Today I’m going to show every part of the regular size Galaxy S7 screen and charging
port replacement. The phone does get sacrificed during the process so it should make for an
interesting video.
[electronic beep noise]
First turn the phone off. Then the easiest part of this whole repair will be removing
the SIM card and SD card tray from the top. Now to remove the back panel we will use a
heat gun to help soften the adhesive underneath the back glass. After heating the phone up
for a couple seconds it’ll be too hot to touch and we can stick a giant suction cup
on it to gently lift up and away from the phone as we slide our metal pry tool in-between
the glass layer and the phone layer. This is the hardest part of the whole removal process.
So once you have it started, you’re probably good to go. That little gap will let us slide
a playing card or business card in-between the glass and the frame and then we can slide
that around the glass edges because the business card will go with the curve of the back glass.
I’m also putting playing cards underneath the glass so it won’t re-adhere back down
to the phone again as I’m removing the adhesive. Once you’ve sliced through the adhesive
on both sides make sure you don’t go too deep or you will cut into the Qi charger.
Then you can remove the back panel. If you need to replace the camera lenses you can
just push those through the back frame. Then there are 12 screws around the back side of
the phone. Now this little gold ticket gets you one free chocolate candy bar from Willy
Wonka’s chocolate factory, so set that off to the side and save it for later. Then the
plastic loud speaker can be removed from the bottom of the phone. Same thing with the Qi
charger, and then the plastic bit at the top. The nice thing about having a Qi charger that
doesn’t go through the charging port is that if your charging port breaks, your Qi
charger will still be able to charge your phone through the contacts on the motherboard.
I’m disconnecting all these little ribbon cables starting with the volume rocker, the
ear piece, the front sensors, the screen and the battery. You should probably start with
the battery and then the power button is off to the side over there. Down here at the bottom
of the phone there is the finger print scanner and then a couple wire cables. You don’t
need to disconnect the back one, I just got a little disconnect happy and popped it off
anyway. Then you can lift the motherboard away from the phone just like in the Galaxy
S7 Edge there is one little cable at the bottom of the motherboard. Just unsnap that like
a little Lego and the motherboard is removed from the phone. Here is the front facing camera;
it’s a 5 megapixel. Just unsnap that like a Lego and then the rear facing camera on
the motherboard here snaps off the same way. It is clicked into the motherboard to this
little plastic frame so you have to unsnap that and then the camera can be removed. Now
this phone has been on for a total of 30 seconds. This tape sits right on top of the processors
and with that much discoloration I wonder if these phones are going to have over heating
issues later on. I guess we’ll find out. Here’s another look at the cameras. The
top one is the 5 megapixel front. The bottom one is the 12 megapixel rear. I’m going
to go ahead and snap those back into the motherboard, just like little Legos, you’ll feel them
click into place. With the rear camera you’ll also feel the camera unit itself click in
cuz that plastic frame holds pretty tight. Now the battery removal will need a metal
pry tool. I’m going to use the blunt end of this metal spudger. Just slip it in and
then pry up little by little all around the edge of the battery. Make sure you do not
puncture the battery at all. There is the battery itself. I will link replacement parts
down in the video description. There are 3 screws down here by the charging port. That
allows you to remove the headphone jack. Set that off to the side. Now this is where the
problem starts. This is the exact same as the Galaxy S7 Edge where the “back” button
and the “menu” button wrap around underneath the screen of the phone so it makes the charging
port repair impossible unless you remove the screen of the phone. Now I assumed that removing
the screen of this phone would be easier than with the Galaxy S7 Edge and I was wrong because
the screens are constructed differently. And I’ll show you why. So I’m heating up the
phone. I slipped a playing card in underneath where the battery was at all the way to the
edge of the screen and that allowed just enough separation between the screen and the metal
frame that I could slip my metal pry tool it. Same thing with the back of the phone,
I slipped the playing cards in so it doesn’t re-adhere back down on top of itself. And
I’m just working my way around the edges. The screen is not going to survive this process.
Tried the same trick with the other side, slipping a business card in and hoping that
that would lift off the other side of the adhesive. Now down here at the bottom you
do have to watch out for the charging port buttons; the “back” button and the “menu”
button. And here’s where I broke my screen, right here on this corner. I nicked that corner
and that made a crack all the way through the LCD. It is super super fragile. That’s
why I say that nothing is salvageable when you are removing the screen from your device.
So a charging port repair is most likely going to require a screen repair as well. Here’s
the other difference: the glass and polarizer are not glued to the amoled screen. Normally,
like with the Note 5 and other Samsung phones everything is glued together so it’s more
structurally sound. This screen is not. It is much thinner and does not have the glue
there. So now that I’ve severely destroyed my screen, I’m just going to pull that away
from the phone. I will link replacement screens down in the video description. I will need
to replace this one believe it or not. Here are the three layers. We’ve got the glass
and polarizer that are separated from the amoled screen. But now that the screen is
off, that will allow us access to the Home button and fingerprint scanner, as well as
the charging port. So I want to point out, look how thick this aluminum chassis is. No
wonder it survived my bend test. Now that we have access to the Home button we can just
pop that out from the back side and then slip it through the little hole in the frame. Set
that off to the side with all the other components. And then right here this is where the buttons
are wrapped around the mid-frame and attached to the other side. So I’m going to lift
those off gently and stick them through the mid-frame and then I can lift the charging
port off of the mid-frame. This is the charging port; usually they’re pretty cheap, right
around 10, 15 maybe 20 bucks. If only it was easier to get at it would make this phone
a lot more repairable. Here are all the components. If you have any questions leave them down
in the comments. I will make a Part 2 to this video where I reassemble everything once I’ve
purchased the new replacement screen. Thanks a ton for watching. Hit that subscribe button
and follow me on Twitter and Instagram for behind the scenes. Hope to see you around.