Today I'm going to show you how to replace just the glass on an iPhone 6.
If you want to see me take apart the phone, go ahead and click the link in the upper left
hand corner.
I have already taken off the back metal plate, the home button, the earpiece, and now the
little plastic bit for the camera, the rubber piece for the earpiece, and the little plastic
square up top.
You will be using these on your new glass when you install it.
Be super super careful with these little ribbon cables here.
If you tweak or bend them too much they will stop working.
Grab a heat gun and heat up your screen uniformly across the whole surface so you don't have
any hot spots.
Between 70 and 95 degrees Celsius is what's worked for me in the past.
If you have a little laser temperature sensor it's really easy to keep the temperature where
you need it to be.
Now I tried removing just the frame because with the iPhone 5 and 5c and 5s, that's how
you would do it, just a glass repair.
But on this phone, the frame is very securely glued to the glass and does not come off,
unfortunately.
It makes this repair much harder.
So I took some of the smaller shards of glass and lifted them out with my razor blade.
You can see that I'm sliding the razor blade underneath the glass, not lifting up too high.
You don't want to create a teeter-totter effect and put too much pressure on the digitizer
underneath.
It's literally as fragile as an eggshell.
Now that I have a slightly wider opening I can take my playing card and use it to separate
the glass from the LCD because of the heat, that we put on it before, has kind of liquefied
the glue.
So using the combination of razor blades, heat. and playing cards we're going to accomplish
this whole repair.
Anyways, heating the phone back up to a safe temperature range again.
Remember, if you go too hot you're going to burn the LCD, so make sure to heat it up.
If it's too hot to touch you probably went too far with the heat.
I'm taking the card and sliding it between the frame and the glass and it's super important
to remember that no matter how boring I get during this repair, you're probably going
to want to watch the whole thing because I'm going to be dropping tips the whole way.
Now that we're away from the LCD and digitizer I can use my knife a little more comfortably
and I'm going to make a slot between the frame and the glass so I can slide my card, because
it really does make the repair a whole lot easier once you don't have to deal with that
frame in the way.
The card can slide between the glass and LCD.
So I'm going to heat the phone back up.
The phone cools down obviously pretty quickly so I'm going to be heating it up about every
thirty to forty seconds, just so I can stay within that safe range.
You can see that as the phone starts to cool down the card doesn't slide as well between
the glass.
I could speed this part up but then you wouldn't realize how slow and meticulous this whole
process is.
Plus removing shards of glass from an extremely fragile digitizer has got to be on pretty
much everyone's bucket list.
So consider yourselves lucky to be blessed with this fascinating spectacle as you embark
on a journey of a lifetime.
Also, don't plan for the perfect replacement.
Even though mine worked, it was not completely perfect.
This repair is best if you are already planning on buying a new screen anyway and you want
to try just the glass repair for kicks and giggles and not as a first plan of action.
Now just grab that heat gun and heat that phone up to the correct temperature again.
You can see that I'm still between the frame and the glass, so taking off this big chunk
right here is pretty easy because I don't have to deal with the frame.
Honestly, a year or two down the road, it might just be worth it to buy a whole screen
and not deal with just a glass swap.
It would be more cost-effective to buy the whole screen as a unit.
The price of the screens do drop over time.
You can check the price of current screens down in the video description below.
Now if you look up in the corner you can see the link to another video I made last year
called "Tips and Tricks: Three common mistakes that people make when replacing just the glass."
I do recommend watching that if you are serious about doing this repair yourself.
I talk about things to avoid while working on your phone.
Plus it's interesting because I actually break screens in that video.
That video was very expensive to make at the time.
As I'm getting toward the edge of the frame I take my razor blade and slide it between
the glass and the frame, and this does make it a little bit easier to get the card between
the LCD and the glass.
Once again the frame is really hard to work with.
It's a shame that it's glued on so tight.
So this repair is really hard.
Chances are you're going to just be working along, minding your own business, when out
of the blue your LCD's going to snap, and you're going to think HOLY COW! that JerryRig
guy was right.
This digitizer's really fragile.
If you lift up too high on this edge, it's going to drive the other edge into the digitizer
itself, kind of like a teeter-totter effect, so you want to make sure to slide the card
horizontally underneath the glass and not lift up too much.
Otherwise you'll end up with a broken LCD.
Also, if you heat up the screen too much, you're going to end up with yellow or burn
marks on the LCD, and that's why I say heat the whole screen up uniformly, that way you
don't concentrate the heat in one spot and cause those burn marks.
Anyway, go super super slow.
You know that feeling you get when you're driving down the road and you see a cop and
you freak out for a second because you have no idea how fast you're actually going?
You should feel that way during this entire repair.
A little bit stressed out, anxious, nervous, you never know when the whole screen's going
to break.
Kind of like finals week of college when you haven't exactly been going to all your classes.
Just kidding, Mom.
I totally went to all of my classes, like all of the days that there was class to go
to, I was definitely there.
Back to the repair, sliding the card underneath the glass still and up along the top.
This piece of glass was connected to the frame of the phone still but since we're so close
to the edge on this one, I decided not to mess with the glass, otherwise I might crack
it along the corner.
So I separated the glass from the LCD and just left it there.
And I will deal with it later since it wasn't exactly connected at this point.
This piece didn't allow me a whole lot of access to either so I didn't lift up on it,
I slid around and got this second piece off over here and then went back to that one later.
I know you'd rather be watching paint dry or grass grow, but this is extremely helpful
to the whole process done start to finish.
So hang in there.
While you're there, you might as well hit that subscribe button down below, it helps
to keep me motivated making tutorials like this in the future, also check my instagram.
I promise my life is not as boring as this video makes it seem.
I'm going to keep on removing these itty-bitty shards of glass.
Lucky for me my screen was pretty cracked up, so I can remove the glass pieces individually.
I imagine if you just have one long crack or, you know, several small cracks, it'd be
a harder repair because you don't have as many access points.
As you get close to the edge and the corners be super careful, because the screen, the
LCD, and the digitizer are much more fragile along those points, and also remember to watch
out for the ribbon cables up top.
You really don't want to bend or tweak those or put any pressure on them at all.
They are super fragile.
Slide my knife along the edge of that frame to get the glass shards off.
It really is amazing how well the frame grips the glass during this repair.
It also is interesting to note that as you get rid of the glass, the phone actually cools
down faster.
So you'll find yourself heating the phone up more and more as there's less glass on
the phone.
It kind of retains less heat than it did when there was a full sheet of glass on top.
Anyway, we are almost there.
Give me a thumbs up down below if you've managed to stay awake this long.
I promise the glass is almost off and we will continue with the repair.
I'm going to show you the glue here in just a second.
Now that the glass is off this is the LCD.
As you can see it's pretty darn dirty at the moment, but, before we start cleaning it,
I want to make sure I'm not wasting my time.
So I'm going to make sure that it still works.
Plugging it into the phone is slightly dangerous obviously, I'm going to go ahead and turn
it on.
Everything looks good so far.
Make sure to slide things around a little bit, make sure that the screen's working.
Obviously if the screen's not working at this point there's nothing you can do.
Especially if you've made sure the connections are good and everything.
And you can just scratch the repair, buy the whole screen, and put it back together again
with a new screen on it.
I'm getting the glass off the old frame, because we are going to reuse that frame with the
new glass that we bought.
Also check the video description down below, I have replacement parts and tools listed
down below.
Everything that you will need for this repair will be there.
So I'm taking a plastic pry tool and scraping the glue off of the glass.
There are two little doohickeys up at the top.
I don't know what they are, but they look important, so make sure not to scratch those
off during your cleaning process.
You're just going to take your plastic pry tool and just scrape all the glue off.
You can kind of imagine it being similar to scraping sticky gum off of an eggshell.
Except that if you break this eggshell, it will end up costing you a lot of money.
So make sure you go super slow, and be super careful.
Remember that the corners are the most fragile part of this screen, so be really careful
as you're working around the corners and the edges.
Once you're done scraping all the major glue chunks off, you can take your alcohol and
a rubbing pad and just kind of rub it around on the screen, and that will get rid of a
lot of the glue residue.
And then you take your pry tool and scrape off any remaining chunks.
The whole process took me about fifteen or twenty minutes to get the screen clean, and
you can see here that minus a few scratches, everything is still working.
The glue that I use will fill up the scratches on the phone, so you will not notice them
once the new glass is in place.
Which is nice.
Everything still works.
Make sure you turn the phone completely off before you move the LCD again.
And here is the Loca glue.
Loca is an ultraviolet activated optically clear adhesive.
It's a very complicated name, but a very simple concept.
I'm going to put the glue on.
And you want to make sure not to use too much because it is a very hard to clean substance.
It will stick on the phone, and is not easy to clean off.
Plus, along the edges, if you get glue on the edges, it will discolor your LCD.
So you want to really make sure that no glue gets on the edge of your phone.
You can see at the end of this video, my LCD did have some seepage inside, and you can
see the discoloration and the mistakes that I made towards the end.
So right now I'm just going to set the glass on top of the screen.
And this is real time, it's not sped up or slowed down, but the reason I'm doing it so
slowly is because as the glue touches the glass, you want to make sure that no air bubbles
get caught inside of there.
Because the air bubbles are hard to get rid of.
So you really just want to go slow and make sure that the glue is going in one straight
line and not grasping all the little air pockets.
So the moral of the story is to go slow.
Kind of like this video is a fairy tale that you'll watch every night before you fall asleep,
you know, slow and steady wins the race.
I should probably write like a children's book or something.
It'll probably put everybody to sleep.
So this will make your life a lot easier, if you use a mold like this.
You put the LCD in, you put the glue on, and then you put the glass exactly where you want
it on top.
Now for this video I'm not going to use a mold, just keep in mind that you want to line
it up with both the left and the right sides of the screen, keeping it the same distance
on either side.
And also keeping in mind that if you mess up even half of a millimeter, your phone's
not going to line up with the old frame that you took off of your old screen.
So now that I have it positioned over the LCD, so that you don't see the LCD anymore
I'm putting a UV light over the glue, which is causing it to cure or dry.
Without the UV light the glue would stay liquid.
So I put it over for about ten seconds or so, lifted it up and making any last minute
adjustments to the LCD that I need to.
Since I've adjusted it I'm going to glue a little bit more, which'll dry the glue a little
bit more and allow me to do any more adjustments.
Granted if you were using a frame for the phone or like a mold, you wouldn't need to
do this.
Since the screen is in the exact place where I need to I'm going to cure it the last time
for about three minutes, it should be dry.
Now here's another mistake.
As I was cleaning off the glue I would kind of force the glue into the LCD on the sides,
causing the discoloration that you see at the end of this video.
So make sure you that you avoid getting glue on the sides of the LCD if at all possible.
It'll definitely save you some time and headache later.
So with the frame of the screen, you want to use some double-sided sticky tape, and
you want to use some permanent stuff.
Because this screen does need to stay very very securely attached to the side of the
frame.
Without it, your screen will lift off.
Granted, if you have a case, that will help keep your screen attached as well.
So I would recommend putting a case on after you get this baby put back together again.
If you need to see how to put your screen back together again go ahead and click the
link it's the same one you clicked on at the beginning of this video, it'll show you how
to put the home button and the earpiece, and the whole phone back together again.
And here you go.
You can see the slight discoloration at the top and the bottom of my screen, this is from
the glue seeping into the LCD.
Other than the phone worked really really well, the LCD wasn't lined up perfectly with
the frame but it's usable, so if you were to buy a mold and if you were to keep the
glue from entering the LCD this would have been a perfect repair.
Anyway hopefully you can learn from my mistakes, hope you liked the video and if you liked
what you saw hit that subscribe button and like it, thanks for watching.
Hope to see you around.