In front of me we have the Umi Super Phone.
This is the same phone I did my durability test on so that’s why it has a couple scratches
on the back and a cracked screen on the front.
You can see when I turn the phone on that the top half of the screen does function but
the part below the crack does not function.
So this phone only costs 200 dollars so it would normally not be cost effective to fix.
Parts are hard to find for this device, so why am I taking it apart?
First off, so we can analyze the build quality of a 200 dollar phone verses a 700 dollar
phone, like the Galaxy S7.
And sometimes when you have important information on your phone and the screen breaks, you’ll
need to Frankenstein two phones together in order to save or back up your information.
Many non-techy people don’t back up their pictures or text messages and are willing
to pay money to recover those when their phone breaks.
So let’s get on with the tear down.
Holding down the power button just restarts the phone so we’re going to do this live.
Like you see, we’re going to remove the SIM card tray and the bottom plastic protections
over the bottom and top of the phone.
There are 6 screws that hold the back housing into the front housing, and then you can just
pull that off the back.
All of the buttons do fall out which is extremely annoying.
The battery is a 4,000 milliamp battery.
The buttons will be annoying later on, but I’ll show you how to deal with them.
There are 4 screws around this back plastic piece and then one more screw underneath the
fingerprint scanner.
Tuck the fingerprint scanner through the back plastic and then pop that off of the phone.
Then there’s a little latch connection that holds the side buttons into place; you can
just lift that up and slide that out.
Remove the wire cable connector and unplug the battery since this phone was not turned
off when we started working on it.
That’s very important.
There’s not a lot of tape or sticky stuff underneath the battery; it just pops out on
its own using the blunt end of my metal pry tool.
Be careful to not damage this extension ribbon cable.
This is just like you see on the One Plus series.
There’s another latch for the screen ribbon so we’re going to pop that out.
And then there’s a weird little cable that’s actually soldered onto the main board.
This design is not my favorite.
I’m going to remove the top tape and that exposes some more connections for us.
There’s a similar Lego-like connection right here at the top.
We’re going to pop that off and lift it up so it’s not in the way of the motherboard.
And the motherboard is released from the frame.
There’s a little metal pocket at the bottom of the motherboard that holds it in place.
And then make sure you lift up the ear piece as well so that it doesn’t get caught.
I’m going to remove the rear facing camera and the front facing camera from the motherboard.
One has the Lego connection; the front facing has the latch.
The rear is a Panasonic 12 megapixel and the front is a 5 megapixel selfie camera.
Stick it back into place; just tuck it in with the latch and plug the Lego one in.
And then make sure you lock down the latch so that the camera doesn’t fall out if you
ever drop your phone.
There are 4 screws at the bottom near the charging port.
Once those are off the top plastic piece will come away.
There aren’t any components on this plastic piece.
Unplug the little wire connection and then unsnap the extension ribbon cable.
There’s one screw holding the charging port into place, then you can pull that away after
pulling off the vibrator motor from the plastic itself.
We don’t want to damage those wires.
Here is the type C charging port.
I will try to find replacement parts and link as many as I can down in the video description
below, but if you’re trying to back up someone’s information you might just need to buy a new
phone or swap motherboards and screens because this is the screen.
This is where you take your replacement parts and put them on the new screen that’s working
if you want to back up your data.
The screen is embedded into the metal frame.
I imagine if they sell parts at all it will be without the metal frame.
You’ll need to transfer the new LCD into the old frame after removing the cracked LCD.
Kind of complicated.
Putting the charging port back into place.
Plug in the extension ribbon cable, the wire and the little screw underneath the plastic
panel.
And then there are 4 screws that hold the top panel in place.
Motherboard gets tucked in after making sure there are no wires or ribbon cables underneath
it, you don’t want to pinch those down.
Set the earpiece into place and the motherboard gets tucked underneath that little metal edge
on the bottom right corner.
Get all the buttons in place.
Plug in that wire cable connection.
Slide the ribbon cable into the latch and latch it down after making sure all the contacts
are straight.
If that ribbon cable is kinked at all and the contacts aren’t touching where they
should be, it’s not going to work right.
Get the top ribbon cable snapped down like a little Lego.
And put the tape back into place.
The tape isn’t super mandatory so if you rip that or anything, just try to stick it
back as best as possible.
Volume buttons are plugged in and the battery is the last thing that we’re going to plug
in so there’s no power coursing through the board.
I’m going to test the phone before I put the back panel on and it looks like everything
is working besides the fact that my phone is still busted from the durability test.
Put the back plastic on.
Get those 5 screws into place before tacking down the fingerprint scanner.
Now these buttons are super annoying.
They are not held into the back housing, I imagine because this is a 200 dollar phone
design.
So I’m setting those into place as best I can and then I’m just taking the top of
the phone, motherboard and the screen, and setting that down into the back instead of
the other way around which is how I would usually do it.
That way the buttons don’t fall out when I’m moving the back panel.
There are 6 screws holding down the back panel into the front housing.
And then we’re going to put those plastic pieces back into place as well.
They just tuck in.
It’s actually a lot easier to use the snapping back pieces than it is to use the glue covered
ones on the Nexus 6P.
If you have any questions leave them down in the comments.
I do behind the scenes stuff on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat recently as well.
Check out my durability video of this Umi Super Phone.
I’ve done 27 other durability videos on popular phones like the iPhone 6s, the Galaxy
S7 and the LG G5, so check those out in my Smart Phone Durability Playlist.
Hope to see you around.
Thanks for watching.