An adventure right here in river city! I recently cracked my iPhone 4s screen. I'm not sure if it was caused by a drop, or by my carrying my phone in my pants front pockets .. and bumping a door or something. I was surprised by the crack until I read that iPhone 4 glass breaks are 82% higher than the earlier iPhone 3gs after 4 months of use. (This from a warrantee company)
The usual "fix" is to trade it in for a new phone, getting replacement value for your broken phone .. i.e. a cost of $200 and hassling with Apple and Verizon. I started to look for alternatives and was surprised how many you-tube videos showed how to "tear down" the iPhone (and most others as well, this is a general problem). And there are kits from places like iFixIt and iCracked that are do-it-yourself. iCracked is a recent Y-Combinator award winner .. VC money with a fascinating business model: they train folks all over the US so that they immediately became a large company with hundreds of local repair people. They have three modes for customers getting their phone fixed: 1: mail in to iCracked central and get it fixed a few days, 2: find a local repair person (there are 3 in Albuquerque!) or 3: DIY kit. Here's their DIY video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EXTWp6bd6Y&feature=related Normally I wouldn't think much about DYI but with computers and phones getting smaller and smaller, they are costlier to do simple thing like repairing batteries etc. Heck .. I decided to buy some tools, buy the kit, and see if its possible. Well, it seems to have worked! I just stitched up the patient and its doing OK, apparently. We'll see after a few days if there are any oddities. As a side note, it turns out teens here in Santa Fe are doing this for pay. One neighbor mentioned a classmate charging $40 + parts cost for screen repairs, so its not a bad business. Here are some pix: A picture of the work space: http://backspaces.net/temp/PhoneFix/Panorama.jpg The tool setup, showing a ridged work surface to make sure parts and screws don't get lost! http://backspaces.net/temp/PhoneFix/Tools.jpg A closeup of the above, showing the chart used of the steps for the tear-down. http://backspaces.net/temp/PhoneFix/ToolsNChart.jpg A view of the instructional video .. a really great tool! http://backspaces.net/temp/PhoneFix/Video.jpg Now to attack my Macbook Air! -- Owen
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