My first shot at a decent i300 was a dud. I didn't find this out until I got the rest of the accessories upon my return to TX from Memphis. I promptly ran the smoke test. No dice. Screen: check. Touchpad: DOA.
Fortunately, the accessories I bought from another EBayer included a phone with screen problems: So, I tried cannibalizing the two units, in the same way I got both my 6035 and my pdQ working again.
The i300 was weirdly set up inside. Sure--the basic principles were there: the mobo and the video card were separate. However, the circuitboards themselves were not engineered, really, to fit the case as much. That was one obstacle: one bad flip of the wrist, one miscalc with the knife, and voila, one cracked piece of silicon would've been in my possession.
The other obstacle was the case itself: the likelihood of case breakage was indeed high--more so than with either of the Kyo/Qualcomms. At one point, I was wondering how in the name of all planar existence they assembled the machine without culling enough breakage to pull profits into the toilet of excessive recycle costs.
To make a long story short, I forgot that it's easier to bum a solder kit from a computer geek and replace the whole sensor assembly than it is to take a razor blade under the sensor sheet and stick it on the other card...or trawl Ebay again and find yet another unit. Too little, too late.
Oh well. Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.