Oops I did it again: How to Fix Your Cracked Cell Phone Screen

I have a problem. I'll admit it. I'm a clutz. I've broken three four iPhone screens and one Galaxy screen. *sigh* Wow does that look bad in writing.

The first time it happened I almost broke down and bawled like a baby. I thought I was going to have to buy a whole new phone! But my trusty Facebook friends reassured me there were "places" that fixed cracked cell phone screens. For around $100 my phone would be good as new again. 

What?! $100! That seemed kinda pricey to me.

Since Cory is a the biggest DIYer I know and he will try to do almost anything himself first, from plumbing, to electrical, to cars, and only if the task becomes too hard to handle (or if it blows up in his face) will he call the pros (in my case I always call on Cory). 

So naturally Cory would try to fix my broken iPhone screen and save me around $80-$90. 

Here she is in all her glory. I felt like I was going to cut my ear/fingertip off every time I used my phone. Although I must say the touchscreen still worked perfect!

This isn't going to be one of my typical tutorials, it's just good old fashioned advice with a whole bunch of pictures of the process. Here is our secret weapon to success: the ever informative Internet. Anyone can learn pretty much anything (except maybe brain surgery) from the Internet.  If I wrote my own tutorial on how to fix a cracked iPhone screen, it would pale in comparison to all the great ones out there on the good ol' internet.

YouTube and Google were Cory's teachers for this, among many a project. I recommend watching as many YouTube videos as you can stand about fixing your particular phone and googling any other problems that arise while you're repairing it. The first YouTube video I watched was my favorite because it featured a guy who fixed a broken iPhone 5c screen in less than five minutes.

Yes, less than five minutes to fix my phone. Obviously these companies are making bookoo bucks off of people who think they can't fix their own phone. To prove my point even more, I bought a screen with a digitizer and tools off eBay for less than $20. I spent less than $10 for my old iPhone 4 screen that Cory fixed for me long ago. Which by the way was wayyy harder to fix than the 5 since you have to take the entire phone apart from the back all the way to the front.

So that means these companies, who probably buy screens in bulk for maybe $15 a piece or less, and then fix a phone in 5 minutes, are making crazy amounts of money for hardly any time or effort.

So needless to say Cory would love to get into this lucrative business so if your cell phone screen is broken, you can email me and we'll set it all up. Just kidding!! Ha ha...not really, Ok, yes I am kidding.

Here's some pictures of Cory fixing my iPhone. You basically take some screws out, which are the tiniest screws in the world by the way, and then pop the screen off, then take more screws out, then remove the screen and digitizer, possibly more things that I'm forgetting like the camera, then you put the new screen on, test it, and then viola fixed phone! Except it didn't work out that way this time.

Don't mind Cory's "man hands". He's such a hard worker, that man o' mine.

When Cory went to "push" the new screen back into the frame the corner cracked. Bummer. But the screen was still a million percent better than before!!

 I used my phone like normal not really caring about the few little cracks, knowing I'd buy another screen someday to replace this one. But then my phone started acting crazy, like a ghost was controlling it, and I couldn't do anything to stop it except lock my phone. It wasn't all the time but it was really annoying when it happened. I'm pretty sure the "ghost" changed a bunch of notes into gibberish that I had in Evernote about Jackson's first steps...

So needless to say I got back on eBay and bought another screen. This time I bought a pink one. Hey, why not. I like pink and it makes my phone more personalized and worth more money if I ever decide to sell it. Who am I kidding, I'll probably break that sucker into a million pieces before I get a chance to sell it. I'm honest, what can I say.

Apparently my phone's ghost was friendly, I call him Casper, and stopped controlling my phone so much. So I went on with my busy life using my phone like always. Until one day I bent over to look at some hot wheels and my phone slipped from my butter fingers and completely busted the corner out. A bunch of pretty lines appeared on the screen. Darn, I didn't get so lucky this time and only the left side of my phone worked, and poorly at that. Also Casper was back with a vengeance.

I guess you never realize how much you need your phone until you can't use it. I could barely make phone calls, I couldn't text and I couldn't check my voicemail. My phone needed to be fixed NOW! So I (not so) patiently waited for Cory to have some spare time. I even kicked around fixing it myself. But I'm just not that confident in my techy skills and I knew Cory could do it so I waited.

My bestie Mel was kind enough to loan me her old Galaxy phone to use until my iPhone was repaired. As I was saying goodbye she jokingly called out, "Don't break my phone!" Not even two seconds later as her garage door closed behind me, Jackson wriggling in my arms, accidentally kicked the phone out of my hands and it landed face down on the driveway. Yep. Just my luck. The whole screen was a spiderweb of cracks.

Thank goodness her phone still worked perfect and it got me by until my phone was fixed. I now know I'm an iPhone lifer after using the android system for a week. It's just not for me, no offense to any android lovers.

Cory fixed my phone a few days later. Here's a picture of him working on it. You can see how teeny tiny the screws are. He used shot glasses to store them in so they wouldn't get lost.

Here's a pic of my brand spankin new pink phone!! I put some tempered glass on the new screen and a pink case and called it a day. A bright shiny day. I can't tell you how happy I am to have my phone back. In one piece. Now if I could just stop dropping it!! In the words of my co worker Chris, "You could encase your phone in cement and you'd still find a way to break it." I hope that isn't true this time...

Now that my phone is fixed Cory is going to try his hand at fixing Melissa's Galaxy. If he masters that he can fix his own cracked Galaxy(see picture above of him fixing my phone). See, I'm not the only one. I often wonder how many people out there have broken cell phone screens...

In my honest opinion I think anyone who is technically savvy can probably fix their broken cell phone screen and save lots of $$$. Cory has for me, three times now. So he's saved me around $300!! He's either an amateur techy genius or it's just not the most difficult task to fix a cracked iPhone screen with a video tutorial. I'm going with both on that one folks. I'm too chicken to try it myself but if it can be done in less than 5 minutes by a youTuber then a novice can do it too, it just might take them three hours.

-Sherri