DIY Sony Xperia Z Desktop Charger

Sony Xperia Z is claimed to be waterproof. They seal every port that it has with plastic-and-rubber covers and leave only two pogo pins for easy desktop charging.

How often do you charge your phone? Internet geeks like me will need it charged daily. What is crossing my mind is : If I open the charging port cover daily, I might break it one day. So, better use the open pogo pins for charging.

The original DK-26 was about $30 and I think now it has down to about $16. The cheaper version L36h is around $9.

Now let's make one out of junk. It costs you some solder tin and your energy :D

Bill of Materials

* Two pieces of PC Drive Covers.
* One USB cable from old broken mouse or any other.
* Two pieces of copper as connectors to pogo pins. I use the connectors in old extension socket plug.
* A small piece of broken plastic ruler and three small screws.
* A thin foam to comfort your Z when laying in :-)
* Pencil.
* Ruler.
* Cutter.
* Scissors.
* Soldering iron and tin.
* Plastic glue.

Cut Out Top Deck

Xperia Z height has a measure of 138mm and 8mm in thickness. Then we cut out a slightly bigger hole on the PC drive cover. I make it 140mm x 10mm. That is the top deck. This cutting takes the most effort in the making and please do it safely and patiently. Do not cut your hand.

Lower Deck

For the lower deck we have to measure from the left where your pogo pins be when laying in. Well, the pogo pins have 3mm wide on the phone. The holes we are going to drill are where the connectors will come out. So you need to make sure the connectors will touch the pogo pins. Drill a small hole with PCB hand drill for each pogo pin, so here we drill two holes.

I am lack of photos because this was my last year project. I am currently using it but I'm not going to disassamble it no more. Instead, I will make another one when I have spare PC drive covers :)
Here I provide some illustration pictures for the connectors using a piece of paper.

As you can see, the bottom part is quite messy. Those silver connectors are difficult to solder, so I changed them to copper ones. They are shaped with scissors, bent up through the holes we drilled.
At first I want to just glue them with hot glue gun, but then crossed in my mind that it will get hot when charging and hot glue will melt. Then I use a broken plastic ruler (or any hard plastic) and some screws to hold the connectors in place.

My thumb acts as the broken plastic ruler holding the connectors in place. The blue plastic acts as the top of Lower Deck where we drill the holes. The connector shows up a little and will spring down when the phone is on top of it.

Now it is time to solder usb cable to the connectors. If you use mouse cable, red wire goes to left connector, while black wire goes to the right. We don't use the green and white cables. When you hold your Xperia Z portrait, upper pogo pin is possitive (red cable) and the lower one is ground (black cable).
Remember that this is for Xperia Z, for other phones you have to search the polarity of its pogo pins.

Cut out a small hole on the left for the usb cable to go through. Then glue it with hot glue.
Cover the bottom with thick foam or any cardboard to prevent electocuted when you touch those wires or connectors together.

Double Decker

Put a thin foam on top of lower deck, but do not covers the conectors. That is to prevent/reduce scratches on your phone.

Glue the bottom of Top Deck and stick it on top of Lower Deck as you can see in the photo.

Finishing

You can use any travel charger's adaptor, but I recommend you to use the original adaptor of your travel charger.

Now you don't have to open the usb port cover for charging.

Mod It Further

The desktop charger has done its charging job well. But if you want to browse your phone while charging, you will find it difficult to access the back, home, and recent keys. So let's mod it a little.

Cut the top deck as you can see in the picture. It is about 15mm from the left and the right of the top deck, or you can adjust it as long as you can access the navigation keys with your finger.
Stick it on top of lower deck so that it covers the thin foam and the connector pins when we put the phone in.

That is it. Happy to save some bucks on desktop charger and fun to build it by myself :-)