Not quite my first phone repair

But it might as well be with how long it's been. The last time I did smartphone repairs was back in 2016 on an iPhone 4S which couldn't connect to WiFi anymore. I tried switching the antenna but, alas, it wasn't enough. But enough about old stuff.

The actual repair

This time, I gave a shot to an Android phone. Specifically a Samsung Galaxy A33.

Armed with the tools they give you when you order the cheapest screen on Aliexpress and an iFixIt kit, I did a full teardown of the phone.

Build quality

Overall, this phone is very well built.

The frame is solid metal, the screen is actual glass and the only plastic piece on it was the back of it. That's an A+ in my books.

Though, I still have some comments about the way it's built.

Samsung, in recent years, started using a ton of glue for everything. Glue is fine, to an extend, but some things are not meant to be glued down. Also, some of it really feels like a middle finger to the independent repair shops. For example, back in 2010, when the iPhone 4 came out, the battery was glued down. Much like it is in this phone. But on the iPhone, the battery had a pull tab to help technicians take it apart.

On the Samsung, I had to order new tools and douse the case in alcohol to weaken the adhesive before I could dare to try and pry the battery out with a plastic tool. This phone has been built with some modularity in mind. For example, it is very easy to replace the mainboard and the daughterboard. It's also fairly easy to replace the main camera. But everything else, it's gonna make you work for it.

Tough luck for me. Because to replace the screen, you need to take everything out of the phone and place everything into the new frame. I could have ordered only the LCD without the frame but after seeing the amount of adhesive I had to deal with to remove the back of the phone and the accessories behind the mainboard, I wouldn't dare to try and pry that LCD off the frame.

Speaking of the accessories, removing some of them really was quite the task. For example, the microphone is obviously glued in. I had to pry on it with a plastic spatula while gripping and twisting it with plyers for it to finally gave out. It came out unsacred, which I can't say about the speaker.

I don't know if it's a build quality issue, if this one specifically was bad or if it's the very cheap plastic frame, but this one just came apart as soon as I tried to pry it out of it's place.

Of course, plopping it back together made it "functional" but barely. I wouldn't use it for anything.

Reassembly

Once everything was taken out of the old phone, it was time to put it back together in the new frame.

I didn't bother getting out the superglue for that one. The point of this repair was to get the data back out of it. So it didn't need to look nice.

The screen I ordered off Aliexpress. The reason being that an official Samsung part costs CHF130. This one was CHF20. Though, that being said, even at that price, I can't recommend it. This frame is missing some key components on top of having what is probably the worst screen I've seen in person.

This frame is, most notably, missing everything metal that isn't the frame itself. Like the copper strip meant to cool the CPU or the tiny metal frame made to keep the volume and lock buttons in place. Opting to use, ironically, glue instead.

Unfortunately, I couldn't put the copper strip back in without taking the whole display assembly apart. So the phone is very slow and gets very hot.

As for the side buttons, I had to take the tiny metal frame off of the old phone to put it in the new frame. Without it, the buttons wouldn't work reliably. This was a very easy fix.

Once reassembled, I booted the phone and was greeted by the worst screen I've seen in person. I know it's typical for repair shop to recommend OEM parts for replacements because of the sensitivity of the touch screen or the size of the bezels but this one is even worse than that. Turns out, the screen I ordered wasn't Oled. When I ordered it, I thought it would be fine since I only needed it to work enough to get data out of it. But not only was this screen a regular old LCD, but a TN panel as well. Meaning the colors and the viewing angles are somehow worse than the ones on my Fujitsu laptop from 1999.

Add to that the overheating issue from the reseller being cheap and not including the heatsink and other accessories, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Cost

As you can imagine, with all the issues that popped up, this repair was pretty cheap.

I paid :

After this repair, I couldn't feel good asking for any money. It's a disaster. The phone I wouldn't consider usable. My friend, who gave me this to try and repair it, was still alright with it because he really only needed the data but I couldn't bring myself to even ask him to pay for the screen or even the battery.

I billed him a coffee. Which is a lot cheaper than if he had gone to a regular repair shop, but for a much lesser quality repair.



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