How do I replace the screen on a Nexus 7?

[AC Question]

How to replace screen on nexus 7

My screen is cracked. What will it cost me to have it repaired

 

[Rukbat]

Re: How to replace screen on nexus 7

That depends. If only the glass is cracked, and you have a good repair shop locally that will replace just the glass, not that much. If not, the entire screen will have to be replaced.

To get an estimate (it can vary by so much - depending on where you are - that giving you the minumum and maximum numbers would be like the price of a Fiat to a Bugatti - meaningless), bring it in to a few shops, including your carrier's repair facility. (If any of them seem abnormally low, it's for one of two reasons - the place is a rip-off or they're offering you the screen from a phone that was too damaged to pay to repair, but the screen was undamaged, which is okay if they're honest about it. Although the labor is going to be the majority of the price, so a used screen, while it will save you some money, won't cut the bill in half.)

(When I sold my last cellphone store, Nokia was the big seller, and I had a few hundred Nokia screens that went with the store. All of them perfectly good, from phones that had been stepped on, driven over and other things that made the phones useless without damaging the screens. We also had loads of cases from phones that died due to water damage and other things that don't affect the case. Good repair shops keep usable parts.)

One thing I would NOT recommend is trying to replace it yourself. There are many Youtube videos showing how "easy" it is to replace screens. It is - after you've done it a dozen times. But those first few times should be under the supervision of someone who's done it before. Once you break something while replacing the screen, most repair shops won't touch the phone - checking it to make sure they find everything you broke - so you can't come back later and claim that they broke something - is going to cost more than the phone is worth. (And they may still miss something and end up having to fix it for free, making the whole deal a loss for them.) It's cheaper to pay $200 to have a screen replaced than to buy a $70 screen and do it yourself.