Alright today we’re going to take apart the HTC M8; the one with the two cameras on
the back.
Go ahead and turn the phone completely off.
Grab a heat gun or a hair dryer and just heat up the phone gently on the top and the bottom.
We’re not trying to heat up the screen, we’re just trying to heat up the little
metal plates that cover the ear piece and camera.
Once they are warmed up, just take a little razor blade and slide it underneath the metal
plate.
Make sure not to put the razor blade down towards the phone because there is some stuff
under there that you can damage.
So lift up these metal plates.
Doesn’t matter if you damage them; they are pretty cheap and inexpensive to replace.
There are four T5 torques heads screws down at the bottom and two normal Philips heads
screws up at the top.
Tools and parts will be listed down in the video description below.
Take out the SIM card, there are probably two on your phone so take out both SIM card
trays before you start to pry the back off of the device.
I have taken my razor blade because it’s a small, thin little tool that can slide in-between
the screen and the back plate and unlatch each little clasp that holds the screen and
frame into the back plate itself.
It is a pretty big pain trying to get this thing apart.
It is not easy.
I did take a little bit of heat and heat up the back of the phone as well just in case
there’s some adhesive back there holding the screen onto the metal frame itself.
The whole take-apart process took about 10 or 15 minutes.
So go slow and take your time as you’re pulling that back plate off.
Here’s the back plate itself.
You can see the little screw holes and the camera lenses.
There is a glass camera lens up for the top camera; so if that breaks you’re just going
to have to pop it out of its little slot and replace it from the inside.
Take off the tape that’s holding down the ribbon cable connectors.
There are two of those.
Make sure you put this in a spot where it won’t get damaged because you will want
to put it back on the phone again when we’re done.
Lift up each of these little white clasps.
They can break so be very careful as you’re lifting them up.
Probably use a little plastic tool.
And then you can just slide the little ribbon cables out from the little clasp itself once
it’s lifted up.
Pretty straight forward.
You can just watch as I’m doing it here in the video.
Once again all replacement parts and tools will be found in the video description below.
You can grab these little wire cables and lift them up.
These ones are attached down towards the charging port.
Then this one right here along the side as well.
There are some more ribbon cables up here at the top.
This is the most ribbon cables I’ve even seen in a phone so congratulations HTC.
There are two screws holding down the battery connector to the motherboard.
So just lift that up and you can see it’s just kind of like a little Lego connection;
once you lift it up, it’s unsnapped.
There are three screws holding on the motherboard to the frame so take those out.
Two more wire cables up at the top.
And the motherboard will slide away from the phone.
So here’s the motherboard.
It’s got the qualcromm processor in it as well as all the memory and RAM and everything
else that your phone needs to work.
None of it is user replaceable.
So unless you have some pretty complex soldering tools you’re just out of luck.
Here is the loud speaker which is user replaceable.
It’s got just a little ribbon cable connector that plugs into the motherboard.
And once again the parts will be listed in the video description below.
Just like the charging port, lucky for us, is replaceable.
Usually one of the things that goes out first on a device.
The headphone jack is also included with this part as well which is nice.
Battery comes out fairly easily.
There’s a little bit of adhesive that holds it to the LCD so be careful when you’re
sliding your pry tool underneath because all of the pressure is going on the LCD as well
and if you’re planning on reusing your screen you want to be gently.
Make sure you pull away those volume rockers as well so you don’t damage that cable when
you’re pulling the battery out.
Here’s the battery.
It’s a 2600 milliamp.
Pretty decent size for a cell phone.
Replacement batteries, hopefully, will be found in the video description as well.
Four screws holding down the daughter board.
And if you’re smart you’ll take out the little screw holding the camera in as well.
So when you pull that away from the board it’ll come with it.
Remove the SIM card ribbon cable as well as the front facing camera ribbon cable and the
vibrator motor plug.
You just want to unplug that from the device itself.
So the power button up here at the top is held down in a little slot so slide that up
and out.
And it is also connected to the top of the front facing camera; so the grounding strap.
So make sure you pull that off as well.
Front facing camera comes away once the motherboard is away from the phone…daughter board, sorry.
It’s a 5 megapixel camera.
And then here’s the camera, the dual camera, on the back of the phone.
It’s probably in a metal case because any variation of distance would mess up the depth
perception feature that the camera is used for with the phone.
So it’s a pretty unique little thing that HTC has going on.
There is the ear piece and now here is the replacement screen.
See the screen comes with the metal frame as well as the two replacement brackets that
go over the front facing camera and the bottom speaker.
So if your replacement screen does not come with all of this stuff, you probably bought
the wrong piece and you’re going to want to get the whole replacement kit.
Because the glass only repair is a completely different repair and very very very difficult.
Now to put the phone back together I clasp the rear facing camera into the motherboard
first…the daughter board.
And then set that into place along with the front facing camera.
Just plug those little ribbon cable connectors in like Legos.
Slid the power button back into its slot and grounded it on top of the front facing camera
again.
And now I’m plugging back in the SIM card tray.
So remember there’s this one and one more on the other side so be very careful when
you are plugging those back in.
Get the vibrator motor plugged in.
If you are replacing your screen you’ll probably need to transfer the vibrator motor
over from your old screen to your new one.
Don’t forget to do that unless you don’t like vibrations.
Get those 5 screws plugged into the daughter board.
And the battery can go back into place.
Make sure you have all of the ribbon cables on the correct side of the battery.
You don’t want to be looking for those later on when you’re trying to put it all back
together again.
Get the charging port back into place; really pleased that this is user replaceable.
It’s nice that HTC made it easy for us.
Lift up the rear camera a little bit when you’re sliding the motherboard back into
place.
It does need to be sitting on top of the motherboard.
Then grab the ribbon cable connectors, plug them in and just latch each one of them down
individually.
Make sure they’re pressed in as far as they can go.
There are little tabs on each of the little ribbon cables that you can use to press in
and plug it into the little slot.
And these little wire cable connectors, make sure it’s seated correctly on top of the
little plug before you press it all the way in.
Three screws on the motherboard.
Plugging some more wire cables in…battery cable…clasp it in like a little Lego.
Get those two screws back in place as well.
It’s really important that you keep your screws organized obviously.
They’re all different sizes so keep them grouped together.
Maybe label them on a piece of paper as you’re taking the phone apart.
Pretty straight forward with all these little ribbon cables….plug them in, latch them
down and keep on going.
This is a short stubby little guy so you got to kind of wiggle him into place and then
use the extra tabs and maybe some leverage so you can plug them back in and have him
stay there.
Get the little wire cables pressed back into place.
Make sure you’re seated correctly.
You don’t want to bend the little connection on the main board cuz once that’s bent you
don’t have a second chance.
So get it on there and press it into place and you’re good to go.
I’m going to test my screen before I put the back plate on because that is honestly
the hardest part of this repair; getting that back plate on and off.
Looks like my screen is good to go.
The touch sensitivity works, the color looks fine.
If you have any lines or anything else on your screen, test the connections first.
If they are still there after all the connections are good, then you probably have a bad screen.
Get the tape back into place over those ribbon cable connectors.
And then I had a problem with my power button falling out.
I don’t know if that’s going to be an issue with everybody but just make sure that’s
placed well into the frame.
And then start with the charging port end of the phone and then once that’s pressed
in you can press the rest of the phone in place.
My power button fell out again but after some convincing I got it back into place.
And snap the screen back into the metal frame.
And you can see it snapped in fairly well.
You can hardly tell that the phone has been taken apart.
Make sure to screw it back in.
Bottom 4 screws and the top two screws.
Now here’s the cool part…these are the replacement metal pieces for the top and bottom
of the phone.
They’re actually really inexpensive so it’s probably worth your time to buy the replacement
ones instead of trying to make the old ones work.
They come with their own adhesive which is really nice.
Just take it, press it into place.
I usually line it up with the bottom of the screen and just snap the rest of it into place
fairly easily.
Pretty straight forward.
I did find out that the lens from my first piece and second metal piece was different
so I had to take off the front facing camera lens from the old screen and then use the
new screen pieces to just set over the top of that and it worked a lot better.
You can see the old camera lens just sitting there on the bottom.
But since it has a new one it’s just fine.
Make sure there’s no dust or anything down inside of that when you’re putting it back
together.
Get the SIM cards in place.
And there you go.
Once again all parts and tools and everything that you’ll need will be found in the video
description below.
Don’t forget to “like” if this video helped you and don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks a ton for watching.
Hope to see you around.