Try to learn something about everything, and everything about somethingThomas Huxley “Darwin's bulldog” (1824-1895)

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Make It Tea

Fairphone6 Screen

I dropped my relatively new Fairphone6, face down, on a pavement, on the way into a supermarket in the run up to Christmas - going in to do the annual Christmas-battle-trolleys food shop. I picked it up, fearing the worst and found just a small chipped/cracked area at the bottom left of the screen. Just where the *back* arrow softkey is. It worked, but the cracks extended across the screen, and the focal point of the break was slowly crumbling into glass-dust. And every time I swiped my thumb across the *back* softkey I was worried it'd start depositing slivers of glass in my flesh.

I waited a couple of months, trying to ignore it.

I know one of the major reasons for owning a Fairphone is that they are user-repairable, with parts easily available and easily replaceable. But I wanted to wait until the desire to fix it overcame my reluctance to spend money. (I'm on a no-buy. Spending money to fix things *is* acceptable in my self-imposed rules, but somehow I now find it difficult to spend *any* money that isn't strictly necessary. The phone still worked, so it took some mental bullying to force myself to spend to fix it.)

Last week I ordered the screen and a Torx-5 screwdriver from the Fairphone website. Today it arrived. It took me less than 10 minutes to take the phone apart, replace the screen and put it back together again.

The hardest part was unclicking the plastic locking tabs on the top-rear cover. Using a guitar plectrum. But it wasn't *that* difficult.

Once back together the phone booted up and the screen is perfect.


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