Broken screen iPhone, what I learned.

[coxt]

I hope what I learned about broken screens on iPhones will help others. Here goes.

My phone: an iPHone 4 with a cracked glass
My solution: I bought a replacement assembly from Gadgetown on ebay for $25 and change. The reviews were all great. When it arrived, I installed it with no trouble by watching a youtube video at http://phonedoctors.com/video/.

Success. But with a big caveat. The screen was just not as good a performer as the original Apple retina LCS. I knew this might turn out to be the case, but for $25, I was wililng to try. The new screen "blacks out" in dark areas. Also, it' s very hard to find an optimum viewing angle. Don't get me wrong - it works and it's pretty good and it was only $25. It's just that it's very hard to downgrade one's expectations after becoming accustomed to the very, very high quality of the OEM screen.

Enter another, better solution. Since my original Apple retina display still works, albeit with a broken glass attached to it, I am going to send it off to
PhoneFixPro who will remove the broken glass and fuse a new glass to my still-functioning Apple LCD. Cost = another $25.00

Lessons learned:
It's not hard to disassemble the iPhone. Just takes a while - 2 hrs. (but i enjoyed it.

It's absolutely true that Apple does't let anybody sell OEM parts. Everything is aftermarket, 3rd party..

Those aftermarket screens aren't too bad, especially for $25. but they sure aren't Apple. The same $25 would be better spent buying only what you need, and keeping your original Apple LCD.

I'll post again when I've reinstalled my original screen.

 

[Leonard1818]

Good to know for future reference!

....I think moving forward though, most people are going to just go to Apple and suck it up and pay them.... heck for what you've got wrapped up in screens ($50) I could use one of my "Accidental drops" and get my whole phone replaced!

 

[Mrbobb]

PhoneFixPro: Let us know if that works out better.

 

[coxt]

Good to know for future reference!

....I think moving forward though, most people are going to just go to Apple and suck it up and pay them.... heck for what you've got wrapped up in screens ($50) I could use one of my "Accidental drops" and get my whole phone replaced!

You're absolutely right! The only reason I embarked on this somewhat Quixotic quest was that I like messing around with stuff like this. I didn't even HAVE an iPhone until my twins begged me to get them both an iPhone 5! After that, just to see what iPhones were like, I bought a broken iPhone 4 for $90 from a student here at the university. I didn't even activate phone service on it! Just messed around with it, cause there's wifi everywhere I go. Then i noticed how fragile iPhones must be, cause there's a zillion broken ones. I decided to fix this one just for fun. If my little experiment works, it will mean that someone could fix a broken screen for $25 and keep their retina display. In the meantime, I had a blast taking the thing apart - just to see if my aging eyesight was still up to it! I'll probably end up having to give the thing to my wife! She wants one now that the twins have 'em!