domarius

I will never replace a screen again, and don’t recommend it. Not for phones nowadays. Once upon a time everything was screwed together, and you might even get the same quality or better screen when buying from eBay. And having the phone repaired was nearly the cost of the phone. Now, it’s the reverse. Removing the glued back and screen and cleaning off all the glue for a clean re-seal is an ordeal that takes multiple hours, AND, often the screen you buy on eBay is NOT OLED, but an LCD, and a blurry one at that. And the local phone repair store will replace the screen with an OLED, reliably, same day turn around, for not much more than the cost of an actual OLED screen, because they have the parts in bulk, and the tools and experience to do it quickly. Never again!

Also I found the best way to clean off the adhesive, every last bit, was to scrape as much as I could off with the guitar pick, then alternate with a cotton swab with rubbing alcohol, a pin to scrape off tiny bits, and a tissue to wipe off loose bits, over and over, to get every last little bit out so the new adhesive will stick cleanly.

Solved it. I nearly gave up; I had heated it till the frame was almost too hot to touch, not happy with that, as components could be damaged. Also I couldn’t find anywhere to get a spuger or guitar pick into around the edge, it was all too narrow. But eventually I found I could get a guitar pick under the cables at the top of the screen and start peeling from that direction. Also the screen would crack and splinter at this point, so it was important to move slowly and keep the pick flush and not curl it up too much, to crack as little as possible. And of course, minding the part where the cable is connected on the top right. And I covered it in sticky tape because it was splintering everywhere during this process.

They’re not kidding - the screen does not survive removal during this process, so it better already be destroyed when you do. In fact I even had little pieces of “display” still stuck to the adhesive when I was done. A foldable display this ‘aint.

Hmmm ok… this isn’t what I see. I seem to have peeled off the glass layer from the display itself. I have a silver looking display to yet remove before I see any of the frame or ribbon cable shown in the picture above. And yet there was indeed black adhesive strip that I was peeling away during this process, so I thought I was doing the right thing.

QA sticker over screw on my model (2018). I advise you delicately remove these with something sharp, from the center of the screw outwards. If you stick the screwdriver straight in, the sticker will jam up in the head of the screw and make it much less likely to get a good grip on the screw as it turns, causing it to slip and strip the screw head.

You might get a more “modernised” part from eBay (for this very model, iPhone 5c) which has an ENTIRE CABLE missing… if you look closely, it’s been re-directed into the middle cable. And it all works perfectly, touch screen, and display. So it’s a optimisation.

In summary - if you get this version of the screen, you only need to deal with 2 cables, not 3. The rightmost socket will remain empty.

Remove the washers and place them with the screws, don’t leave them on the board, you’ll be removing it later and you don’t want to have them slide off.

When lifting it out, it seemed to be affixed to something at the far bottom right corner (relative to the above photo), and required a bit of tugging before popping free, which was a bit alarming. Not sure where it was stuck. Was definitely lifting it away from the base first before lifting too far up.

Also this is a good point to be reminded not to lose the little battery washers from earlier (step 3) if you decided to be smart and leave them on the board! Remove them and place them with the screws.

TIP for correcting misaligned strips before it’s too late: OK, after laying the battery down on the ends before rolling them around to the other side (as others have described) - it’s good to try and visually align the adhesive before you start pressing down. Nevertheless, if you start pressing them down slowly, and notice they are going on an angle (and therefore, will continue off the side of the battery instead of heading to the top), you can “course correct” by lifting up the other end of the plastic film off the already adhered end of the strips, till only the adhesive itself is loosely holding the film to the phone. Then you can change the angle of the whole thing, BUT only by stretching one side of the strips, not crumpling the other side. Stretching is better because crumpling will add 1mm of thickness which may impact the phone closing properly and give you pressure points on the screen!

I don’t know why the instructions didn’t mention this, but I pulled it to the left and back, like the previous strip, rather than straight back, to avoid snapping.