Hardware Shoulder Buttons

[RaymondHien]

For every DS System I owned I always manage to break the the shoulder buttons. Espicially the L buttons. Does anybody know a way to prevent this?

 

[dragonkid6]

All my L buttons have broke on my DSs, I am about to ship my 3DS to Ninty to fix it.

 

[mjax]

What do you mean when you say, "I always manage to break the the shoulder buttons" - A physical damage? Take it easy on the DS Lite.

A non functional button? Unfortunately DS Lite's are prone to this problem. It's a wide-spread problem. I am sure you must have heard of blow-fix. But, it's only a temp-fix. No pun intended.

If you want to go with a permanent fix, you will have to buy the internal switches and solder them on the board. From my personal experience I want to believe that it's a mechanical failure inside the switch button. Something gets off its way.

You have to be fairly good with surface-mount soldering or have someone experienced do it for you.

Edit: I now see that you have specifically asked for 'prevention'. DS Lite's are really delicate, specially around that region (I meant the shoulder buttons, get your mind out of gutter). So it's mostly just wear and tear. I could only suggest not playing games that are too abusive for the shoulder buttons. For Example: Snaking in Mario Kart DS...

 

[RaymondHien]

What do you mean when you say, "I always manage to break the the shoulder buttons" - A physical damage? Take it easy on the DS Lite.

A non functional button? Unfortunately DS Lite's are prone to this problem. It's a wide-spread problem. I am sure you must have heard of blow-fix. But, it's only a temp-fix. No pun intended.

If you want to go with a permanent fix, you will have to buy the internal switches and solder them on the board. From my personal experience I want to believe that it's a mechanical failure inside the switch button. Something gets off its way.

You have to be fairly good with surface-mount soldering or have someone experienced do it for you.

Edit: I now see that you have specifically asked for 'prevention'. DS Lite's are really delicate, specially around that region (I meant the shoulder buttons, get your mind out of gutter). So it's mostly just wear and tear. I could only suggest not playing games that are too abusive for the shoulder buttons. For Example: Snaking in Mario Kart DS...

Well, i recently had to sent my 3DS to nintendo for repair for the L button. I don't know how I break it. The L button stops responding everytime I press it.

 

[yuyuyup]

Swear to god I blow-fixed my 3DS L button yesterdee

 

[elgarta]

Do you go really hard on the shoulder buttons? The Lite was prone to those issues, but I found the 3DS buttons to be much better quality, and they seem more resilient to a good pushing

 

[The Milkman]

Yeah, the DS lites shoulders broke easily because you couldn't only push them from the top, but also the back side. The 3DS uses actual buttons (like the DSi)

 

[NathanDuma]

It takes awhile to break them. I've played mario kart 7 and they haven't broke yet.
The only fix is to send them to nintendo I guess.

 

[RNorthex]

my L feels softer and i've hardly ever used it, it's just how it goes, but my dsi's shoulder buttons were perfect
my guess is that now it'll have respond-problems rather than them being broken
for now it works good, but it annoys me

 

[Mr. Prince]

The only broke shoulder button I had was the DSi (L) button, and I had owned every kind of DS except the DSiXL, and the DSi was the only one with a broken L button...

 

[xwatchmanx]

You know, people always tell me about this button breaking or that button breaking, and not once have I ever had a problem, whether it be N64 analogs, GBA shoulder buttons, 3DS should buttons, etc... idk what it is with my soft, delicate fingers that dont break buttons. lol