Yes - that will probably work OK (there may be some inovious gitch but should be no technical problem.).
Very importantly though - you want good mechanical support for the nw larger connector. A non conductove brack (eg plastic) that supports the connector and is screwed to the PCB in a neutral location is advisable. Or Heath Robinson solution is to pot the connector and PCB with eg epoxy resin ;-(.
Ensure shortest possible connections between old and new centres connecyor and good ground to ground connections.
Note that the new connector does not have to point in the same direction as the old one.
- Mounting it at 90 degrees on a sheet of plastic that extends from the PCB may be extremely effective.
Even if it is at an angle it can work OK. Shortness of connection length is more important than prettiness.
There are several physical ways to connect.
(1) Either connect middle to middle and brass cube to body. This should be very easy to trial with the new connector at an angle so that relevant parts touch. Not pretty but should work OK for trialing.
or
(2) Remove brass cube and connect inner to inner, outer to where body connected
or
(3) Connect from bottom of PCB with old brass block still in place.
Any of these schemes may produce an impedance step and cause reflections and some loss of signal. But all may work OK - there's a degree of luck involved.
Next I thought that cutting the trace on the bottom side of the board leading to the antenna (shown in red) would surely do the trick but again I was wrong; it would still connect if I was within a foot or two of the Xbox One. As an aside, what exactly is that trace's functionality?
The red line you cut IS the antenna path. But not it's radiation source. The reason it now only connects at 1 foot instead of its usual range is because you crippled it. Two ways to completely (for practical purposes) remove the signal is depower the entire antenna/wifi section, which the sub-board is, or connect the antenna trace to ground.
For theory, Antennas should be a full or 3/4th or 1/2, or 1/4th of the wavelength for optimum propagation. Just because it is not that size does not stop it from working, it just stops it from working well. Your antenna is now a few millimeters long instead of a few inches.
Best Answer
WiFi frequencies are high enough that useful antennas can be quite small. It therefore isn't that hard to build the antennas into the case. Here is a extreme example of a WiFi antenna built right onto the PC board of a WiFi module. It can be seen near the top of the picture at the top right of the WiFi module.
The whole module from the ends of the solder pads on one side to the ends of the solder pads on the other side is about 1 inch. The antenna itself is only about 13mm left to right in the picture. The parts surrounding the WiFi module on the base board are 0805 packages.