When electronics break or malfunction there are two things you can do if you don’t want to pay for repairs. You can sell it cheap or you can fix it yourself. I like to fix it myself if I think I can, so when I saw an HTC EVO 3D at a garage sale for $10, I had to ask what was wrong with it. The seller told me “the screen acts like you’re touching it sometimes and gets all crazy”, so I bought it with the hope that I could fix it. Sure enough, another $14 and an hour of my time was all it took. Below are the instructions on how to do this yourself. Read them all the way through before starting, click any photo to super size it, and comment below with any questions. Now let’s get started.
1. Buy a new digitizer. Check ebay and you should be able to find one for under $15. The one I bought from etechnotics came with a T5 screwdriver a Phillips screwdriver, and two spudger pry tools.
2. Remove back cover. This is pretty simple to do and likely you’ve done it before.
3. With the cover off, remove battery and MicroSD card.
4. Remove the six screws shown. There are two Phillips screws half way up the phone on the edges, and there are four T5 screws on the corners.
5. Remove the small plastic piece at the top of the phone with a spudger.
6. Remove the back inner housing with a spudger carefully. Be sure not to break anything.
7. With tweezers, remove the three pieces of yellow tape from the connectors.
8. Now disconnect the four flex cables shown. Be careful not to damage them!
9. Remove two silver Phillips screws pointed to in the photo. This will loosen up the board.
10. Flip the piece shown up as you can see in the photo and carefully pull back the board from the top end, being careful about the remaining flex cables that are still connected.
11. Pull back the silver cover tape just enough to reveal these two flex cables and then disconnect them.
12. While you’re at it, unplug the antenna cable.
13. Now for the hard part. Pry the glass away from the screen as shown with a spudger. You can try to loosen the glue with a heat gun or hair dryer, but be very careful about the amount of heat you use as it can damage the components.
14. Pry the screen out of the case in the same way, being mindful of the flex cables. Be very careful here. I nearly damaged the screen being impatient. When complete, you should have three pieces as shown.
15. Clean up any leftover glue between the screen and the digitizer and replace with thin strips of double-sided tape.
16. Peel the backing off of your new digitizer and carefully line it up with the screen, pressing it firmly in place when lined up.
17. Finally, just reverse the steps to put it back together (don’t forget to reconnect ALL the cables).