All right, today I'm going to show you how to replace just the glass on an iPhone screen.
This video will work for the iPhone 5c, the iPhone 5, and the iPhone 5s.
What I've done to this point is taken off the back metal plate, the home button, and
the earpiece from the phone.
If you want to watch how to do this on your own phone go ahead and click the link that
goes to yours and it'll show you the teardown video for that.
This video's just how to replace the glass on your iPhone.
Taking off these little plastic pieces from the top of the phone because we're going to
reuse those on the glass once we get it back into place.
That last piece was a little metal grill.
Be really careful with these ribbon cables during the process, because if you bend or
tweak them in any way your LCD's going to stop working permanently.
Grab a heat gun and start heating up your phone very gently.
You want to get it to 70 degrees Celsius but don't go over 95 degrees Celsius or you will
start burning the LCD underneath.
If you're not using one of those handy-dandy laser heat temperature sensors which I will
link in the video description below, you want to get it just too hot to touch.
Pull off the plastic frame from around the edge of the glass because we are going to
reuse the plastic frame with your new glass that you purchased from the link in the video
description below.
I'm going to grab a playing card and kind of slide it between the frame and the glass
below to kind of help out.
If your screen is shattered this will come off a little bit easier, but since my screen's
mostly in one piece it's slightly harder.
Clean off any shards of glass that are down in this plastic since we're going to reuse
it, and now we need to separate the LCD from the glass itself.
So we're going to grab that heat gun and heat it up again to that same temperature range
as before, just getting it barely too hot to touch.
We don't want to do any damage to the LCD underneath.
The LCD will become yellow or brown if you've heated it up too much.
Now I'm going to grab my playing card once it's to temperature and slide it between the
LCD and the glass.
I'm going to flip it over and show you what it looks like.
You can see that that glue is kind of liquid between the two layers and it's just kind
of sliding away from the card itself.
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Links to social media and repair parts will be found in the video description below.
Now you can see as I slide the card in that the glue is not responding as quickly as it
was before.
It's because the glass is cooling down.
It does cool down fairly quickly because it's so thin.
So I'm going to go ahead and stop sliding my card around here in a second, I'm going
to reheat the glass again, so that the glue will become more liquid.
This is pretty freaking exciting.
Going to heat it up to that same temperature range as before, 70 degrees Celsius to 95
degrees Celsius.
And you can watch the card separate the glass from the LCD.
I'm not going to speed this up at all just so you can see exactly how the glue reacts
with the card.
Some people use wire, some people use razor blades.
If this isn't the funnest thing you've watched all day I don't know what is.
You can see that this glass shard is about to pop off.
If your screen is more cracked than this you'll be pulling glass shards off more often, but
since my screen's not too bad this is all the excitement that you get.
Pull that guy off and we are almost done.
So buckle up ladies and gentlemen, we are almost there.
The anticipation is killing me.
And we are finished.
You can go ahead and pull that glass off and just throw it away, we're not going to need
it anymore.
Replacement glass pieces will be found in the video description below.
So here's the LCD.
When you look at it I want you to think eggshell because any more pressure than what would
crack an eggshell will crack this and you'll be left with just a broken piece of plastic.
We're going to pull off all the glue that we can from it, just kind of rolling it off
with your finger, remember being super super gentle the whole time.
Once you've gotten all the big pieces of glue off, you can use gentle solvent, like alcohol,
and just kind of rub it around on top of the glue and it'll just kind of make it dissolve.
I will link in the video description the alcohol that I use, and you can buy that if you need
to.
I'm taking a plastic pry tool, you can also use a broken debit card or a plastic card
and scrape off some of the major pieces of glue from the edge of the screen.
And then heading back to the alcohol kind of helps clear up the last little bits of
it.
Some people recommend using Goo-Gone, I personally haven't tried that before, but it's an option.
Here is the very clean LCD screen.
Now that I've gotten all the glue off I'm going to do one last quick little rubdown
with the alcohol and a new piece of cloth to make sure that there's not any dust or
anything before I put this UV-activated LOCA glue on top of the screen.
So what this glue is, it's an optically clear UV-activated glue.
I will link that down in the video description below.
And you just kind of want to lay it down in a patterns similar to this so that you don't
trap air bubbles underneath the glass when you lay it down.
If you get any air bubbles in the glue, you can just tap it with your metal tweezers and
those will pop the bubbles on the inside.
Anyways taking the glass, lining up with the earpiece with the ribbon cables to make sure
that it's oriented in the right direction, and then I'm just going to gently place the
glass down on top of the LCD and the glue.
Remember, the slower you do this the better, because if you do it fast, it's going to trap
little air bubbles inside and they're going to be almost impossible to remove because
they are between the glass and the LCD.
So if you do get bubbles you can just kind of like massage them out towards the glass,
but the slower you do it the less bubbles you have.
Preferably none.
Anyway, if you need to grab popcorn feel free to pause the video.
It is pretty darn exciting.
Still just pressing the glue out to the edge of the screen.
You can kind of see that the glass will slide around a little bit.
This is fine and it's actually preferable because we are not using a mold at the moment.
I figured the majority of the world wouldn't have molds to work with so we are doing the
video without them.
I'm sure you prefer that as well.
Okay, now that the glue has been pushed out to the edges of the LCD I'm going to lift
it up.
The glue kind of acts like a suction, which is nice and makes our job a little bit easier.
The goal is to line the LCD up with the glass.
So you'll want an even distance on the left and right side of the LCD.
And along the top here you're going to see a white line.
You want that line to be completely hidden by the top glass.
Once you've kind of gently put in place, making sure that there's no air bubbles or anything
between the glass and the LCD, I'm doing a couple of last minute adjustments here before
I grab my UV light.
The UV light is what cures the glue or makes it dry.
The glue will always stay liquid until the UV light hits it.
I've heard of some guys going outside and using the sun, but I feel like that would
take too long and I honestly don't think it really works that well.
So just grab a UV light and stick it over the top of the screen.
I did mine for about twenty seconds and then I flipped it up just to make sure I didn't
need to do any last minute adjustments to it while the glue was still kind of tacky
because the glue will dry completely in about a minute or two once the UV light is on it.
Now that it's all dried I'm going flip it over and clean off the back, any excess glue,
making sure that it's not going to stick around.
Get it?
Now there's some adhesive that you want to use to get the frame onto the glass.
This 3m stuff that you see me putting on right now is actually garbage, do not use it.
I would recommend using the sticky tape that I showed previously that comes in the giant
roll.
That stuff is a lot more sticky and does a lot better job.
But hindsight is 20/20.
Now that I've placed the glass inside of the frame I can start putting the whole film back
together again.
If you're bored of this part, you can skip toward the end, especially if you know what
you're doing.
Getting that metal plate back into place.
Putting the home button down.
Getting the metal bracket screwed in.
Making sure that the frame's in the right spot.
And now I'm putting on all those little bits and pieces that I took off in the beginning
of the video, like the earpiece, the grill, the rubber bit, the other little plastic thingymajigger,
and setting down the camera and proximity sensor into place in that plastic bracket.
Earpiece goes in, earpiece bracket goes in.
Screw on the top, screw on the bottom, and there you go.
Everything seems to be working now that the screen is back into place.
If you have any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments down below.
Don't forget to like if this video helped you and don't forget to subscribe.
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I hope to see you around.
Thanks for watching.