As mentioned in a previous blog entry, a while ago my G1 fell under the wheels of a lorry on The Old Kent Road. My first reaction was shock at the loss of my faithful Android powered device. My second reaction was annoyance at the realisation that I had only just started a new 18 month contract. So I resigned myself to a long wait for a replacement. I did look into purchasing a new LCD but at the time replacement screens were going for around £90.
Half a year later I decided to look into the possibility of replacing the screen again. I searched on the Internet and found a replacement LCD on Ebay from these guys for only £35 pounds. What’s more, it also came with free tools to fit it. The good news didn’t stop there. Further research revealed a number of tutorials detailing how to replace the LCD. I used this video tutorial. Handily I also found the HTC service manual.
Armed with the tools, the video tutorial and the manual I started to take the beast apart. I won’t go into how to replace the screen. The steps are detailed well enough in the resources mentioned above. What I will say is to read the relevant sections of the manual and look at the video before you start just to get a feel of the phone internals.
It actually took me three attempts to get the phone back to life. After the first attempt I was left with 3 screws and a small piece of rubber. After attempt number two all the screws were accounted for but the camera didn’t work and the phone kept inexplicably rebooting.
The third attempt was more successful. I found that the cable connecting the camera to the motherboard had come adrift. Upon reassembly the camera worked and no more crashes.
After a day I noticed that the speaker had stopped working. I put up with it for a while then decided to open her up again. This time I found that the two soldered connector springs that mate with the speaker(which is attached to the back cover) had come off. Not having a soldering iron I cut very small pieces of gaffer tape and taped the connectors down. The intention being that once the back cover was screwed into place, the springs would stay in place by pressure. This worked nicely and a week later the phone is as good as new.