Way back when in the early days of the WinMo smartphone cable hacking was done to get the HTC Typhoon (SPV C500/Audiovox SMT5600) to charge required shorting one of the data pins to ground.

When I saw this post and recalling the Nokia N900's behavior brought this memory back to me.

AS a side note-for those who don't want to solder you can get conductive ink pens to make bridges to create paths between any two points.