Ever fix your own phone (or PC, eBook reader, etc.)?

[Maxine Shaw]

Curious b/c I fixed my Galaxy 3 (cracked screen) back in the day and my Galaxy 6 today (busted USB port). Damn, my hands were shaking like a mug w/that S6! You can't remove the back w/o a heat gun, and I swear I had to tear down every fukking thing. Took me hours, but Sprint wanted $75 for diagnostics (hello, the USB port is busted!) plus money for parts and labor. I spent $18 on the heat gun and $11 on the part I needed.

To any brehs/brehettes who have physical damage to their phone, consider fixing it yourself. YouTube has tons of tutorials out there nowadays, and most of the time, you haven't damaged it nearly as bad as you thought. What so many people say is "glass" (as in "I broke the glass on my screen") is really just hard plastic with some adhesive on it that can be easily swapped out.

Any stories, good or bad? Back before eBay became what it is today, I used to eat sooooooo good buying up "broken" PCs and game systems, repairing them and selling them for a profit.

 

[TransJenner]

I fixed a water damaged phone if that counts


Placed it in my cup holder and had a open drink


Stuck it in a bag of rice for 2 days and it was good as new

 

[R=G]

The tutorials are there but I wouldnt feel like doing it. My note 4 screen is cracked but works fine. Just an at home phone anyway.

 

[Maxine Shaw]

The tutorials are there but I wouldnt feel like doing it. My note 4 screen is cracked but works fine. Just an at home phone anyway.

If you ever get tired of it, a heat gun (or a hair dryer, which I do NOT recommend) and a replacement screen is all you would need. Most replacement screens come w/the proper tools to fix them. For a Note 4, you're looking at about $12.

I was so surprised to see how much of phone repair is just melting that damned adhesive. I guess it's like how you learn more about cars by working on them. Fixing my S3 is the reason why I could fix my S6. Next, I'm going to fix the USB port on my S3 (my backup phone). From what I see, it requires a soldering iron. A soldering iron to replace a $3 piece of metal. Sheesh.

 

[R=G]

If you ever get tired of it, a heat gun (or a hair dryer, which I do NOT recommend) and a replacement screen is all you would need. Most replacement screens come w/the proper tools to fix them. For a Note 4, you're looking at about $12.

I was so surprised to see how much of phone repair is just melting that damned adhesive. I guess it's like how you learn more about cars by working on them. Fixing my S3 is the reason why I could fix my S6. Next, I'm going to fix the USB port on my S3 (my backup phone). From what I see, it requires a soldering iron. A soldering iron to replace a $3 piece of metal. Sheesh.

Yeah..on the youtube vids to fix them..they give links to the replacement screen package and mentioned that heat gun..and that little thing to slowly lift it once the adhesive is loose enough. I haven' seen that tutorial in like a year. They said like 200 to fix that screen..I bust out laughing

 

[Killigraphy]

Fixed and upgrade my own PC....not really that hard to the Pyramid building puzzle I thought it was, as a child.

 

[bnew]

If you ever get tired of it, a heat gun (or a hair dryer, which I do NOT recommend) and a replacement screen is all you would need. Most replacement screens come w/the proper tools to fix them. For a Note 4, you're looking at about $12.

I was so surprised to see how much of phone repair is just melting that damned adhesive. I guess it's like how you learn more about cars by working on them. Fixing my S3 is the reason why I could fix my S6. Next, I'm going to fix the USB port on my S3 (my backup phone). From what I see, it requires a soldering iron. A soldering iron to replace a $3 piece of metal. Sheesh.

You're still going to need a microscope to see the pins you're trying to solder.

 

[Renkz]

Replacing the keyboard and hdds in laptops, its frustrating that in some laptops you have to uscrew everything to get to the keyboard

 

[Address_Unknown]

Did lots of repairs on both my Blackberry Curve and Samsung Galaxy 4 when they started fukking up to prolong they life and what's not.

The Blackberry Curve was a decent phone and I liked the media buttons (Play/Pause, Skip and back) being on top of the unit which made switching and pausing tracks a breeze while driving but they'd get brittle and dry rotted every few months and I got tired of paying a dude I know damn near 40 just to switch the housing so I YouTube'd up and did it myself to favorable results.

When I upgraded and got a Samsung S4 at the time I got a faulty charger port which made charging the phone a pain since it would disconnect and reconnect rapidly and never charge fully. YouTube'd it, took a deep breath and managed to fix it by swapping out the charger port since it's all just shyt connected the motherboard you can pull off. Changed alot of shyt on that too from the flash bulb to the speakers it was so simple.

Fixing shyt or attempting to ain't that hard once you get over the initial fear of fukking up your product; especially if you live in an area where you can just run out and buy a new one, perfect example being when I tried to fix the power switch on my fat Ps2 which was connected by a thin ribbon cable on the top portion of the case.

Opened it up while watching a video and the cover slid off the bed and yanked clean out and just left me like "You know, having to rapidly mash the eject button to get the shots to work for like 10 minutes really wasn't that bad, now we ain't got shyt to play 'cause you wanna get your Double D on and be extra."

 

[Tunez]

Replacing the keyboard and hdds in laptops, its frustrating that in some laptops you have to uscrew everything to get to the keyboard

I know your pain, I'm lazy as fukk too

 

[Big Brown Areola]

They are making it harder for the average joe to fix their own phones/electronics.

 

[R=G]

Did lots of repairs on both my Blackberry Curve and Samsung Galaxy 4 when they started fukking up to prolong they life and what's not.

The Blackberry Curve was a decent phone and I liked the media buttons (Play/Pause, Skip and back) being on top of the unit which made switching and pausing tracks a breeze while driving but they'd get brittle and dry rotted every few months and I got tired of paying a dude I know damn near 40 just to switch the housing so I YouTube'd up and did it myself to favorable results.

When I upgraded and got a Samsung S4 at the time I got a faulty charger port which made charging the phone a pain since it would disconnect and reconnect rapidly and never charge fully. YouTube'd it, took a deep breath and managed to fix it by swapping out the charger port since it's all just shyt connected the motherboard you can pull off. Changed alot of shyt on that too from the flash bulb to the speakers it was so simple.

Fixing shyt or attempting to ain't that hard once you get over the initial fear of fukking up your product; especially if you live in an area where you can just run out and buy a new one, perfect example being when I tried to fix the power switch on my fat Ps2 which was connected by a thin ribbon cable on the top portion of the case.

Opened it up while watching a video and the cover slid off the bed and yanked clean out and just left me like "You know, having to rapidly mash the eject button to get the shots to work for like 10 minutes really wasn't that bad, now we ain't got shyt to play 'cause you wanna get your Double D on and be extra."

I got a cracked screen S4 too that I use for music sometimes. They had a good screen for that. What? 2013 maybe when it came out. I got the Note 4 and 5 after that one.

 

[Maxine Shaw]

Replacing the keyboard and hdds in laptops, its frustrating that in some laptops you have to uscrew everything to get to the keyboard

Mine is like that. That's why I've got a wonky space bar to this day. I just don't feel like taking the whole damn thing apart, especially since the palm rest is about to break.

 

[Address_Unknown]

I got a cracked screen S4 too that I use for music sometimes. They had a good screen for that. What? 2013 maybe when it came out. I got the Note 4 and 5 after that one.

The last two phones I had to stop using because they couldn't function (Galaxy S4 and recently my Galaxy S5 after like 4,5 years of dedicated service) I considered taking apart and learning how to replace the parts, like most noticeably the screen which costs a good chunk of money here to see if I could do that as a side hustle if not just be Competent to do the shyts myself if I ever acquire a busted screen....but the tech is changing and we all on curved screens now and that looks like a whole 'nother beast.

But that's how this shyt works and I ride a phone until the wheels fall off so by the time I run a curved screen phone in the ground we'd prolly be using retina display or some shyt.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

I almost never pay for any repairs on electronic devices. I'm an electronic technician by trade, so I'd be cheating myself to pay someone else to do it.

shyts not that hard if you can learn it, do it. You'll save so much money in the long run.

My two biggest wins were my 60 in LG led TV and my fridge.

The LG TV stopped working and I got an estimate for repair, they wanted $200 just to look at the thing. I was like fukk that and took a look at it myself. There was a blown capacitor on one of the boards. shyt literally costed 50 cent from RadioShack. TV worked like new, until a couple months later my son threw a remote through the screen

So I turned a $500+ repair into a 50 cent repair

With my fridge this just happened in the last month. shyt went bad, stopped cooling and the front console stopped working. I have a warranty through sears. They came out and determined they would swap out two control boards. One of them was shipped to my house the other was on backorder. Through a bunch of calling back and forth I got them to pay for a full replacement fridge. I put the control board they had sent to my house in myself, and now the fridge works fine and I have $3000 Sears/Kmart cash to spend on whatever I want. My kids won this Christmas