In addition to expensive and precious objects, modern smartphones are also very delicate. Compared to the legendary phones of the past (such as forgetting the immortal Nokia 3310), the screen of a new generation iPhone or Samsung Galaxy can crack or show cracks even after a small bump. When this happens, we usually give up doing the repair because now we already know that sending it to service means being without the phone for at least a month and that, if the warranty does not cover accidental damage, the price of repairs could be very high. Although most cell phones are not designed to be fixed, many problems can be solved economically with the right tools and a detailed guide.
Clearly opening a smartphone such as the iPhone or Samsung will almost certainly invalidate the warranty and probably also the extended warranty. Repairing a smartphone is not a simple thing, but those who have good manual skills with screwdrivers and electronic components should not have difficulty performing these operations to fix it from home.
Repair tools and kits
Whatever the phone you are trying to take apart, you need some tools to keep close at hand:
- A kit of screwdrivers, especially small ones. Screwdrivers for special screws such as those of the iPhone we can find them in convenient kits, such as the one available here -> Mini Screwdrivers, Precision Screwdriver Set Screwdriver Kit 25 in 1 (8 €).
- Plastic tools to pull up the broken screen, using a snap or sucker mechanism. These kits can also be purchased online, such as the one available here -> LCD opening pliers, LCD screen opening pliers (€ 12).
- The spare part to be replaced (for example the screen or the internal battery); spare parts can usually be found on Amazon, on Ebay or even in small shops that also sell used cell phones.
How to find the guide to repair the phone
Due to the wide variety of models, it will be essential to find a specific guide to repair our specific smartphone model; luckily on the Internet there is no shortage of sites for doing DIY repairs. In addition to the video guides to look for on Youtube, the main site to watch, the absolute protagonist of this article is iFixit, the best resource on the Internet where you can find step-by-step instructions to disassemble and repair the most popular smartphones .
The site is in English but since for each guide there are very clear photos and images, it becomes easy to consult even if you don't know the language.
In particular we have guides to repair the following modern smartphones:
- iPhone XS Max
- iPhone XS
- iPhone XR
- iPhone X
- Samsung Galaxy S10
- Samsung Galaxy S10 +
- Samsung Galaxy S10e
Each smartphone and mobile phone model is also given a repairability score (from 0 to 10), which indicates the ease of opening it and changing a piece inside.
You can also see the repairability ranking of smartphones to find that the easiest smartphone to repair is the Google Pixel 3a XL (at least among the most recent smartphones), while all the modern Samsung that we have seen in the previous list are quite difficult to repair (vote 3).
Types of repair
Not all hardware damage to a phone can be repaired; the most common are listed below.Screen
The broken screen, a classic damage, fortunately often repairable.Fixing a cracked or broken screen can be quite simple and inexpensive depending on how the smartphone is built.
The replacement cost goes up a lot if on the touchscreen smartphone there is a single screen and there is no protective glass above the digitized one.
In cases where the display is not fused to the glass, you can replace this broken glass without difficulty, otherwise you will also need to intervene on the cable connecting the screen to the motherboard and things get complicated.
Also from iFixit we can obtain the guides to repair the screen for all the smartphones included in the previous list, in particular on the latest generation iPhones (iPhone XS Max, iPhone XS, iPhone Xr and iPhone X).
READ ALSO: Android with broken screen, how to use it or recover data
Upper speaker and sensors
Among the components that we can replace we also find the upper speaker and the sensors, which can easily be damaged following a fall. Once the device is open, replacing the upper speaker and the sensors is relatively simple, since it is usually a single piece connected with a plug directly to the logic board.Also for this repair there are guides for various smartphone models such as iPhone XS Max, iPhone XS, iPhone Xr and iPhone X.
Battery
One of the components that is often replaced is certainly the battery, which can lose most of its capacity once the two years of use have passed. Although all modern smartphones have an internal battery, it is connected to the logic board via connectors and, by turning on the internal components, it can be easily replaced. Also in this case the phones on which it is easier to replace the battery are the iPhone, as can be seen from the guides for iPhone XS Max, iPhone XS, iPhone Xr and iPhone X.Camera
We will rarely have damage to the rear or front camera; but if it stops working, the flash does not work or we see lines or cracks appear, the replacement is quite simple, especially on iPhones, as indicated in the guides for iPhone XS Max, iPhone XS, iPhone Xr and iPhone X (lens rear and front chamber).Conclusions
Repairing a modern phone is not a simple task: it is no coincidence that there are companies and repair specialists, who earn by repairing the most delicate components of our smartphones every day. If we are enough geeks and want to learn something, there are thousands of video guides and text guides on the Web, which we can follow in order to carry out home repairs.If our smartphone has fallen into the water and we don't know how to fix it, we invite you to read our guide on How to save a wet or fallen mobile phone .
