Fix it, don't throw it away!

問題

I dropped my iPhone and started getting white lines on half the scree, though the screen was not broken. After looking it up, I had tried to re-connect the screen connectors, but it did not fix the problem. We had several good reasons for trying the repair:

(1) The phone was fairly new and we did not want to throw $599 in the garbage

(2) There's too much e-waste as it is

(3) It was a learning experience for our kids, especially for our 10yr old girl who did half of the disassembly. Just seeing inside the phone was a great experience for the kids

(4) We wanted to support iFixit, as we too are associated with Cal Poly SLO and we believe in their mission.

修理

The guide and overview video on iFixit were excellent. The only challenging part was that the Philips#000 screwdriver tip provided with the iFixit kit was not quite "sharp" enough. Luckily we happened to have another tip that was better (please see pic above. The silver colored tip is the one from iFixit).

アドバイス

Be patient, be confident, and, like the iFixit box says, remember that "you got this!" However, I would recommend spending a bit more on a good Philips #000 driver. Perhaps iFix it can offer one or two "premium" toolkits?

In our case, one successful repair lead to another. Our first repair was to replace a keyboard on a Blackberry!

So do get yourself a good set of tools. You won't regret it.