iPhone Screen Repair Attempt

You might have seen my Facebook post where I proclaimed that I was about to see how hard it could be to repair my own cracked iPhone 4S screen.

Hahahhahahahaha

Long story short, I now have an iPhone 5!!!! LOL!!!!

Instead of shelling out $100 to one of the authorized service places, I decided to order the kit from eBay for $30 and do it myself.

It came in the mail in about 3 days and I immediately ripped it open and got to work!

As soon as I got the 2 bottom screws out, I realized I was going to need some instructions.

Good ol YouTube to the rescue....

I followed along just enough to get to where I got the back plate off and then continued my dissection!

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Everything was going fine until it was time to remove the battery. 

They glue the battery down so you have to pry it off. Good thing I have muscles right? lol

*WARNING - This is where I screwed up! I wasn't careful enough with the delicate connection to the motherboard and broke the soldering off completely!

If it wasn't for this right here, I would have successfully fixed the screen and saved myself ~$70.....

OUCH!

So I finished replacing the screen anyway and despite losing a few screws, (who needs all of them ?? :) ) I put it back together.

First stop was a nearby store called LifeLine to see if they could fix it:

They told me I was out of luck and I basically destroyed my phone and nobody could fix that because it required micro soldering. He told me I could probably pay apple $200 for an out of warranty repair. Okay! that sucks....next stop Apple Store!

I got there and there was a huge line going outside for people waiting to buy the iPhone 5. 

Crazy People!!! :)

I walked in and asked one of the "genius'" what my options were. I was totally honest with him and told him a opened it up and tried to fix it myself. He told me I basically created a $600 paperweight.

I did some google searches on repairing the broken part myself. I have a recording engineering background where we took some soldering classes so this doesn't scare me....One of the forums pointed to this place....

So the moral the story is 

DO NOT REPAIR A BROKEN SCREEN YOURSELF!

and BE WARY OF CRAIGSLIST FIXERS!

I came across several stories of people taking their screens in to unauthorized service centers and having them doing the exact same thing I did during the repair and then telling them sorry, we don't cover this!

I would flip out!

Do yourself a favor and pay the $100 to a place like the LifeLine Store I went to afterwards or just bring it to Apple.

Options:

• Sell to a store that buys broken iPhones (iPhone antidote was the highest paying I could find)
• Sell on Ebay AS IS and hope I can get more than $125
• Pay $60 + $20 replacement battery cost to get it functioning again and then sell for ~$300-$400.
• Learn to micro solder, order the parts and fix it myself and then sell.

I'm leaning toward option 3. 

What do you think???

UPDATE-Nov 21st:

shipped out yesterday to iBroke......Realized I was going to have to pay for a battery replacement as well since I tore the cord as well...