Database Users

Anyone doing g1 repair?

I've got a g1 bought when they first came out that the screen stopped working on. I suspect that it's just the loose ribbon cable, since it's the initial run of the phone. The phone works, I can adb into it, there's just nothing on the screen. Unfortunately, I don't think I can send it in for repair, even tho it's inside the year warranty, cos I had changed the housing for a different color off ebay, which meant unscrewing the screws and breaking the void sticker. So, any recommendations of reputable-won't rip me off&won't break the phone while fixing it-repair services? I looked at the service manual, and really don't feel comfortable disassembling it myself when I am unsure what the problem is.
Edit-If you saw my earlier thread about flashing back to stock, in which I thought it was my fiance's brand new g1 that had died, we realized when we went to box the phone up that the IMEI on the dead phone didn't match the new box. I'd accidentally switched the phones when rooting his&updating the ROM on mine and not realized it. Moral of the story, never flash two phones at the same time!
Editx2-I'm in the DC metro area.

well since you've changed the shell it shouldn't be much harder to check out the cable. just remember in most cases if you have to force something to come apart you are probably are missing a step.
I've taken a few phones apart (bbs, motos, nokias, htcs) down to bare bones and their not that difficult as long as you follow the steps outlined in the service manual. If you are still uncomfortable messing with it and are near a big city most have well reviewed repair shops which offer warranties on their work. If they don't offer a warranty , I probably wouldn't mess with em.
Not sure anyone can recommend anywhere local (being that you didn't mention your local) but I'm sure a few other people can chip in on online sources(I've yet to use any so not comfortable with recommanding any, sry).
Good luck

I called up HTC a while ago, you can mail them your phone and they can do repairs. Just go to their website, it is under the support section. Unfortunately for T-Mobile replacements, one of the first things they ask is "Is the LCD screen working?"

SolemnWishing said:
I called up HTC a while ago, you can mail them your phone and they can do repairs. Just go to their website, it is under the support section. Unfortunately for T-Mobile replacements, one of the first things they ask is "Is the LCD screen working?"
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I read on here that HTC charges likes $250 for repairing the screen tho, that's insane. I'm willing to pay a REASONABLE price to get it fixed by someone who knows what they're doing, but if the repair is gonna run me more than I paid for the phone and more than 50% the cost of a NEW phone, I'll suck it up and do it myself.

I can fix it for you, I have built a working G1 from two, one that was liquid damage and the other with a shattered lcd and digitizer. Where are you located, i am in alabama... now if you damaged the cable to the lcd, then it would require purchasing a new one. The lcd goes for $65 to $70 and the digitizer goes for about $80 on ebay.

Turboteg1 said:
Where are you located, i am in alabama.
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I'm in DC, so mailing it to alabama is less than ideal. I'm exploring other options, thanks!

odds are you are gonna have to mail it off somewhere unless you do it yourself. i have had MANY phones and taken all of them apart to fix one thing or another, i never had any worries about my work and i never had a service manual. if something where to go whong with this phone i would be more confident in my ability to fix it since i can go find a service manual online

[Q] Repair or Replace?

Today, I dropped my baby edgewise onto concrete. The digitizer shattered right along with my heart!
Although the breakage occurred on the same corner as the digitizer's connection, the phone continues to function as normal, albeit with the increased risk of minor cuts.
I have done minor repair to cell phones in the past, and I have worked with LCD screens as well, so I am sure that, given the proper manuals or repair videos, I could replace the digitizer myself.
On eBay, I discovered that a replacement screen for our phones (tmobile, usa) was around $70.00 US. My warranty asks for a $130.00 deductible, if I want to completely replace the phone.
My HD2 has had none of the hardware issues that seems to have plagued some of the other users on this forum, so I hesitate to take the chance of getting a bum unit. On the other hand, this is a very expensive phone and as such it is a shame to try and fix it.
So... what do you guys think? Should I repair or replace my phone?

although I have no personal knowledge of you or your situation, I would recommend just doing the replacement yourself
Seriously though, that's exactly what I'd do. I think you have the skills, and maybe if you learn the process on this phone you can then offer your services to others who might not be able to handle it themselves. Or are too lazy. Me, for example

Apparently it is really easy to rip this little cord and pretty much ruin your phone. I would only do it if you think you have the expertise. At least be very careful of not damaging that cord.

Not worth the risk, you say you have insurance and a $130 deductible. So if you replace the digi your gonna void that warranty your paying for and god forbid you rip a wire or strip and kill the phone. Then you gonna get one on CL for $250. I'd just pay the $130 and get a brandnew one. I think there selling fast enough they should have cleared out the bum units by now. Also I'm not sure if there are so many bum units out their as bum owners who don't know WTH there doing. When I got my stock HD2 it froze occasionallly, and was pretty slow. Custom roms changed all that where I don't ever even worry about having to reset the phone. If I didn't do weird POC and hacky things with it I don't think I'd ever need to reset it at all.

Dropped my G2 = glass cracked!

I've found a replacement screen on eBay for $68 but have no idea how to replace it. I don't see any disassembly of the screen on any of the teardown pics. Any help would be much appreciated.

Insurance thru tmo. Better off getting brand new out the box. Just my thought.
[G2/HTC Vision]

Yeah, that would be ideal but I bought the phone used. No insurance. Also everything, including the touchscreen, works perfectly fine still. The glass is just cracked.

djodpm said:
Yeah, that would be ideal but I bought the phone used. No insurance. Also everything, including the touchscreen, works perfectly fine still. The glass is just cracked.
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You can call T-Mo, have them add the premium insurance, and then call back in a couple days and have them give you a replacement under the plan for $130.
EDIT: Make sure to get confirmation on this before you go through.
Of course, $68 is much better than $130. This link to a Desire Z teardown shows the top panel being taken apart (about 2/3 of the way down the page). It's a hell of a process; one that might leave you with more than just a screen issue if something were to go wrong.

Pix please and also what link are r u looking at? $68 seems to cheap. Just wanna make sure you dont end up with a mytouch or hero screen

Wow, thanks for your help so far guys. Sorry about the links, it wouldnt let me post a normal link since Im a new user, so just cut and paste.
Here is a link to the replacement screen I found on eBay, its actually $58:
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280580921344&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_2532wt_785
And here is a photo:
picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/YQQk9mou_kp-7iN6ItklDtTVQVAkEM77fsYCIJiprL0?feat=directlink

djodpm said:
Wow, thanks for your help so far guys. Sorry about the links, it wouldnt let me post a normal link since Im a new user, so just cut and paste.
Here is a link to the replacement screen I found on eBay, its actually $58:
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280580921344&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_2532wt_785
And here is a photo:
picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/YQQk9mou_kp-7iN6ItklDtTVQVAkEM77fsYCIJiprL0?feat=directlink
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thats pretty bad on the phone but yes that is the right screen.
You cracked the touch screen part not the lcd which would of cost more.
Good luck with replacing it. Idk how good you are at this stuff but for me it doesnt look to hard just make sure you have all the right tools.
and @ EfemaN
thanks for the link. and has anyone looked to see if the led has multi- color?

i don't think you can add insurance now. only at the time you bought the phone.
actually when i bought, they added insurance w/o telling me. i found it later and canceled cuz it's 6.99/mo and deductible is 130. i thought 130 is way too much.
how much will HTC charge you? around 200?

HTC wont even repair them yet, that is the worst part. Below is the email I got from HTC customer service.
We apologize for any issues you are experiencing with your device and would be happy to assist. Unfortunately, we are not currently supporting this device for repair. We will have RMA options available soon, but do not have an ETA on when this will take effect. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Customer Care at 1.888.356.2375.

I was able to remove and re-add insurance back over the last year or so that I had my Blackberry. There's no harm in just calling to ask.
I just called T-Mobile to have a new G2 sent (having radio issues), and during the usual agreement word-for-word reading, the rep mentioned the "if we find that you screwed up your phone" fee of.. I believe she said around $280, and if I remember correctly, it was $130 for the Blackberry. That $68 screen seems a little more attractive now...

I called and tried to add insurance to my G2 today. T-Mobile said I had the phone more than 15 days and could not add it :-(
They did say that there is a year warranty on the phone that covers defects, but not breaks caused by consumer.
I also asked if they have an open enrollment period like some phone insurance companies do and they said that they didn't.
The DID however say that if I went to a T-Mobile store and got any repairs or exchanges done, I would be able to add insurance.
FYI my G2 is in perfect condition. Was just wanting to know if I could add it. Wish I would have when I had the chance.

Just so you guys are aware..
Insurance can be added only during an open enrollment period - purchase of a new phone or a warranty exchange. More or less, whenever T-mobile gives you a phone, you have 14 days to add it to the line.
That being said, the qualifying event that enables you to add insurance to your line doesn't necessarily have to cover the phone that was purchased or exchanged. The insurance will actually follow the sim card (iphone excluded) so that if you put your sim card into another device, that is actually the device that is currently covered.
Now, if you have a phone that can't receive a signal (totally inoperable as a phone) you might run into some difficulties actually making the claim. While it is technically policy, they would certainly prefer to see some usage on the phone you're trying to make a claim on. Depends on who you talk to, really.
Figured I would share. Toodles.

Bishybob said:
I called and tried to add insurance to my G2 today. T-Mobile said I had the phone more than 15 days and could not add it :-(
They did say that there is a year warranty on the phone that covers defects, but not breaks caused by consumer.
I also asked if they have an open enrollment period like some phone insurance companies do and they said that they didn't.
The DID however say that if I went to a T-Mobile store and got any repairs or exchanges done, I would be able to add insurance.
FYI my G2 is in perfect condition. Was just wanting to know if I could add it. Wish I would have when I had the chance.
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why dont you sim unlock your phone and see if you cant get signal, get your replacement device, which would be covered as a defect, and then add insurance to that one. I prefer sprints insurance, they will even let you claim a phone you got used from ebay/cl or whatever. Also, you might want to look into a third party insurance provider, as asurion is who covers it through every carrier anyway. They will always just tell you to call them, wont make anything easier.

Does anyone have a better tear down link than this?: tjworld.net/blog/htc-desire-z-tear-down
This assumes that the 1/2 that the screen is attached to is separated from the other 1/2 of the phone. I ordered a new digitizer and am just waiting for it to arrive. I was quoted $50 labor from a local shop here in NYC. I ordered the part for $36.

good luck with this man
it really sucks to have almost no good guides on how to take apart a phone
i did a screen replacement with my old vibrant
it was terrible

Cracked screen :(

I'm just a little bit miffed today. My phone got knocked off a table at a restaurant, landed on the corner, then came to rest on its back (camera down). I know have a nice spiderweb across the top of screen. Thankfully, only my glass is cracked. The touchscreen still works perfectly, even across the cracks.
Am I going to be able to get this repaired from Sprint? One of my friends got his EVO repaired for free a few months ago with the same type of damage. Do I have similar coverage, or am I going to have to shell out for a replacement?
I'm taking it in on Monday, should I RUU back to stock, or just flash my rooted stock ROM backup? (I'm on CM7 RC4)

That sucks dude.
I'm always afraid of that happening to mine too
I personally don't know if Sprint will do it for free or not (they'll know for sure when you go)
Also, I think it might be best to RUU back (making backups of all your setups, ROMs, data, etc and saving said backups to your PC) Just in case Sprint feels the need to rummage through your phone after they replace the screen (I'm guessing they might to test to see if the screen replacement is working correctly)
You could do your second listed option, up to you. I'm also afraid of Sprint finding out I voided the warranty. See, if you they find out you're rooted, then there goes your warrant and free screen replacement (as long as a screen replacement is part of the warranty)

I'm not sure if they'll replace it for free. I have this "insurance" deal with sprint (which I'm pretty sure is a ripoff, but my mom insisted I get it) that we had to pay for when I first bought the phone that cost $10. It only covers certain types of things, such as hardware errors and the like, but doesn't cover accidental physical damage. It would cost me $100 to get my phone or screen replaced if something like this happened. But maybe the employees at your sprint store are nice and might replace your screen for free.

screen on my moment imploded and took it to the sprint store and asked them to fix it and they looked at me like i was a crackhead that walked in off the street. then they told me to call ausurion and pay the 100 bucks to get it fixed . chances are thats what you will have to do

Digitizer Replacement saga- I bet this is how all refurbs are done

Earlier this year I got an Evo (HW 004, Epson screen) off eBay, no contract, no TEP, no ERP, and have used it pretty hard for a few months now. I have already cracked and replaced the camera lens glass cover disc of glass thingie with a kit also bought on eBay, so when the digitizer started getting progressively worse in recent days I basically said fine I'm perfectly willing to go DIY again.
Everyone says just replace the LCD screen and digitizer together as a unit so you don't fiddle around separating the bad digitizer from the good LCD screen and all that adhesive drama. Let's say approx $30 for just the digitizer, $80 for both, these days. To me, if the phone costs $2000 to own over two years, I don't really care about a few bucks here and there, so either method would work for me.
But while researching this issue on XDA I found quite a few people who persuaded either Sprint ($35) or HTC ($6 S&H) to do it for them.
So I figured why not drop in to the nearest Authorized Sprint Repair Center which happens to be very near where I live.
I get to the repair tech window and tell the guy I'm just asking him for advice. I say right up front this phone is rooted, I got it off eBay, I got no insurance of any kind etc. I just ask him what are my options?
He offers to replace both digitizer and LCD screen for $35. On the spot. Only I'll have to pay in cash because "their computers are down".
I say right on let's rock. His methodology is very straightforward. In plain view of God and everyone he just turns around to the counter behind him and starts rooting through all the returned phones lying around (they're all in these big envelopes, like in the old days of processing rolls of film, yeah i know lol I'm that old whatever) until he finds an Evo that he knows he saw earlier. I guess he's assuming that the Evo he's cannibalizing wasn't being returned because of a faulty digitizer or screen. Real master of probability theory, this guy.
He determines that the screen on whatever Evo he came up with has "the narrow cable" and then he cracks mine open (in like four seconds- I'm pretty sure I would have spent a good 30 minutes making sweet love to my phone with a pry tool to get to the same point- maybe DIY is not really such a bargain after all if your time is worth anything) and determines mine has "the fat cable". So no donor match for me. He puts it back together, hands it back and says to come back tomorrow because he just got ten new Evo's in from the factory for customers who have been waiting to get their phones back. Once they have returned to the store to pick up their replacements he'll have plenty of Evos to work with. He figures at least two of them will have "the fat cable".
I imagine this is how refurbs are done in general: Find out what the customer is complaining about, grab the relevant parts from a phone that a *different* customer was complaining about, and hope they weren't complaining about the same thing.

Given the circumstances (rooted phone bought off ebay) and the fact that he wanted you to pay cash because the "computers were down" I have a feeling this might not be how all repairs are handled... probably just the ones that are done "off the books" by that particular repair guy.

Pretty sure this is how they handle the repairs. I had my screen replaced once, and got it back with a crack by the volume buttons and power button. When I confronted the tech, he told me the screens are not new, but "harvested parts".

I had the same thing done to my phone. I had the "B spot" on my original HW003 and he replaced it with a used screen, which had another small white blotch in the screen. About 2 weeks later he received a brand new screen from HTC and put it on my phone. Been running that screen ever since.

bryank930 said:
Pretty sure this is how they handle the repairs. I had my screen replaced once, and got it back with a crack by the volume buttons and power button. When I confronted the tech, he told me the screens are not new, but "harvested parts".
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Same thing happened to me when I was going through my "refurb phase" trying to get a decent replacement. Sprint sent me a refurb that the screen was cracked out of the package. I took it to the store, the guy ripped it open in about 5 seconds, rummaged around a box of spare evo parts, and put a new screen on it. He gave it back to me 5 minutes later. This new screen was scratched to hell, the bezel around the screen was scratched to hell from him ripping the phone open, and the volume keys didnt work, I assume because he didnt put it together correctly. He told me that's how they do it, and that even though the "new" screen he put on had scratches, to sprint that was considered a new screen. It then took me about 4 hours arguing with the manager and on the phone with retentions to get them to get me another device.

Well, I went back to the guy for the replacement, and at the end of it all, either things got a whole lot shadier or a whole lot *less* shady, I can't tell: after he did the job (10 minutes, while-u-wait), he then wrote down my phone #, MEID and IMSI on a post it note before he gave me the phone back.
But there are a few things he said that make me think I misjudged the guy, like how I might receive a call from Sprint asking if I was satisfied with their customer service etc, how he does actually test the screen before he puts it in to make sure he's not swapping out one bad screen with another, and of course the post-it note ritual itself.
Of course this time there were other customers present, so maybe that was all for show and the post it note just went straight to the bottom of a trash can somewhere.
Anyways I paid in cash as previously arranged and walked out the door one happy person. What he did afterwards I don't know, and hopefully won't ever need to care.
Bottom line, digitizer is replaced (and as a nice side effect i no longer have to live with a couple pretty deep scratches on the old glass, even if the bezel is a little more nicked up than my old one), and the phone has never worked better.
[EDIT : just got a series of automated questions from Sprint via SMS asking about my experience. So I guess this all turned out to be more legit than I had initially suspected...]

Very nice! Glad to see you got a legit operation. As you know, I am in similar process. Getting screen replaced.

NxNW said:
Well, I went back to the guy for the replacement, and at the end of it all, either things got a whole lot shadier or a whole lot *less* shady, I can't tell: after he did the job (10 minutes, while-u-wait), he then wrote down my phone #, MEID and IMSI on a post it note before he gave me the phone back.
But there are a few things he said that make me think I misjudged the guy, like how I might receive a call from Sprint asking if I was satisfied with their customer service etc, how he does actually test the screen before he puts it in to make sure he's not swapping out one bad screen with another, and of course the post-it note ritual itself.
Of course this time there were other customers present, so maybe that was all for show and the post it note just went straight to the bottom of a trash can somewhere.
Anyways I paid in cash as previously arranged and walked out the door one happy person. What he did afterwards I don't know, and hopefully won't ever need to care.
Bottom line, digitizer is replaced (and as a nice side effect i no longer have to live with a couple pretty deep scratches on the old glass, even if the bezel is a little more nicked up than my old one), and the phone has never worked better.
[EDIT : just got a series of automated questions from Sprint via SMS asking about my experience. So I guess this all turned out to be more legit than I had initially suspected...]
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He used your phone information to put in a trouble ticket with Sprint to show that he did the repair. Standard stuff.