Samsung Phone Repair
Background
Back when they were popular, I owned a phone with a sliding keyboard and touchscreen called the Samsung Galaxy Impression, and I quickly discovered a major flaw in the sliding mechanism that it relied on. It was a nice phone for what it was worth, but one day, after about a year of normal use, the display went dead. I was reluctant to open it and find the issue that had caused it to fail because I had not yet begun to regularly troubleshoot such small electronics, but I eventually gave in with the hope of at least learning something from the process.
I found many ribbons and coaxial cables that needed to be detached, and a frustrating number of tiny screws requiring me to add new screwdrivers to my arsenal before I could proceed. I figured that the issue had to be in the interface between the display and the “motherboard”, in the LCD itself, or that the unit responsible for processing display was fried. I thought that it was most likely in the interface, though, as I had had previous issues with laptop screens failing from the signal wires wearing down.
My suspicions were confirmed once I finally gained access to a few very annoyingly concealed screws which seemed to be positioned out of reach to prevent tampering, though it is more likely that I missed a step in disassembling the phone thus leaving them hidden. The ribbon responsible for communicating all display, touchscreen and backlight data had a very slight tear on one side of it, presumably from the repeated folding and unfolding that it experienced when opening and closing the phone’s keyboard. I was able to find a replacement ribbon for a few dollars online and after a few weeks, I received it in the mail.
The replacement process was easy, and upon re-assembling the phone, everything worked fine. My Aunt had the same phone and the same issue, so I tried replacing the ribbon on her phone as well but was less lucky, and the replacement didn’t fix the issue despite the visible tear in the original ribbon. I attempted to make adjustments in order to correct any misalignments that I might have caused, but the display never came back, which was disappointing. My own phone lasted for another year or so after the ribbon replacement before experiencing the same issue, at which point I decided to upgrade to something with lower risk of mechanical wear. This was my first experience with dissecting small electronics, and I have since greatly improved my process through lots of repetition and practice, but despite the tedious work that went into it, it’s a skill that I greatly appreciate.
