Eeeer...how bad is this?

ego_black

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Mar 16, 2013
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Hello. Alright, so, this enitre ordeal has been a bit of a nightmare for me and I need a bit of advice, please. :p This is going to be a bit of a long post so bear with me.

Being a college student I'd been looking at the Galaxy Note 10.1 for some time. So, I sold my Glaxy Note(phone). It sold for about what I expected but I was juuuuust about $100 short of affording a used Galaxy Note 10.1. I had found one with a shattered screen on ebay, guaranteed to have everything working. Even though the tablet seemed easy enough to fix, I was a bit leery about putting out my tablet budget on a broken one, as I was a bit unsure about opening it up and fooling around with it and I really didn't have the time. I mentioned it in passing to a friend one day and he told me his older brother was great with electronics and had fixed several before. All I had to do was get the tablet and a replacement screen and he'd fix it for me, free of charge. I trusted my friend and I'd hung out with his brother a few times and he seemed pretty competent to me. After averaging it out, I'd be able to get the tablet, a replacement screen and a keyboard case and come in under budget. So, I went for it. The tablet came in and worked perfectly. When the screen came in I sent them off with my friend. A week passes and my friend finally brings the tablet back.

The first thing I notice is that the screen is uneven in the frame. The bottom corners and some of the edges are raised slightly above it. The top wasn't even stuck to the frame and I could pull it back a bit. At this point my friend was uncomfortable and when I asked him what happened he told me that his brother had not only broken a few things inside but he hadn't known the screen had come with it's own adhesive already attached! He'd tried to glue the thing with hot glue and that's why it was raised slightly. Well, I was obviously kinda ticked but I'd given the guy permission to fiddle around inside of it. I figured I could chalk it up to a learning experience. Everything still worked fine, it functioned like it was supposed to and nothing acted weird. Still, there were a few specks of debris under the screen and the top part was so loose and separated from the frame so much that I was afraid of dirt and dust finding its way under the glass. So, I opened it myself.

My friend had told me he had broken one of the clips on the left speaker but that it still functioned and was held down on top. True enough, it is a touch loose on the bottom but it's nothing I would worry about. It doesn't move when jostled, so that was fine. The thing I'm worried about though, is he had evidently broken a chunk from the black plastic cover of one of the ribbon cables. It can still be clipped and there are still two sides protecting it. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the function of the s-pen and it seemed to work just fine. I've just....never had this problem before. :p I have no idea how you would even break it unless your hand slipped or something. I replaced laptop/netbook components that used them and I've never ran into this. I've always figured they were there to protect the connectors on the cable from shorts or static or something. I've never really thought about it. So, it doesn't seem to be a problem now but could it potentially be? I do have a picture:

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At this point just looking at the thing pisses me off and I'd thought of just trying to resale it on ebay and try and get some of my money back but I dunno. Slightly worried about saving up to afford a another used one, so I may just end up buying another replacement screen. :p
 

srkmagnus

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May 23, 2010
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Unfortunate situation. If you decide to sell it be sure to carefully, and completely, inform of the issues with it to prevent future problems on your end if you decide to sell it. My recommenation, if it really bothers you and sticking it in a case won't hide any of the problems then selling it and getting a new(used) one is the way to go. I know the feeling of having something that works and know problems exists.

If you decide to go the new screen route you might want to search youtube for how-to videos and see if its something you can tackle yourself.