So, we’re on day four of seven in the Caribbean, and so far it’s been a lot of fun. Other than one cloudy day, the rest of the vacation so far has been hot and sunny, which is great. As it’s still low season, the resort isn’t as packed as we’re used to, which is fine because we’ve been required to spend a lot of time doing work due to some projects we have going on back home.
Unfortunately for me, I dropped my iPhone 4 yesterday and ended up cracking the front-side protective glass. In the iPhone 3G, it would cost about $15 and some sweat and tears to replace the glass. Apparently with the iPhone 4 though it’s not possible to replace the glass by itself, since it’s firmly glued to the LCD. So, you generally have to replace the LCD unit at the same time.
I’m going to hit the Apple store in Vancouver on Saturday and see how much it will be to replace it. My options at this point are:
- Pay Apple to repair the phone. Probably between $200 and $400 I’m guessing.
- Buy a brand new phone and sell the old cracked one on eBay. As many companies are fixing the glass for $150 or so, I imagine someone will probably buy it for around $500 – $600, meaning I get a new phone for $200 – $300 after the difference.
- Buy the part myself (around $150) and fix it sometime next week
My preference is to have Apple fix it, since then I’ll at least have my original warranty in place. But if it’s too much money, I may just get a new phone and eBay the old one, or grab the part and try to fix it myself. My only real concern with the part route is that it may not be an OEM part (even though it is advertised as such), and I don’t really want to sell a phone with non-original parts in it someday.
But I’ll sort it out when I get back into town. Surprisingly the phone works completely fine despite having a smashed screen.
That sucks. I heard that the iPhone 4 is much easier to break when it is dropped which sucks because I am considering switching my Blackberry Tour for it. I’ve dropped my Blackberry Tour a countless number of times….
Paul, it should be said that it was not in a bumper/case- I’ve dropped mine in the bumper and it was surprisingly unharmed. Without one, that hard (read: brittle) glass is toast.
Speaking of an iPhone that works after some carnage, a buddy of mine had his fall out of his pocket while at the ball park earlier in the year. Completely oblivivous to this happening, he was shocked to have a voicemail at home telling him that someone found his phone at the park. Apparently the guy who found it had accidentally run it over (it was a parking lot, who’s looking for fallen phones?) and completely shattered the screen.
It still works to this day.
I’ve also dropped mine a few times without the bumper and it was fine. I think a bumper would protect you in any scenario where the sides of the phone was impacted, but wouldn’t help at all if something hit the glass directly, like a rock or a corner. It also wouldn’t protect against bending stresses (someone by the pool said their’s broke by simply being in their back pocket all day, which doesn’t surprise me since I broke the LCD on my powershot camera the same way once).
But, it would help in a lot of scenarios.