[LazyLightning]

Hey all - I just cracked the front glass on my s7. Of course it's about two weeks before I was most likely going to trade it in for credit towards the S9. I'm now looking at a credit of $100 instead of $300.

I was wondering if anyone has advice on replacing the front glass. There's no lcd damage.

From what I've seen online it looks like you can fairly easily remove the glass by freezing it off with dry ice. Then remove the glue from the lcd panel with acetone (not as easy) and then put a new glass on securing it with a precut 3m piece of tape. Looks like I can buy the $15 - $20 of parts online.

Just wondering if anyone has advice or has tried this? I think if I don't repair it then I might just keep it as a secondary device for music or whatever. It looks like a pro fix is pretty expensive

Thanks

[Rukbat]

It always looks easy on YouTube - even the videos that say "this is the first time I ever did this" - but most of those people are really cellphone repair people, and have done it dozens of times already (and destroyed a few phones the first few times, which is why repair shops keep unfixable phones - for new people to destroy while they're learning). How do I know that some of the videos are fake? I recognized one person claiming to be doing it the first time - and he'd been repairing phones for about 4 years when he made the video.

But I never heard of chilling the glue - that does seem to be a method you can use successfully the first time. The normal problem is overheating the screen when you use a heat gun to remove the glass, but dry ice can't get colder than -78.5° C, and if that removes the glass ... why didn't someone figure that out when I still owned my stores?

It can't hurt - try removing the glass. (Use thick gloves - not only because the dry ice can kill skin, but because some tiny shards of that cracked glass can do a lot of damage to your fingers.) If it comes off clean, buy the replacement and you're good to go. If the dry ice doesn't do anything you've wasted what - a dollar? It may take time - freeze one shard, remove it, freeze the next piece, remove it. Etc. But knowing how to replace the glass on a cellphone screen is a valuable talent, so do it just for the knowledge (and who knows - you might make good money by doing it for people in your town). If you get $200 more on the trade-in for half an hour of work - I'll take that any 40 hours a week.