Can anyone verify if the front housing has a thin plastic layer covering the touch screen? I have a tiny scratch here and I'm considering buying a front housing if I can verify that piece of information.
what you are looking fore is generally called a
screen protector
there are tons of them around
don't believe x1 comes with one
at least mine did not
he is asking if there is a thin layer of film between the screen and the outside (so u touch the film and not the screen directly) like some laptops have.
i dont think the x1 has that film layer
No, there is not. The front cover is only a frame and the touch foil is mounted on the display.
Yes, you need a screen protector as Rudegar wrote.
Thanks
Thank you all for your replies. My phone is only 20 days old and I did order a Martin Fields screen protector that hasn't arrived yet. I had the protective film, which originally came with the phone, on until I realized that it was the reason for the scratch. I cut off the tip on the top right side, which you use to pull the film off the screen, hoping that I could use it until my screen protector arrives. However, I didn't do a very good job there; when I cut it I didn't do a 90 degree clean cut but rather chopped a 45 degree cut as shown in the attached photo. The tip of the stylus, as well as my finger nail I'm guessing, sliding off the slit caused an ugly little scratch right there. I am really mad at myself but there is nothing I can do now.
Another issue: I have an Arkon car holder that I used once with my Xperia for 35 minutes while I used Garmin Mobile XT for navigation. Guess what? Noticeable discolouration on the battery cover! I don't know if it's the heat, the direct sunlight (36 degree Celsius with really high UV index), the padding of the holder or a combination of reasons. I called Sony Ericsson’s local dealer in Egypt and they said I don’t qualify for a replacement cover under warranty! I emailed Sony Ericsson’s international website. Let’s see what the future days will carry for me.
I really love the phone and it came with a free 8GB memory card and full Arabic language support but it’s freaking too early to sustain such damage to this beauty. I am extremely careful with the phone and I bought the Sony Ericsson ICE-125 leather case, which I don’t like at all, to use temporarily until my Noreve case arrives. My feelings are a mixture of happiness for finally buying the phone, and sadness for not being able to maintain its perfection for more than 20 days…
One last thing
So I can replace the touch foil?!
Don't worry about it man. I have a big ass scratch on the middle of the screen and I barely notice it. I didn't wait for my screen protector as well.
You can always go to a repair shop and change the whole touchscreen .
Relief!
My Martin Fields protector arrived today! Great stuff! The scratch is no where to be seen. Thank you all!
God bless eBay!
I found the touch screen digitizer selling for less than $10 on eBay. Ordered one and planning on changing it myself. My LCD is fine; it's only the digitizer that is scratched. Will post a video and some photos when I'm done! Wish me luck!
I cracked my glass on my screen and purchased a replacement online. I've found tutorials on how to replace the screen as a whole but I only need to replace the glass. The screen is fine. Any info in this?
Thanks beforehand.
i dont know much about this in particular but u would have to open the phone up but u gotta be careful not to damage the touch sensors if you do replace it, or u could just sell it and put maybe 100 in for a used one
If you want to replace the glass, the Super Amoled itself will have to be replaced as well. Unfortunately, the glass and the amoled screen are glued together which makes seperating the two nearly impossible without tearing/destroying the Super Amoled.
XPLANE9 said:
If you want to replace the glass, the Super Amoled itself will have to be replaced as well. Unfortunately, the glass and the amoled screen are glued together which makes seperating the two nearly impossible without tearing/destroying the Super Amoled.
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Not true. i replaced mine on the second atempt, on the first i cracked the amoled.
I really dont recomend you to do it yourself. Let a professional do this for you, but if you are really studborn.. here comes the info :
the border of the amoled is glued to the glass. the trick is that the amoled, is so fragile as an egg shell, to be honest, more fragile. since part of the amoled is glued to the back of the phone dispositives, any wrong trie to pull the glass, can crack the amoled.
So you need a hot dryer, and a lot of time and pacience to remove all the glue before trying to pull the glass. if you did not broke the glass on the borders or over the buttons (back, home, seach, settings) i recomend you to not lose your time and send for a professional, because the shattered pieces will stay over the screen and you will not be able to clean the amoled without damaging it.
Sorry for my english, hope it helped, but the best i can tell you, just send to a professional or there is a 90% you will screw it like on my first time
infestedd said:
Not true. i replaced mine on the second atempt, on the first i cracked the amoled.
I really dont recomend you to do it yourself. Let a professional do this for you, but if you are really studborn.. here comes the info :
the border of the amoled is glued to the glass. the trick is that the amoled, is so fragile as an egg shell, to be honest, more fragile. since part of the amoled is glued to the back of the phone dispositives, any wrong trie to pull the glass, can crack the amoled.
So you need a hot dryer, and a lot of time and pacience to remove all the glue before trying to pull the glass. if you did not broke the glass on the borders or over the buttons (back, home, seach, settings) i recomend you to not lose your time and send for a professional, because the shattered pieces will stay over the screen and you will not be able to clean the amoled without damaging it.
Sorry for my english, hope it helped, but the best i can tell you, just send to a professional or there is a 90% you will screw it like on my first time
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Which is exactly why I said nearly impossible. OP would be better off buying a whole new screen or a cheap unit off of Craigslist.
XPLANE9 said:
Which is exactly why I said nearly impossible. OP would be better off buying a whole new screen or a cheap unit off of Craigslist.
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Absolutely right! I remember the days I used to work as a cellphone technician repairing hardware damaged phones... a lot of people used to come to replace iphone glass.... people would buy iphone glass off ebay and have no clue how to take it off the screen...breaking the screen while doing so... and from my experience only a few!!!! a FEW!! technicians can do stuff like that.. you need BALLS and steady hands! and PATIENCE! google the topic she as much as you can find.
In other words from my experience you can try to sell your phone on craigslist for some change... and buy a used or stolen model for a low price! half of the phones on craigslist are stolen so ur not doing anything bad buying it, u just assume ur buying it for a good price while a thief tries to make a quick buck, just check the phone completely if it works... ear piece, speakers,, touch screen, internet signal,,, etc..
Good luck pal!
Unfortunate
Thats very unfortunate as a gorilla glass lens only costs 20 bucks whereas the entire display unit costs 100-140
[With pics] How to replace only the glass (not the whole "LCD") on a Galaxy S3!
You don't.
Although it is entirely possible, the chance of failure if done by people with absolutely no experience with mobile phone repairs is very high.
If you've broken the screen on your Samsung Galaxy S3 and have considered replacing the screen by yourself because your local mobile phone repair shops charge a hefty price for the repair, you should reconsider. You may have seen videos like the following that make it seem it is very easy to replace the glass only:
(skip to 3:00 in this one)
Maybe it seemed too easy. That's because it was too easy. Chances are those screens have already been replaced before by a third party who has access to professional equipment and skills. Possibly the screen has been broken more than once?
Even if you do successfully replace the glass only, it is guaranteed that you will get scratches, dust, fingerprints and adhesive marks on the Super AMOLED panel, no matter how much you clean it. That's because you won't be doing the repair with gloves on in a clean room free of dust. And that's not all - after a few weeks or months of use, dust will somehow find a way to get in between the glass and SAMOLED+ panel because you didn't use machine-cut adhesive that adheres your glass perfectly, leaving no gap for dust to get in. Your screen's touch sensitivity will drop as well, since it's not making adequate contact with the digitizer. And on top of that, the visibility will also drop.
Those problems don't show up on camera, and can easily be masked/hidden from the camera, too.
If this is only your first time breaking the screen on your S3, those tutorials won't work for you because your screen was manufactured as one whole piece by Samsung. The glass on your phone won't fall out by itself because the whole glass is optically laminated to the SAMOLED+ panel using a Liquid Optically Clear Adhesive, or LOCA for short. This kind of adhesive is a little bit sensitive to heat, but can't be completely removed because it is cured using UV light, not heat.
Optical lamination is a manufacturing process employed in more high end mobile devices that eliminate the air gap usually present between the display panel (usually either LCD or AMOLED) and the glass digitizer panel on top. Phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S3, S4, Note 2 and Note 3, iPhone 4/4S/5/5S/5C, HTC One X, One, Butterfly, Droid DNA, LG Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Sony Xperia Z, Z1, Z Ultra etc. have displays that are optically laminated. Optical lamination has a number of advantages:
Visibility is increased (especially under sunlight), since there aren't multiple layers reflecting ambient light creating optical interference
Screen clarity is increased, since optical lamination makes the display look like it is on top of the glass as opposed to being under it
It is impossible for debris like dirt and dust to get trapped in the air gap between the display and glass, because that gap is filled with LOCA
Higher contrast ratio, because there's less light reflecting off the parts of the screen that aren't emitting light
But the biggest disadvantage is the increased cost of repair. That's what you have to pay for all those aforementioned advantages. It also certainly doesn't help that the screens are getting thinner and thinner every year. The likelihood of breaking the screen increases every year too.
Here's a little photo album that I'd like to share with everyone documenting my experiences trying to remove the glass from full original Samsung screens that haven't been replaced or tampered with before. Click to enlarge.
This is a picture of the Black Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-i9300. Only the glass was broken, so I attempted to separate it from the AMOLED panel using a heat gun and some plastic pry tools. So far so good, until the AMOLED panel broke because it is optically bonded to the glass and also stuck to the frame underneath it. You can still see some LOCA on the AMOLED panel and glass.
Second is the Galaxy S4 GT-i9505. It was broken on the top half, so I started removing the glass from the bottom. Again, the LOCA wasn't very cooperative, staying quite solid throughout the removal. Eventually, the S4's AMOLED panel broke too.
It didn't look like the broken original Samsung screens wanted to be separated, so I moved on to fully intact screens.
It was a pain trying to separate this one. The adhesive was very difficult to remove, and the screen's touch digitizer circuit and polarizer started to separate from the AMOLED panel. As you can see, the glass came off intact, but the AMOLED underneath was completely destroyed.
It doesn't look like the digitizer circuit/polarizer is bonded to the AMOLED. It just gets sandwiched on top, so it is very easy to unintentionally separate it from the AMOLED instead of leaving it on and only removing the glass, especially if the glass is smashed into a thousand fragments. The glass was in one piece though, and you can see how that turned out.
This is a good representation of what the AMOLED sandwich consists of. From top to bottom:
Gorilla Glass
Touch digitizer circuit/polarizer (you can see the rest of the glass is a lot darker than the top left corner where polarizer was removed)
AMOLED panel (it looks very reflective without the polarizer on top of it)
Midframe
Some of the AMOLED panel itself came off and was still stuck to the glass!
You can see how thin and fragile the AMOLED panel is on the Samsung Galaxy S series phones. Sure, it's thin, but is it worth it? The panel has to be supported by the frame and the glass to stay intact. The panel on the S4 has a slimmed down bezel and was made thinner again, so it's a lot easier to break the AMOLED on the S4 than it is on the S3.
Ugh, don't even get me started with the iPhone 5 screen. LCDs are more robust than AMOLEDS but still...so much LOCA...so much glass...
Sure, these glass panels can be had for about $10, but is it worth all the effort to end up with a screen full of dust and fingerprints, has a warped frame and will eventually come loose and fall off, or simply just to destroy the AMOLED panel then spending extra money on a whole display assembly? Reapplying the glass leaving no gaps for dust to get in requires adhesive that is machine-cut perfectly for your frame.
Edit: Even then, you still don't have any LOCA or the necessary facilities to fill that air gap. (Thanks to @KrzychuG !)
Do you have what it takes?
Sorry for such a long post. I'm spending my time, efforts and money so you don't have to. I will occasionally add to this thread when I get more screens to experiment with.
This is a good video on how these screens can be separated and replaced with a perfect bubble-free and dust-free finish:
Most of the time its a better idea to just buy an entire replacement. I've replaced glass on nexus 7's and Galaxy Note2's a few times. it's not fun to replace glass or lamination, and it's just a whole lot easier to purchase a "parts" phone with a working display from ebay and swap out boards. Glass is one of my least favorite things to play with.
vantt1 said:
This is a good video on how these screens can be separated and replaced with a perfect bubble-free and dust-free finish:
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Awesome dude! thanks alot for the tutorial, but i dont think people have industrial size vacuums in their house, lol,
Thank you so much, this is very helpful!
Can I ask how you got the information? That would be very useful to do further research about other devices
Thanks again!
I will never, ever separate the glass and the screen. I know that it will break for sure. When I replace phone glass, I replace the entire front screen assembly which includes the glass, screen, and any frame to attach it into the phone. Even if it's just the glass that's broken and the LCD still works, still replace the entire front assembly.
Pizza_Dox said:
Awesome dude! thanks alot for the tutorial, but i dont think people have industrial size vacuums in their house, lol,
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I think the point is that unless you have all this stuff you shouldn't be even attempting to replace the glass.
i have tried this multiple times and all i can say is for anyone at home wihtout the professional equipment your not gonna get anywhere.. this isnt like and iPhone 3G/S where you take the screen off and seperate the LCD from the digitizer with a heatgun or hairdryer, ive tried all possible ways an failed every single time, either broken AMOLED or in some cases half the AMOLED comes off with the adheasive...
just save your money and buy the digitizer with the AMOLED attached..
HankChill said:
I will never, ever separate the glass and the screen. I know that it will break for sure. When I replace phone glass, I replace the entire front screen assembly which includes the glass, screen, and any frame to attach it into the phone. Even if it's just the glass that's broken and the LCD still works, still replace the entire front assembly.
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but what will you do with the old screen with the broken front glass ?
andr3wchong said:
but what will you do with the old screen with the broken front glass ?
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Chuck it
I have replaced many screens, and in my experience, you're always best buying everything as readily assembled as possible. Out of 5 attempts at separating the S3 Glass from the AMOLED panel, I have managed it twice without breaking the AMOLED, and that involves also keeping the digitser intact as well, which is between the outer glass and the AMOLED.
Back when I was doing this, you were looking at £175+ for the complete assembly, so to some people, £20 at a risk was worth it if I could manage it. Now though they're cheap enough to replace the whole lot without the worry.
There is an app on Play Store called ifixit which gives pretty detailed step-by-step instructions for most DIY teardowns and fixes for phones, tablets, consoles and even some household applicances, and they have a website too. Unfortunately, it's only experience (and expense) that make you realise that just because they make it look doable, it doesn't mean everyone can do it easily. There are many, many pitfalls that you will only discover yourself when you take on these DIY repairs, to the point where I don't do them all that often anymore, just because it's too stressful and costly if it goes wrong. My first iPhone 4 (am I allowed to say that here? ) screen replacement took me 3 hours just because of how careful I was. Now I can do it in 20 minutes, just because of experience. But even then you can be plagued with problems for no apparent reason. If you don't handle stress well, my best advice is to leave it to the experts
matmaneyre said:
I have replaced many screens, and in my experience, you're always best buying everything as readily assembled as possible. Out of 5 attempts at separating the S3 Glass from the AMOLED panel, I have managed it twice without breaking the AMOLED, and that involves also keeping the digitser intact as well, which is between the outer glass and the AMOLED.
Back when I was doing this, you were looking at £175+ for the complete assembly, so to some people, £20 at a risk was worth it if I could manage it. Now though they're cheap enough to replace the whole lot without the worry.
There is an app on Play Store called ifixit which gives pretty detailed step-by-step instructions for most DIY teardowns and fixes for phones, tablets, consoles and even some household applicances, and they have a website too. Unfortunately, it's only experience (and expense) that make you realise that just because they make it look doable, it doesn't mean everyone can do it easily. There are many, many pitfalls that you will only discover yourself when you take on these DIY repairs, to the point where I don't do them all that often anymore, just because it's too stressful and costly if it goes wrong. My first iPhone 4 (am I allowed to say that here? ) screen replacement took me 3 hours just because of how careful I was. Now I can do it in 20 minutes, just because of experience. But even then you can be plagued with problems for no apparent reason. If you don't handle stress well, my best advice is to leave it to the experts
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you musty be really good out of i think 7 possible 8, i have managed to seperate once, but still i scratched the AMOLED...
ricky310711 said:
you musty be really good out of i think 7 possible 8, i have managed to seperate once, but still i scratched the AMOLED...
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It never feels like I'm very good when I see the screen go though. Just that sick feeling :/
Saying that as well, I gave the phones back to whoever they belonged to when they were done. There's nothing to say that a couple of weeks/months down the line they faced the problems of dust under the glass, touchscreen sensitivity reduced etc. They were just happy to get them back 'looking' perfect.
Never again
matmaneyre said:
It never feels like I'm very good when I see the screen go though. Just that sick feeling :/
Saying that as well, I gave the phones back to whoever they belonged to when they were done. There's nothing to say that a couple of weeks/months down the line they faced the problems of dust under the glass, touchscreen sensitivity reduced etc. They were just happy to get them back 'looking' perfect.
Never again
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your right, quallity also plays a BIG part aswell, like you said never know what could happen, but better brands generally have better touch respones and just generally more smoothe, i knew someone who had just got the digitizer replaced by a phone repair shop, they couldnt use their phone in the wind thats how bad the replacement was..
EDIT: response**
thank you, says my sii p
you saved a sii today, i'm using my phone without screen protection so it gets scratches after long times and i said to myself that's ok, i will replace the gorilla glass. that would be open the phone replace it then close it and i will have a new sii p again but sounds it's not that easy.
Very interesting thread.
I must be lucky,as on several occasions with most phones I have owned (HTC Desire hd, HTC One X, HTC One,Nexus 5, Samsung Note 3) I have accidentally dropped my phone. I've never had a case on and have on some occasions been unlucky to have the phone land on the screen, it has happened indoors and outdoors, on concrete and tarmac, despite this I haven't ever broken the glass.
andr3wchong said:
but what will you do with the old screen with the broken front glass ?
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HankChill said:
Chuck it
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I wouldn't follow the advice to "Chuck it". We purchase these cracked glass assemblies as long as the touch screen and LCD still work fine. We can pay up to $100 PER screen, depending on the model. PM us for prices for bulk orders.
I very recently bought myself an used Galaxy S3 and to my great disappointment the glass has no scratches because it has been replaced. Now I got ****ty touchscreen response and already dust is gathering between the digitizer and the glass. I might try to sell it off and buy myself another one, this time checking very carefully that everything is in perfect working condition!
So much for thinking I had found a bargain for this fantastic phone (which, despite the problems, is a nice upgrade from my Galaxy Ace!)
MobileEMT said:
I wouldn't follow the advice to "Chuck it". We purchase these cracked glass assemblies as long as the touch screen and LCD still work fine. We can pay up to $100 PER screen, depending on the model. PM us for prices for bulk orders.
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Really? I have a crapload
ricky310711 said:
Really? I have a crapload
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Good to hear! We'll PM you. Feel free to contact us if you would like to sell or refurbish them.
Unfortunately my G5 Plus had a little accident this weekend and now the front glass is cracked. As far as I can tell the phone is still fully functional and screen touch responsiveness seems good despite the cracks.
I see replacement LCD screen plus digitizer units available on ebay and other sources online, I was wondering if anyone had any good recommendations and any replacement tips after having gone through the process themselves. Thanks.
I would suggest do it from an authorised service centre even if you have to pay twice the price. I've had experience where I tried to search a replacement for cheap (which it was) and was disappointed with the quality, the screen wasn't as sturdy as the original one and cracked within a week. So it makes sense of your phone is new and. Want to make it work for atleast a year more.
Apply some pieces of single side tape on the crack screen, to prevent shatter glass injury, and heat up the new screen for a while after you finish the replacement, that could help to make the screen adhere to the frame tightly. I will recommend witrigs, they sell original screen and also adhesive and tools.
Good luck.
These are very hard for the average person to do themselves. Everything is glued together, and just a hair dryer or heat gun doesn't do it, without great care. I'm 50/50 on droid turbos, and after searching on line, these are slightly harder to do than that series.