The phone was dirty when we opened it up, mostly from of sandy texture. Sand (salt) and moisture can cause corrosion in phones.

A Storm 2 teardown begins by taking out the battery and SIM card as well as the top and bottom front plates.

Then you pop the top and bottom plastic caps off. Be careful because they are stuck with adhesive.

Then you undue the 4 t6 torx screws (2 at the top 2 at the bottom-front and back).

Then using your fingernail pry out the back casing/housing.

Also remember to disconnect the 2 ribbons on the motherboard.

Separate the motherboard from the LCD, which are held together with metal clips that you have to pop out.

After removing the old LCD you remove the metal plate that is adhered to the back of it.

You then apply it on the new LCD. At this point you can clamp it back to the motherboard.

The line in bold is key to enabling a sensitive touch to the screen. It is also a step that many people leave off of the various online tutorials. Some parts may come with a replacement metal plate already adhered but at any rate it is a waste of money.

Once we were done with this the touchscreen was responsive. To finish it off I changed the keypad settings. We changed the hover time to 100,
double tap to 100 and key type to fast and swiping to 6.

After this, the phone was better than when RIM made it. One final note: When your glass digitizer breaks on the Storm 2 the LCD needs replacing because they are glued together. This drives the cost up and is something all phone companies should avoid, yet most do not.

[RepairLaunch Phone Screen Repair]

The post Blackberry Storm 2 Screen & LCD Repair Notes appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

A Droid X repair is very dicy and easy to screw up if you don’t know what you are doing. There is some material online that helps with the overall process of DIY repair but everything false short in some degree. This won’t be the end all guide but this is meant to fill in some gaps so you don’t screw things up rather than fixing it successfully.

We used a T-4 Torx screwdriver, heat gun and a pry tool as tools to complete the repair. On the low end, you can find the Droid X digitizer within the US borders for $75 and some pricing over $100. This is much higher than most digitizer screens, so while it is not the easiest to break (not hard either) it is expensive. Lucky for Droid X fanboys though, when the screen breaks the LCD can still be good. For some phones they are stuck together so a tiny crack can result in big dollars lost.

Prop off the top and bottom plastic caps on the edge of the phone. This is easy.

Once you unscrew the back you have to pry apart the back and front assembly with plastic clips that must be released without breaking them. This can be a nuisance but with any experience it is obvious that these things need to be pried with measured force.

After you have avoided breaking off the plastic clips it is on to the guts of the phone, it is onto lifting the motherboard.

It is really easy to damage the connecter so you can’t lift the motherboard completely. There is a connector connecting the LCD to the motherboard, you will rip this if you are not careful.

You will also notice black sticky foam gook (aka black sticky icky) that holds the digitizer connector in place. You will need to remove this, using tweezer to remove the phone without damage to the connector.

The digitizer has two connectors, with the smaller one being under a plastic ‘door’ that also must be released. The plastic door is very fragile and has black sticky icky foam to be a real headache.

The connectors can really screw you up so be careful not to tear the ribbon, bend the pins in the connectors and even break the black door.

Now, just reverse the steps of not f’ing up the disassembly of your phone and place in the new digitizer during reassembly. Steady hands and attentions spans help.

If this seems too difficult or you’re scared of making things worse, you can always send it in to be serviced.

[RepairLaunch's Motorola Droid Repair]

The post How to replace the Motorola Droid X Digitizer appeared first on Mobile Magazine.