So I never break phones on accident, but last week I broke my personal phone twice doing very normal
things. This crack over here wasn't a big deal, I was just lifting a chair out of the back of a car,
which is something I do often. As I lift the chair out of the vehicle, the chair rests on my pocket
which has my phone in it. And after two years of doing that repetitively, it broke my screen.
I was just going to leave it since it's cosmetic and everything still works. But a couple days
later I broke my phone again. My phone slid out of my pocket while sitting down in my office chair,
and the edge of my screen hit the wheel of my chair and then fell onto carpet. But when the
edge of the screen came in contact with the wheel, it shattered the side of the phone and broke more
than just the glass...which rendered my phone pretty much useless. Without a screen there's
not a whole lot you can do. So now we have two options. I could go get another phone. It has been
two years, so I could kind of buy another phone relatively guilt-free. Usually, I like to use my
phone for a bit longer. But two years is nothing to frown upon and it's what most of you suggested
over on Twitter. But I got to thinking...iFixit has said if every single American were to keep
their phone for an extra year, it would take the equivalent of 600,000 cars off the road. Which is
a pretty big deal. And my mom always says, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
And she's a pretty big deal. But unfortunately though, my phone cannot make do anymore since
the screen is one of the more important parts of a cellphone. So it's time to get a little creative
and see if we can Frankenstein this thing back together with one of my durability tested phones
that you've seen here previously about 2 years ago. Sometimes using a donor phone for parts is
cheaper than buying brand new replacement parts. This is a Note 10 Plus 5G so who knows, maybe I'll
have 5G once I'm done with the repair. There's only one way to find out. Let's get started.
[Intro]
Frankensteining things together is actually kind of fun, it's the act of taking two broken phones
and splicing them into one to make a working device. Just like a pick a part automotive junk
yard where you can go in and grab the parts you need off of a wrecked vehicle so you can keep your
own vehicle running longer. The unicorn sneeze colored Note 10 Plus is an international phone
so it won't work with my carrier here in the USA. It doesn't have the right antennas for me to just
plop my SIM card into. But I'm hoping at least the screen and the frame part are interchangeable,
even if it has been scratched up and durability tested two years ago.
I'll take the Teardown Skin off my non-psychedelic black phone and it looks like I've been a lot
harder on my phone than I thought. My back glass is also shattered...probably because I've been
double bagging it with a skin and a case which most likely puts a lot of extra pressure on that
rear glass. Definitely not doing that anymore. Plus I've been keeping my gym key card tucked
into the case, which adds even more stress. All things that I will avoid doing from now on.
If I can bring my phone back to life, I'm going to be a whole lot nicer to it.
Normally when I tear down a phone there's no emotional attachment,
but this guy has been in my pocket for two years now, so I'm really hoping that it'll live again.
With some heat from my heat gun and slices from my razor knife,
we can soften and remove the adhesive holding the cracked back glass in place.
And then we can do the same thing to the melted pile of skittles over here. It's much easier and
quicker since it was already taken apart once a few years ago. So far things are looking positive.
The screw holes appear to be in the same positions on both phones even though they are international
and domestic variance. Not the kind of variance that concern the TVA of course, but the screw
holes being in the same locations mean that the motherboard transplant might be feasible.
Each Note 10 Plus has 9 screws holding down the back plastics and wireless charger over
the motherboard. I almost forgot to show you the boot screen, which as you can see is locked
to an SK telecom in South Korea. Not super useful if I want to use it here in the USA.
I'll pop off all the little ribbon connectors just like little Lego's.
And then do the same thing for my own phone, with it's 9 screws and little ribbons.
I can remove the SIM card trays and then pop out the stacked motherboard with their
attached camera modules. I kind of forgot that I sliced up and removed the copper vapor chamber
during the teardown. I'm realizing that I'm not very nice to phones in general.
I'll steel the vapor chamber from my old phone and slap it into the kaleidoscope.
And luckily, even with the different chips and antennas, my US variant motherboard fits
inside of the international frame. This might just work after all.
As far as 5G goes though, as you can see, the slots for the 5G millimeter wave antennas
are empty on my old phone, and they are also missing on the South Korean variant.
So neither one of them has a super fast 5G and I won't end up with 5G after this is all over.
Surprisingly though, the international phone with my own motherboard installed does turn on
and shows the background of my old phone with all my apps and information. It's good to see
them again. The problem though, which is kind of a big deal, is that I have no cell service,
even after installing my SIM card. So we're going to have to try something else.
The lack of cell signal could be one of two things: the phone could be looking for the
charging port board, or more likely, it's looking for the back plastics which have
the silver antennas lines baked on. To be on the safe side, I'll just move them all over.
I'll plop my charging port board into the crayon box colored phone, along with my own loudspeaker,
which as you can see has the silver antenna lines built onto the black plastics. I'll also make sure
that I'm using the top plastics that previously covered the motherboard from my old phone since
as we can see, the antenna lines on these parts are also different between the variants,
and I need mine to work here in the USA. With all of the insides pretty much swapped over, we start
delving into the metaphysical realm of the ship of Theseus. At one point did my phone stop being my
phone, as the individual parts are replaced? The screen is different, the battery is different,
and the frame is different. Even the color is different. But the insides, where it matters, my
phone is indeed still the same, and surprisingly, still functional. You can even make phone calls.
[Cambry] Hello.
-How are you doing?
-Can you hear me?
-Yes I can. Can you hear me?
-Yes. Did you have dinner?
-Yeah, I did. I just fixed my phone. I'm just making sure it worked.
-Oh. Alright. Well I'm on my way home.
-Perfect. See you in a minute. Love ya.
-Love you. Bye.
-Not too shabby. There are still plenty of useful parts remaining in my previous phone,
like the earpiece, battery, vibrator, and even the frame. It's always a good idea to
recycle your phone. There's still plenty of value to even very broken phones. Even though
my new phone now has scratches at level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7, a burn mark as well
as scratches over the ultrasonic fingerprint reader, and no water resistance, I still very
much prefer it to my totally broken display. And hopefully, this transplant will let me continue
to use my phone for another year or two. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
I'm curious to know how long you've been using your current phone.
Let me know down in the comments. Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter.
And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.