I Broke My Phone’s Screen, and It Was Awesome

There&#x27;s a cultural quirk buried in the article, when the technician uses his or her &quot;very long thumbnail (in lieu of a spudger&#x2F;guitar pick).&quot;<p>Some Chinese men grow one fingernail quite long as a sign that they do not toil in the fields (else the nail would be broken)[1]. It has been for some time a symbol of high status. Yet here we see a long fingernail employed specifically to aid manual labor.<p>I now wonder if there are budget repair guys walking around Shenzhen appearing to show off their socioeconomic status but actually just hoping their nails don&#x27;t break because it would make splitting open broken phones less convenient.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.vagabondjourney.com/why-chinese-men-grow-long-fingernails/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vagabondjourney.com&#x2F;why-chinese-men-grow-long-fin...</a>

Contrast this with my recent experience at the 14th Street and Fifth Avenue Apple Stores in New York.<p>Two weeks ago my Mac stopped booting. Made an appointment at the 14th Street Apple Store. Arrived 15 minutes early. Discovered there was a line to check in. That put you into a second line, the line to be seen by a &quot;Genius&quot;. Forty-five minutes after my appointment time, I&#x27;m seen by someone with no intimate knowledge of my device. Laptop is checked in overnight.<p>Two days later, I receive my &quot;fixed&quot; Mac. SSD replaced, problem still there. Take it to the Fifth Avenue Apple Store at 4AM. This time I&#x27;m seen within 30 minutes of my appointment. &quot;Genius&quot; asks me to call phone support. Phone support insists Genius can solve the problem, asks to speak with Genius–nobody at store can find him. Thirty minutes later, phone support tells Genius what to do. Genius disappears into a back room, emerges 20 minutes later with the right tool. No clear answer as to what went wrong provided.<p>I am willing to pay for fast, smart solutions. Sometimes the brainpower is not available, and I accept that. Curious that I feel that brainpower would have been more amply available in the streets of Shenzhen than New York.

Shenzhen, and particularly the Huaqiangbei area, is a great place to be if you&#x27;re into electronics in general. Components are cheap and plentiful, and so are component-level repair shops. &quot;Fixed while you wait (and watch)&quot; is the norm, and some of the more popular shops have lineups of people waiting with their tablets&#x2F;laptops&#x2F;desktops&#x2F;etc. in need of repair. A friend had his laptop&#x27;s chipset reballed there (the nVidia one that was famous for failing early.) Very different experience than in the West.<p>Bunnie has been there before:<p><a href="http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=283" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bunniestudios.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=283</a><p><a href="http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=147" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bunniestudios.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=147</a>

I wish I had more adventures like this one, but I&#x27;ve found one of the things that holds me back is the language barrier. I don&#x27;t speak any of Mandarin, Korean, or Japanese (I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if bunnie does, given how brilliant he is), and I worry that not being able to communicate effectively rules out serendipitous moments like these.<p>For others here, did you learn Chinese (or Spanish, or Arabic, or Russian) to assist you in your travels? I&#x27;ve always found learning computer languages easy, but human languages frustratingly difficult for me (different muscles, I know).

One interesting aspect of replacement is the difference between a good rework job and a bad rework job is typically environmental sealing. Does the case still snap perfectly tightly, with sealant&#x2F;gaskets, if any, around the borders etc?<p>This is useful advice not just for people doing it themselves, but to evaluate a shops ability to do rework. If its a busy shop catch a guy leaving with a replacement and ask to see some completed work.<p>There is an analogy with programming where a mere &quot;it compiled&quot; is not exactly the pinnacle of all possible compliments.

Same deal here in Bolivia, you break something chances are someone somewhere in Los Cachis can fix it for you inexpensively.<p>For example my Kindle 1st gen charging port was no longer snapping the connector cable correctly - I took it in and for 20Bs ($3) they fixed a soldered part that had come loose with the ins-and-outs of the charging cable.

I did this myself for my Nokia Lumia 920. Same fault - the glass cracked but the digitizer and display were fine. Hair dryer, tweezers and a ton of patience. It took me four hours though, but it was a complete success.<p>If you&#x27;re planning on doing this yourself, don&#x27;t be tempted to buy an unbranded replacement - they may be fakes or poor quality reproductions (not gorilla glass, digitizer inaccurate, etc.) - My phone was a developer device but I replaced the screen with an AT&amp;T branded one. The branded screens are usually genuine.

This post hints at one of the great advantages of being close to suppliers. When you&#x27;re that close to the supply source, you gain all sorts of advantages like:<p>a) You can typically find the person actually building the damn thing, and ask about it.<p>b) You can probably get your hands on a large set of cheap, defective parts to play around with.<p>c) You can get your hands on the actual parts really cheap.<p>b and c together vastly reduces the cost of experimentation, and more importantly, reduces the cost of screwing up.<p>This is some of what you lose when you become just the end node of the supply chain. This is the type of &#x27;magic&#x27; that some people speak about when they talk about when &#x27;America (or insert your choice of western democratic country) built things&#x27;.

The hairdryer as heat-gun method was first shown to me by an incredibly gifted Electrical Engineer (from China) who used this method to fix dry joints on PCBs (including consumer mainboards).<p>It was astounding the first time I saw a dead MB revived with nothing more than a bathroom accessory!

That&#x27;s pretty nice, but in the US at least, the digitizer alone is almost always never replaced because it is a fairly dangerous maneuver. [1]<p>Also, if you have the tools (and I would recommend buying a small electronics tool set to everyone, because it&#x27;s a lot cheaper and funner to fix stuff yourself than to pay someone to fix it), then you can buy a complete LCD + digitizer for $36 on Amazon. [2]<p>[1]<a href="http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/111483/iPhone+5+cracked+glass,+but+the+screen+still+works" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;Answers&#x2F;View&#x2F;111483&#x2F;iPhone+5+cracked+g...</a><p>[2]<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Generic-Screen-Digitizer-Assembly-Replacement/dp/B00APSNZSG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1401023285&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=iphone+5+screen" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Generic-Screen-Digitizer-Assembly-Repl...</a>

When I repair phones, I always replace the digitizer and the LCD, firstly because it is too difficult to separate them, but secondly because buying the LCD+Digitizer as one unit isn&#x27;t that much more expensive than buying the digitizer on its own.

I didn&#x27;t have the same luck with a nexus 7 couple of months ago. It fell from a small night table and the screen shattered (the digitizer still works). I did the same process as the post explained and I got a replacement in Amazon ($60 and $6 for the tape), but for some reason it didn&#x27;t work. The broken screen used to work, but now I only hear noise when I turn it on, but no image. I think I made a mistake when I was removing the graphic ribbon, who knows. Now I feel like I don&#x27;t want to put more money and time into it. It&#x27;s great a company like that recycle everything, just separating the digitizer takes a lot of work.

FTA:<p>&gt; <i>I had originally assumed that the glass on the digitizer is inseparable from the OLED, but apparently those clever folks in Hua Qiang Bei have figured out an efficient method...</i><p>There is a large amount of skill involved. I saw a designer take apart a smartphone to use the digitizer in a &quot;looks like works like&quot; prototype. Getting the glue off and otherwise dissembling a smartphone screen without breaking anything is not easy! It&#x27;s not meant to be repairable. And this guy is a wizard at building prototypes.

I&#x27;ve got the iFixit repair kit. So far I&#x27;ve used it to repair a kindle hdx, a samsung android device, and an iphone 5c. Basically I just wait until a friend breaks their device and fix it for free. I got a free kindle fire HD out of the deal anyway. I don&#x27;t ask for money since it&#x27;s usually friends. I&#x27;ve also used it to replace the battery in my lenovo p500 which does not have a removable battery i.e. you must crack it open.

Does anyone here get anything useful to happen by dialing ∗#0∗# on an iPhone? I just get the message &quot;Error performing request: Unknown Error&quot;

&gt; This is the power of recycling and repair — instead of paying $120 for a screen and throwing away what is largely a functional piece of electronics, I just had to pay for the cost of just replacing the broken glass itself.<p>Some level of replace-ability should be enforced by law. There should be universal interchangeable types of batteries. Board self-test should be available and so on.

The three times I&#x27;ve broken phone screens it&#x27;s always the OLED&#x2F;LCD display that popped and the digitizer just sat there and grinned at me having protected sod all. I&#x27;ve replaced them all myself and it&#x27;s been pretty easy on all devices and very cheap. The OLED&#x2F;LCD displays all came from ebay.

I was curious about the diagnostic code mentioned * # 0 * #<p>I tried it and the phone did seem to go into some diagnostic mode and showed &quot;please wait&quot; for about 5 seconds, then just stopped with &quot;Unknown Error&quot; Sad.

I guess it takes skills @dannyrohit<p>I have tried to replace the set on an ipod touch in the past. Didn&#x27;t succeed. Screwed up taking the face&#x2F;body assembly apart.

I don&#x27;t fully get Bunnie&#x27;s point. I got my 3gs&#x27; screen replaced for £30 here in the UK (over the post though)

There&#x27;s no better place than any oversaturated labor market to get cheap labor! How uplifting.

Can you replace the iPhone LCD screen with an OLED display?

Video of the process for anyone curious.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbZwypAINYE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=PbZwypAINYE</a>

Maybe I&#x27;m just grumpy since I haven&#x27;t had coffee yet this morning, but why is this worthy of being #1 on HN? Author got a part replaced on his phone. Wow.