Well, at least attempting to. Unfortunately it didn’t end very well. A friend of mine broke the glass screen of their Samsung Galaxy Note 9. They have a warranty on it, but they already broke the screen once, and now they would have to pay several hundred dollars to have this one fixed again.
Remember: Glass screen protectors are your friend! A case doesn’t protect the screen! Always buy a glass screen protector!
They bought a replacement glass kit for around $30 and hoped to do the work themselves and save a lot of money. Once they started watching how to videos, though, they realized that they were in over their heads. So, they came to me…..
Of course, my first suggestion was that they seek a professional. Turns out the only professional in our town wanted $300 to do the work. Unfortunately for my friend, that was still too much. So, they asked me to give it a try first.
I told them this wouldn’t work. I don’t have the right equipment. I don’t have a warranty. I could ruin the screen. But, they were persistent, so I gave it a go.
The key is to get the glass hot, but not hot enough to melt the screen. So I used a heat gun and a thermometer to adjust it to 90 degrees Celsius. Once that was set I started heating the glass.
Then, using a toothbrush, I started applying isopropyl alcohol to the shattered portion of the screen. This breaks down the glue. As carefully as I could I used plastic screwdriver type tools to lift off the broken chunks of glass.
All was going really well for the first 30 minutes. I had lifted off the glass in about the shape and size of a quarter, and was moving right along. And then… while lifting a longer piece of glass, it levered against the screen, and poked the digitizer, causing a huge green line and purple line right down the middle of the display!
I was really bummed! Now the screen and the glass were ruined, and, despite the warnings I gave my friend beforehand, I’m pretty sure that they lost all confidence in my phone skills. They ended up turning it in for repair.
So, the moral of the story is: buy a good glass screen protector, and don’t try to fix broken glass without the right tools.
Linux – keep it simple.
Thank you for documenting your procedure! Also thank you for being willing to share even when the overall task failed.
You bet! I like writing about failures, because they usually help us hone our craft. They say the only real failure is not learning from one…. Besides, if I only wrote about success, there wouldn’t be much content on the blog! 😀