iPhone Repair – Phase 1

For those who read my iPhone disaster piece last weekend:

… you might have seen my update regarding the purchase of a new touch screen:

… and a new battery

… all for about 25 bucks. Well, they both arrived Friday, which I thought was pretty decent for letter mail (free shipping inside Canada uses 1st class letter mail.)

So this evening I started to disassemble the phone to repair it. The first step is to remove the two screws beside the connection slot in the bottom. Here, you see them already removed with the tabs showing that hold the LCD assembly to the body.

Here’s how you lift the top with ease.

But be careful, too rough and you sever the three flat cables connecting the top to the bottom.

Once apart, I can work on each separately.

From here, I proceed to remove 6 tiny screws along the sides of the top part (on the right in the above image) and then I try lifting out the LCD itself in the middle. At this point I misunderstand what I am seeing in the instructions and videos I am watching on my eldest’s old laptop, which I hooked up on the kitchen table in order to see the steps in real time. There are *a ton* of videos and web sites on battery replacement and screen replacement for the 3G and in fact every other phone in existence.

Anyway … back to my world class brain fart. If you remember my last article, the LCD was 100% intact. And once I started trying to lever the LCD out of the top case, it was no longer intact. Frak.

So I went online and ordered a new LCD for $25. My repair cost has now doubled from $25 to $50. Bummer, but that’s the price of brain farts. Watch the whole vid before touching the iPhone! Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Still, $50 is cheap for a new iPhone with a fresh battery. If it works :-)

Meanwhile, I’ll continue this article tomorrow, as I continue to replace the touch screen (requires heating of glue etc.)) and the battery (requires diving to the bottom of all those electronics stuffed into the phone proper. Fingers crossed …