleve one is called varitube .
 

eSMOKA

Silver Contributor
Member For 5 Years
Since you repair cell phones:

Screw the charge port, try turning it into an 18650 mod and charge the batteries in a charger ;)
 

Angrygod50

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Member For 3 Years
Member For 2 Years
M80 is a good name for them. Mine vented while charging. I was at one of the local shops and a guy came in with 2 that wouldn't charge and the owner of the other local shop told me she had 5 come back. I know it sucks but your in good company. Nether shop will handle Smok products anymore. Time to move on.
 

deacon303

Member For 4 Years
Member For 3 Years
Member For 2 Years
Member For 1 Year
Got rid of this device. I had replaced it in November with a Coolfire IV. Got rid of that on Monday. I now have an eVic VTC Mini. We'll see how long that lasts.
 

DevAuto

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
ECF Refugee
Reviewer
Vape Media
Congrats!

The VTC mini should serve you well and last a long time! I do recommend charging the battery in a charger and not over the USB port though. Also, in case you weren't aware already, there are firmware updates available for download on Joyetech's website. Not sure what firmware you are currently at, but you should probably go check it out and see if there is anything new ... Latest firmware is V3 and it seems to be working better than the previous versions.
 

Markw4mms

#Team Jimi Supporter
VU Donator
Diamond Contributor
Member For 4 Years
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Congrats, and good choice! We have two VTC mini's here and love them! They are a very well made device!
 

deacon303

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Member For 3 Years
Member For 2 Years
Member For 1 Year
Well, I can't give a thumbs up or down on it just yet. The shop was out of batteries and the clerk actually loaned me one of his personal batteries, which doesn't seem to have the best life span. I'm going back in tomorrow and hopefully they will have gotten their shipment in. Then I can begin judging this thing mercilessly. LOL!
 

Zamazam

Evil Vulcan's do it with Logic
VU Donator
Platinum Contributor
Member For 5 Years
+1, Good place to get authentic batts at good prices.
 

Angrygod50

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Member For 3 Years
Member For 2 Years
Another +1 for Liionwholesale.
Samsung Sony LG only
 

DevAuto

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
ECF Refugee
Reviewer
Vape Media
Well, I can't give a thumbs up or down on it just yet. The shop was out of batteries and the clerk actually loaned me one of his personal batteries, which doesn't seem to have the best life span. I'm going back in tomorrow and hopefully they will have gotten their shipment in. Then I can begin judging this thing mercilessly. LOL!
Whether you like the mod or not, it sounds like you found a good shop. If the clerk was willing to loan you a battery from his personal collection, that at least says they care enough to try and do whatever they can for their customers!
 

deacon303

Member For 4 Years
Member For 3 Years
Member For 2 Years
Member For 1 Year
Whether you like the mod or not, it sounds like you found a good shop. If the clerk was willing to loan you a battery from his personal collection, that at least says they care enough to try and do whatever they can for their customers!

I agree. I've been in this shop a bunch of times, but I've never met this specific clerk before. I went in today for my batteries and dropped off his. He wasn't there. The shop manager was shocked he'd let me borrow it, and even more shocked that I'd returned it. I'm not doing that. He was kind enough to do something like that for someone he'd never met before, I'm not going to run off with his battery. Besides, with a shop with clerks that good, I would like to return!
 
Deacon,

Your probably are not going to want to hear what I have to say, but I need to save you from yourself before you go any further.

It is really a bad idea to buy a device that uses a high-drain type of battery and not charge the batteries outside of the device, for two reasons.

The first is the battery has a finite life cycle; they are not long for the Earth, period. And the batteries used in this endeavor are being pushed pretty hard. They are like the tires on your car, and you don't want to have to replace your car every time the tires wear out. The second is an in-device charging board, which on face value is just something else to break rendering the device worthless if the batteries don't pop in and out easily. Not to mention it must be connected to a high-drain battery in order for it to function.

You fix cell phones, and I fixed radio equipment in the military as a young man. Your cell phone puts out 10th's of a watt (.1 to .6 watts say). A single 18650 can fire 50+ watts to these little coils. To put it into a cell phone perspective, you could probably get 2 watts transmit power out of a cell phone (I am guessing here), but your talk time would be in minutes before your cell phone battery was drained out.

We talk about Ohm's law, but most folks look at it in terms of numbers on a computer screen or a piece of paper. They don't quite grasp the concept of what an Ampere really is; they seem to get more fixated on Voltage as being the monster in the room, but it is the Amps that will kill you. Most circuit breakers in your house are but 15 Amp, and they will surely kill you if you get a hold of one in the wrong way. I got bit by 900 Volts by a power supply once messing around where I shouldn't have been; it hurt, and I shook for a couple of hours, but it didn't kill me. 1.5 Volts divided by .01 Ohms is 150 Amps, which is surly enough current flow to vaporize most anything in its way.

Most things only short out just long enough to open, but there are a whole lot of fireworks that can go on before it does...

I will tell you two funny stories that are true to the best of my knowledge so you don't think of me as a total pompous Ass. I knew a guy that worked as a tech at the tower of an airfield called EAF in 29 Psalms back in my service days. He tells me this story about an EA-6B pilot who flew in and got stuck at the stumps for a day or so because of weather. Being that an EA-6 is an all weather aircraft the pilot weren't real happy with the tower holding him up because of weather; lucky SOB probably had a date somewhere... At any rate, when he finally got cleared to leave, he supposedly came back over the airfield and turned on his wiz-bang boxes in the B model blowing out fuses and circuit breakers in retaliation. I always just figured it was a BS Jar-Head story passed down during beer drinking nights from one joker to the next.

It was probably 12 years ago, but I was sitting here in my house playing around with a ham radio with an 800 watt amplifier. Middle of the night, with a belly full of beer, I manage to miss tune the amp hopping from band to band. I key the the rig up and the amp squeals like a pig sending RF through out the house blowing out my home alarm system; that's right, the alarm went off and I could not shut it off! I couldn't shut it off and it wouldn't time out. I had to take my dumb drunk ass up on a ladder in the middle of the night to cut the alarm leads to restore peace in the house and the neighborhood.

Amps are the monster in the room, people. 800 Watts divided by 120 Volts is 6.66 Amps. That is all it took; just 6 .6 little Amps blew the piss out of a circuit board across the house wired to its own circuit completely independent and isolated from each other. I got to recon that pissing off an EA-6B pilot was a bad idea.

On to the next Caper,
CC


That's depressing news. The Smok Sub o plus got execellent reviews and I was pleased with mine, purchased four months ago, until the charge port loosened up, which was partly my fault. Forgetting that it was plugged in when I picked it up to vape yanked on the port. Now I have to tape the charge cord over at an angle to get it to charge. I purchased an Alien as soon as the 80 started to rebel against the cord. I really like the Alien and it also received excellent reviews. I use both mods. Since vaping just before bed gives me vibrant dreams and sleep walking, I started to vape zero nicotine about an hour before turning in. It's the habit thing, necessary to feed even without nic. Anyway, I was just changing tanks originally but that got to be a pain, forgetting which tank had the nic and which didn't.

Anyway, against the advice given here, I'm going to dismantle the 80 as soon as I can find the right torx. I have been a country boy all my life and rarely do you throw away anything that may have some use, no matter how unrelated to it's original intent, some time in the future. If the problem turns out to be broken solder joints, that's an easy fix. Duct tape, Bondo, super glue, acetylene, and a hot glue gun, allow anything to be repaired or turned into something usable. I was disappointed to read about the limited life of the power supply but there must be a fix for that to. I'll just have to wait until I get it open.

I just wanted to thank everyone here for all their advice. I'll write back to let you know if the 80 works as designed or if it is soon to be a box elder bug zapper. It IS the amps that count.
 

Eskie

Silver Contributor
Member For 3 Years
Last post was Jan 2016

True, but I like the pilot story. I had a friend who flew an EA-6 off a carrier (this was way back when) and used to talk about how he could knock off TV and radio transmissions on the entire East Coast. I remember asking him not to go out and prove it..

OK, now I can return to on topic. What's the topic again?:D
 

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