Sister's Phone Broken: Pay to repair or DIY job?

RMS Oceanic

The other day my sister dropped her phone - a Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini - and the glass screen broke. My parents asked around various mobile phone shops, and the fees they charge for replacing the glass range from £55 to £130. So my parents looked for alternatives, and they see replacement screens with kits to do it yourself for maybe £10. Is it a good idea to try and fix it yourself, or should they swallow the pill: Alternate question, is there anywhere that can offer a better deal on replacing the screen for you?

Kalkino

Try and find a YouTube tutorial to see how fiddly it is and how long it takes.

Delmain

It doesn't look that hard actually, if you ever work with little stuff like phones.

I'd be worried about sourcing on the replacement glass, but taking it apart looks relatively easy.

bowen

Yeah if you're going to do it, do it yourself.

TannerMS

I don't have a ton of experience here, but the one time I tried to replace my phone's screen, the frame was actually bent half a millimeter or so. This wasn't visible to me until I was trying to fit it together but I guess at worst you're out $10 for the replacement kit.

mcp

I replaced the screen on an iPad 2 using parts from http://www.strivemobile.com.

It's was kind of annoying, but cheaper than having Apple do it.

I don't know if they have the parts you need.

Oliver

I replaced the screen (glass only) on my wife's Galaxy S3. Here are my thoughts:

- You can do it if you are pretty handy with small tools, can work quickly, and have a steady hand.
- It will not turn out just like the phone was before the glass broke, unless you get really lucky or are very good
- This might mean a number of things, the screen could act just like normal but it doesn't fit like the old one did, or the screen could be less responsive
- It is fairly messy if you use the liquid screen glue (but has the potential to end up being the most like the stock phone)
- Using the non-liquid glue is less messy, but then you end up with no glue between the new glass and the digitizer which *can* cause the phone to look or act slightly different (or you may not notice!)
- You can ruin the phone during this process
- You will have to use a heat gun to get the old glass off and you have to be careful to not exceed a certain temperature (not sure what it is for the mini)
- I had an infra-red thermometer laying around which I used to monitor the temperature of the screen while I heated it up

I'm pretty handy with things, but I did not enjoy this process at all. I used the liquid glue that cures under UV light (called loca) for my replacement. I wanted to make sure I didn't leave any air bubbles under the screen, and I ended up using more glue than I should have. It turned out fairly messy, but did work just like it used to. That being said, it was a lot cheaper than sending it away to someone that I would probably do it again if I broke my phone.