The kid was having a bad day with his motorcycle repair. And then he dropped his phone, shattering the digitizer and breaking the LCD display and making his bad day even worse. Luckily for him, I had a spare phone. The spare phone was another ZenFone 2 with better specs. I let him borrow it while we waited for the replacement screen to arrive.
It only made sense to get a $30 replacement display with the digitizer included to fix a $230 phone.
I watched a youtube video that showed how to disassemble the phone. The first parts were easy. Getting the back off, removing the battery, and the dozen screws (don't forget the one under the security sticker!) was easy. The back lifted right off after getting the screws all out.
The speaker module was stuck in with adhesive, so a little pulling got it out without too much trouble. The vibration motor came out without having to deal with any adhesive.
Watch a video that shows you how to remove the ribbon cables for the display and digitizer. You'll want to flip up the little plastic bar before sliding the connectors out.
Now, I don't know why the video shows them prying on the power switch. You don't need to pry on it or even remove it. Just leave it where it is. You can see on the left, it's still there in the picture below.
There is a white thermally conductive pad that you'll need to save or replace. I just added some thermal compound and stuck it back on when it was time to reassemble it.
If you've done this much, you're in for a treat. I recommend safety glasses for this next part. Prying on glass that's glued down could send tiny glass fragments flying. The best place to start is on the corner that's shattered. That way, you can get underneath the glass and separate it from the phone body. There's glue all the way around the entire edge. Separating the display from the phone is a tedious ordeal that will try your patience. And just now I realized that I should have used a hair dryer to heat it up. I don't do these very often, thankfully.
After getting the phone and screen separated, I removed the remaining adhesive from the phone because I didn't want any uneven edges. I'm sure glad I did a test fit before gluing the new screen in. I had to scrape out a corner so the new glass would fit in. The phone was bent on the corner that it dropped on, so I also had to bend that corner back.
You can see on the old screen (top) that the top right corner is bent. That's where the phone landed. The replacement screen (bottom) matches the old one.
I realized that the new screen didn't come with any replacement adhesive. I wasn't going to wait for an order of adhesive strips, so I decided to use contact cement. It's not the best idea, but it seems to be holding, at least for now.
Success! It worked! I got your phone fixed. Do you want to switch back? Nope, he said. "This one's battery lasts much longer." And that's why I like to have a spare phone, just in case.
