The iphone screen I had ordered finally arrived, so I wasted no time in getting to work replacing it. I made sure and watched a couple of Youtube videos all the way through to make sure I knew what to expect, and one of them was a guy filming himself to see what mistakes he would make. His main one was pulling the screen too hard, thus pulling all the connecting cables away instead of gently removing them; noted. The part that concerned me, and would ultimately lead to a lot more money being spent, was the fact that a hairdryer/heat gun needed to be used to remove the glass! So it wasn’t just a case of unscrewing stuff and replacing; there was some fiddly stuff to do. It wasn’t this part that screwed everything up however, it was removing the LCD screen. In the video the guy is seen taking out the screws then using a tool to slip under the LCD to remove it. Mine didn’t just slip out, and I spent a while jostling with it. In the end I put too much pressure on it and heard a light cracking noise; I turned it over to find I had damaged the LCD. This was what I was dreading the most, just making it worse and worse. I didn’t know at first how damaged it was, so I got on with sorting the glass section out before worrying too much. The glass was not what I was expecting, I though it would just separate with a little bit of heat, instead it deformed the frame and damaged all the rubber sealing. Okay, so it would be a little exposed to increased moisture, at least I will have saved on taking it to Apple; that’s what I was telling myself. When it came to sticking the glass to the midframe, it was as bad as I had imagined; a very uneven seal, and the rubber peeling away. I plugged it all back in anyway, just to see where I was at, and the LCD was in quite a bad way; only the top half was barely visible. When I tried to push it all back together it was a struggle as you can imagine, and once it eventually did go in (after cutting away most of the rubber seal) the screen was just a mess of colours. I quickly got on line to find an LCD screen, and although there were plenty about, and for a reasonable price, I couldn’t wait for several days for it to arrive. I eventually found a place in Bermondsey that stocked them, but unfortunately they were double the price of most on line stockists; I had no choice. When I arrived, I walked into their workshop, and asked for the LCD screen only; I did ask the price for the whole front unit, but £69.99 was a bit much. Now, as I was a little shaky due to my iPhone being completely stuffed, I had a little trouble putting screen together with all those minuscule screws. The two guys in there saw this and insisted they help me. I didn’t want them doing it for nothing, and already felt like an idiot because I had tried to fix it myself to save money. In the end they said they would be happy to do it for free, so they did, and pointed out that I was a second away from breaking the screen again by placing it over a part that should have gone above it! I took a £5 note out of my bag and told him to buy himself a drink, but he flatly refused. I persisted, pointing out that I would have cost myself even more if he hadn’t of stopped me; again he refused. When I told him the least I could do was tweet about the company and tell others, he said this was what he really wanted – word of mouth was the best thing for a company like his. Now, the question is would I do it again, and the answer is yes, because my phone worked, although I will buy a complete mid frame assembly to replace the deformed one. The problem with the LCD was that the frame needed to be separated in several places with a sharp object that could slot between them. The rest of it was a doddle, so I am buying a new mid frame assembly, and putting my iphone back into it’s previous cosmetic state. Funnily enough, when I got onto eBay to buy a complete mid frame assembly, the only company selling this, besides ones in Hong Kong with up to a month delivery, was this same company! In the end the total for parts was about £83, and all the running around. But, I didn’t have to send my phone away, it was cheaper than Apple, and for the future I will buy the cheap mid frame from Hong Kong in advance, so if I do break my screen again, it will be a fraction of the price.
http://www.parts4ipods.com/They're great people, and much cheaper for parts and repair than Apple stores.
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