The Car Kit Phenomenon

My wife came up to me the other day and said "my phone isn't working."

I ran through the possibilities - dead battery, no signal, software lock up, physically broken? This is an LG VX6000.

No, the culprit was the Car Kit mode. The phone was in Car Kit mode, as displayed on the main screen, and in that mode you can neither hear nor say anything into the phone (although you can dial). Apparently if it's connected to some "Car Kit" then all works well.

I went through the software menus to disable Car Kit mode and discovered . . . that there is no Car Kit setting on the phone! Uh-oh. After some sleuthing I determined that if you shorted two pins on the power socket of the phone (at the end beneath the microphone), then you can toggle it out of Car Kit mode.

Chalk it up to a freakish occurence.

A few days later I'm in Target and I notice that I can't hear my voicemails. Lo and behold, mv LG VX7000 is also in Car Kit mode!

What the?????

Trying the "shorted connector" approach, I walked to Target's kitchen aisle and carefully stuck a fork into the end of the phone, hoping to make a short. Target puts little plastic "tong protectors" at the end of their kitchen forks - is that some kind of weird liability strategy?

After a few attempts and weird looks from a Target shelf stocker I determined that the perhaps the fork wasn't the best electrical conductor. I carefully opened a roll of aluminum foil and tore off a small piece.  In MacGuyver-like fashion I jiggled the piece of foil in the power socket of the VX7000 and . . ta da! I disabled Car Kit mode and the phone worked fine.

But how did both of these phones get into Car Kit mode? How could both get shorted like that?

I thought back to my 8 month old's fascination with cell phones (takes after her Daddy). She loves to press the buttons, play with the hinge, puts the phone in her mouth . . .

Ah ha - somehow the baby saliva was shorting the connector and getting the phone into Car Kit mode.

Comments

[David]

This is the funniest thing I've read in a while and sounds like something my daughter would do.

[Ed Zee]

The magic words: "After some sleuthing I determined..".

So, besides being a Digital Dad. , you had to be a Digital Sleuth.

Congrats on your sleuthing.

[Vinney Le]

OH MY GOSH!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! my phone LG VX6000 phone was in -Car Kit- mode for a while and I couldn't fix it! I was so scared I was going to have to buy a new phone to fix it because I could not change the mode! But thanks to you, I was able to fix my phone. THANK YOU SO MUCH! You are awesome!

[Sam]

Wow. I tried everything I could find or think of to get my phone out of car kit mode. Nothing worked, until I read your post. Your MacGuyver skills are greatly appreciated. The tinfoil is key. Thanks!

[zac]

The same thing just happened to me so I plugged in google "carkit" and "LG" got this and with the help of a paperclip my phone works. I will no longer let my son play with my phone!

[Steve Trefethen]

Thanks for the post, you saved me a trip to the Sprint store. Too bad I hadn't found this while I was on the phone with Sprint, they had no idea. Thanks again!

[RI]

Thank you. I do have a 2 year old daughter that sneaks a bite on my phone every so often.

you were the only post that came up when I googled "disable car kit" and "verizon wireless"

All the best

RK

[hitendra]

This is for lgvx6000, I have 3 pins on the cell phone battery , and 3 pins on the phone after i remove the battery, which 2 of these 3 pins need to be shorted. ?
thanks.

[jimmy]

same phone, my son is 19 months old, that explains why my phone is in car kit mode.

thanks,

[L]

I shorted the pins and it sparked and the phone switched off. post panic, i switched it on and its still in car-kit mode. any ideas?

[Christopher, VZ Wireless]

This would have just helped me with a cute customer (yeah, we're blind) except her LG VX7000 kept switching back into car kit mode after the phone power-cycled itself. Oh, well. She's off to the local Tech Center Store... :-(

[Colleen]

My hand was slightly wet when I moved my cell phone off of the towel I needed to dry my hands. God only knows why I put it on top of the towel anyway. Needless to say, my phone entered "car kit" mode. This idea was pretty good. My phone shut off, but still when I turned it back on it remained in "car kit" mode. I even tried everything on another website, including a step-by-step guide to remove the annoyance:

http://www.mobiledia.com/forum/topic19157.html

However, my efforts were to no avail. I gave up and left the house with my mom's cell phone just in case. Thankfully, about 20 minutes after I dropped all efforts to fix the phone, I picked it up again to play around with it when I noticed it was back to its regular mode. For this reason, I'm not quite sure if it was the step-by-step guide, sticking a paper clip in its power socket, or just waiting for the phone to dry inside. Try it all!

[Shanna]

hey, i tried your tinfoil method, and it worked, but if i take the tinfoil out, in a few seconds its right back in carkit mode? i really dont want to carry tinfoil around w/ me everywhere i go... HELP!

[Anna]

WOW.... this is so funny and you have gotten so many comments, but this just worked immediatly, I too have the LG VX6000 and dropped it into water which made it to the car kit mode, after a fight with my boyfriend over trying to fix it i went to the verizon store.... Mistake, the man basically told me there was nothing i could do. However i came home, googled this car kit mode, found your link and immediatly started jamming things into it, Low and behold, it works! Thanks a million lol!

[Ellen]

Thank you so much --- it worked for us!!!

[Genee]

Eureka!!! Not only was it funny to read about this trick but it worked!
My husband's VX6000 phone got damp and that stupid "car kit" came on. I also went to a Verizon store and got the smirked face a** telling me I was screwed and that I needed to pay full price for a new cell phone. I was a click away from upgrading our plan to get a new phone etc.. and decided to see if there was a way to hack out of "car kit." I tried countless suggestions on mobiledia.com but the only thing that worked was cramming that piece of tinfoil up my phones "port." Thank you Digital Dad, you brought my husbands phone back from the brink!

[Digital Dad]

Hey I'm glad this has helped everyone - this is how this medium should work.

[bennie]

We've had the Car Kit problem also. Tried the foil, fork, etc. Didn't fix it. I turned the hair dryer (high) on the end beneath the microphone for about 45 sec. This cured it for us.

Thanks for info from here because we were thinking we couldn't read the book properly. We never found anything about Car Kit only references to it.

Hope this helps someone also.

[Victor]

Thanks! The dryer and shorting of pins approach worked for me too! I carefully jamed a hairpin into the adapter near the microphone towards the bottom of the phone jiggling it back and forth and 'Car Kit' went away..!

[Liz]

Thank you, Digital Dad! I had tried other setting "solutions" which didn't work, searching different discussion groups. Your MacGuyver trick with the paper clip was brilliant! The paper clip has joined my nail file and rubber band in my "mom" toolkit in my wallet.

[Meek]

OMG!! What is so funny is that Imy 12 month old was just sitting this morning with my sturdy durdu vx7000 chewing the bottom of it where the charger goes in.,..LOw and behold I am in kar kit mode..it was not until I looked up disable car kit mode lgvx7000 that i saw your post!!! WOW...MAke it so bad is that I work for VZW Wireless and that goes to water damage

[Nick]

This was a life saver!!! I have already bought one phone for 200 bucks after losing the previous one and did not want to shell out more cash. This worked like a charm.

[Pete]

Yeah so my phone gets one droplet of rain on the bottom and im stuck into this "carkit" mode, after a few hours of trying to troubleshoot this thing I finally go into the Verizon Wireless store which then they told me there was no way out and I had to get a new or refurbished phone but eligiblity to get a upgrade was not for another 3 good months. After searching more and not giving up I got onto google and foudn this, in which the popular thing to do was stuck some metal up the ass of the phone, sounded kinda weird but it worked!! I think these wireless companies (verizon) are frauding their customers into this will never work again thing "get a new phone" method and lookee here it works again, I might make a stop in there later to show what a liar she was!!!

thanks again for the help!
pete

[whitney]

Okay Thank God for these posts! I was about ready to shoot myself on this damn car kit thing on my LG flip phone I answered it when I was in the shower and tried EVERYTHING from removing the battery to turning it off and on i could recieve calls but couldnt answer them and there was no sound or vibrate i took it into the Cell One store and they were closed cuz it was sunday (it went in car kit mode on Saturday night) well after working on the piece of shit all day I finally took my charger and hair pins and just poked them everywhere but i think what did the trick was i took the metal end of the charger and stuck it in the bottom end of the phone and kept doing that for like 2 min and then i opened my phone and it showed -vib & high- instead ofCar Kit- thanks guys i hope this will help all u frustrated people out there with the same problem

[Nic]

Okay- so I had the car kit thing and went to Verizon and the guy knew how to reset it. Which should be a happy ending according to everyone else's stories, but I still have a problem that noone has mentioned-- I have some sort of electrical issue that makes my screen go blank now. I didn't have this problem before "car kit", which is now gone. I have to remove the battery, plug in and then power up several times a day. Does anyone know about this?
Thanks