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.
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:
The tool setup, showing a ridged work surface to make
sure parts and screws don't get lost!
A closeup of the above, showing the chart used of the
steps for the tear-down.
A view of the instructional video .. a really great
tool!
Now to attack my Macbook Air!
-- Owen
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