Month old iPhone SE dropped and shattered glass. Apple say £106 to replace. Seen £10 glass on eBay but looks fiddly to change on YouTube. Any alternatives or Indy places at a better price? Cheers

the 10 quid glass, will be much much fidlier than buying a screen which will cost much more than a tenner.

swapping out a screen is easy, I’ve done it on a few phones, not iphone mind, but i doubt it’s much different. I wouldn’t even know how to replace just the glass.

If you have a search on Amazon there will be someone selling a screen assembly. Price about £70 but it will be a unplug and then plug in replacement. Just the screen will involve transferring the home button and various other bits from old to new. Have a care that the print reader may require a fix to make it work properly.

I’d be getting in touch with Wysiwyg off here and finding out if he can fix it. Cheaper and quicker than most shops, and saves you some hours of swearing…

There was a thing about iphones with finger print tech bricking if the sensor was swapped. Forget if the SE has that or not?

Yeah if you have a finger print iPhone you really should try to retain the original home button. Most places will disable it somehow, but yes it’s been known to brick phones.

Personally, I’d bite the bullet and let Apple do it. They’re surprisingly not much more than the back-street places and it maintains the warranty. I’m in my second aftermarket screen on my 6. The genuine one failed and because I’m impatient I had it repaired locally by a really good guy who we use a lot in work, that screen was okay but occasionally came loose, I dropped it and it basically self-destructed, no way it was a strong as a genuine one – the latest screen needs to be on a much brighter setting to be usable and the battery lasts as short as 4 hours now. I can’t wait to be rid of it.

I happily do this myself (with my own phones), but wouldn’t bother with an iPhone (if I ever get one – i may try one out sometime) due to the booby traps apple build in.

I’d get apple to fix it.

Rob Hilton – Member
I happily do this myself (with my own phones), but wouldn’t bother with an iPhone (if I ever get one – i may try one out sometime) due to the booby traps apple build in.

Which are?
If you can be bothered to actually do a search on here for the subject, then you’ll see that replacing iPhone screens is, generally speaking, fairly straightforward, as wysiwyg will attest to.
However, once you start having sophisticated security tech being introduced to the occasion, as in Apple’s fingerprint sensor, then you clearly have a risk that replacing the screen may, possibly, compromise the security.
This comes under the law of unintended consequences, not, I believe, booby traps, otherwise all previous models would cause problems, which they don’t.

Yes it’s the fingerprint later version so now I’m worried about a potential cost cutting method cocking it up comletely. Looks like it’s young enough to still register for Applecare, still costs mind but just a bit less.

I’ve repaired many Iplops and other phones in the past but no longer bother since the Iphone 5 era.

Unless you have the tools, dexterity and patience of a saint I personally wouldn’t bother.

£100 is expensive yes, but in the grand scheme of things for something you use every day and rely on it isn’t too bad.

If you (or somebody you know) can fix it to factory condition then ok, but in general I got to find that they don’t go back exactly how intended or are just too damn fiddly to do at home properly.

I thought they lifted the restriction on the home button but I’d stil pay as you’ll bet a quality screen and in warranty.

Apple did my iPhone after I dropped it. 4 hour turnaround and £99 all in.

They are VERY explicit about any 3rd-party hardware being installed or seeing any evidence of non-Apple approved work. Anything found means they won’t carry out repairs, warranty is invalidated etc.

The difference in £ when offset against any drop in value when I come to sell it is negligible.

That said, if it were an older phone I’d be doing it myself. I’ve done 2 x new batteries in my old iPhone 4 (now being used by my mum)..

@wysiwyg does this and receives good feedback.

IME changing batteries and rear glass is pretty easy. The front glass is not. For an experiment I tried on an old iPhone 4 and the phone was destroyed getting the front glass off was very complicated and I failed. The downside is you render the phone unrepairable. My experience with replacement batterie quality is variable, hard to know what you are getting

IMO you pay the money and get Apple to fix it. You might want to change the battery at the same time

I bought a new screen assembly off eBay for £30 for my wife’s 5c. it even had all the gizmos on it like the home button sensors front camera etc.
it wasn’t too bad to do. although after the first go the home button didn’t work so I had to transplant it with the original.
all fine after that and my wife was over the moon.
whether I would do it on something in warranty and better than a 5c I don’t know. if out of contract then yes. worth the gamble.

Get it done professionally. This fellas prices are reasonable http://www.corephone.co.uk/services.aspx

Main problem, I found with buying. replacement screen,wasn’t the fitting (which was fiddly but not that hard, following youtube instructions), but the quality of the replacement. Replacing the glass with a £10 one is unlikely to work (youtube search it).
Once I’d done the replacement,the phone kept switching itself off. Then the new glass cracked… apparently some replacements are fraction of mms to thick which causes this!
It’s a lot of hassle for no result really.

(excuse dodgy punctuation above -ipad typing!)

The screen you buy from ebay or amazon wont be a genuine Apple one.

I had the same dilemma when I smashed mine, I was looking at the cheap replacements on eBay and in the end went to one of those phone case shops that spring up everywhere and had it changed for £60. The replacement glass isn’t genuine and whilst it works it has started to discolour and has some bright spots about 8 months later, it has also lifted in the bottom right hand corner and doesn’t sit properly on the body of the phone.

My reasoning for getting someone else to do it? If they break anything doing the repair, it’s their problem not mine. I felt the extra cost over getting something off eBay and doing it myself was worth it for that piece of mind. However, if I was going to do it again I’d suck it up and get Apple or someone you trust to do a good job and pay a little more, Wysiwig from what I have seen has some really good feedback. I wouldn’t go to a random phone shop again (or Timpsons, they’re very expensive).

I can’t get mine re-done at Apple now because of the 3rd party screen so it’s a case of putting up with it. If I drop it again it’ll be insurance time.

I believe Apple use some form of bonding paste in the SE which could make things trickier, however I could be wrong.

Edit – I was wrong, no paste in the SE according to iFixit. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+SE+Teardown/60902

For the age of the phone and the amount of money you’ll save with a third party, I’d be going to Apple if only for warranty reasons. If you don’t and it goes pop in six months time – and bearing in mind that if it’s been dropped and repaired by an unofficial source, how likely is that to happen? – then you’re screwed and might end up having to buy a whole new phone for the sake of saving £40.

£40 job, 24hr turnaround.

You can’t separate the glass with any success rate. But £106 is astronomical

I thought broken screens were a feature not a bug. That’s what I told my son when he broke his for the third time (4s). Fixed one myself. I won’t be fixing any more. Take apart over a white tea towel. Keep all the screws and bits in an ice cube tray. Reassemble without crushing cables.

Dreadful device. Never broken a Blackberry screen despite quite a few falls.

@wysiwyg

My daughter has a 5s (I think) with a broken screen. I will be in touch!

will send pm too @wysiwyg

Fixerofphones@gmail.com