replacement parts

J

jamsomito

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I'll spare you my anecdote until later in the post. Bottom line is I'm looking for a new Nexus 5 screen, cheapest I can get (obviously), but more importantly I want it to be OEM, or as close to it as I can get. I'm sick of Amazon retailers labeling things as OEM when they're not. So, where would you recommend I go to get one?


Read on if you want to hear my ramblings:
I'm on my 2nd Nexus 5 screen, and I managed to break it. On the first one, just the digitizer went bad, but everything else was fine, so it was really frustrating to have to replace everything just for that. This 2nd one I'm not happy with at all. The seller claimed it was OEM, but it's clearly not - crappy screen, crappy plastic, crappy glass, just all-around not happy with it. After reading many reviews, it seems this is a common problem. Anyway, I put it on my lap in the car, which I never do, and when I got out it slid off my lap and hit the pavement. Surprisingly it didn't break. What did it in was the guy across from me who happened to step on it before I could get to it. Now, I can put up with a shattered screen for a while as long as everything works, call it an idiot mark, but the shattered part is right over the proximity sensor, so the screen will not turn on during a call making it impossible for me to enter a voicemail passcode, hang up, hang up before leaving a voicemail, hang up after leaving voicemails (it's really frustrating for everyone when I need to leave 5 minute voicemails), join conference calls with pins, 2-waycalls, you get the idea... I can't even pull the battery to hang up because it doesn't have a removable battery :mad:

First and foremost I need this thing to work. Secondly, it would be nice to have the original quality of the display back, not some cheap knock-off. Thirdly, I'm doing this to save money - I'd just jump on a cheap Nexus 6 right now, but since this phone really isn't hindering me in terms of performance, I'd like to keep it until that happens and get something much better later on. I'm ok with ~$80 for a replacement screen, as long as it's quality, but I'm also ok with $40 and having to separate things with a heat gun and re-glue. I thought about using the screen from my old phone and the digitizer from my new screen to make a fully functional one again, but I think the digitizer is part of the glass on the N5 so unless you tell me otherwise, I'm ruling that out for now.

TL;DR - where can I get good quality replacement parts for a good price? I don't trust random retailers on Amazon.
 
Went with MobileDefenders after asking a friend who works as a cell phone repairman. They also came up as a recommendation in a reply on XDA... figured those guys knew what they were talking about too.

But, it looks like every single replacement screen out there is chinese junk. Why no official OEM products (at least from LG)? I want my phone like new, no compromises... ugh.
 
The easiest way to get a real OEM screen is to buy a broken phone on eBay, where the screen isn't the broken part. Almost no one sells real OEM phone parts. I tried 3 replacement batteries for my Nexus 5, all labelled OEM and none of them were and none of them worked worth a damn. I eventually gave up and just bought another phone.
 
Yeah, sucks.

I've found that if someone is selling a broken phone, it's the screen that's broken :(.

Oh well, ordered me another chinese knock-off. At least it will work again, and I don't have to shell out $400+ for a new phone.
 
I've got a new USB board and battery off of Amazon recently for my M8, all for around $30. Phone is like new again, so I can't complain. Displays/screens are a bit harder to QC though, so I can understand the concern for getting those from a random 3rd party. Not sure where to point you for that other than what's already been suggested; buy a broken phone for its screen.
 
T4rd said:
I've got a new USB board and battery off of Amazon recently for my M8, all for around $30. Phone is like new again, so I can't complain. Displays/screens are a bit harder to QC though, so I can understand the concern for getting those from a random 3rd party. Not sure where to point you for that other than what's already been suggested; buy a broken phone for its screen.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for things like that I agree, and it wouldn't bother me as much. But I nit-pick things a lot, and having a sub-par screen is particularly frustrating. Especially when the original problem was just the digitizer.

Thx for the input though, everyone.
 
Yeah, replacement parts are a crap shoot. I'm guessing the manufacturers don't sale repair parts because they just want you to buy a new phone?

You can sometimes get recommendations on the ifixit site. They do a lot of teardowns.
 
Yeah dude, this is why I pay for phone insurance.

if I break the screen. I pay a hundred bucks and get a phone refurbed with OEM parts. It's not new, but it's a helluva lot better than I could do myself given the crap out there :D
 
defaultluser said:
Yeah dude, this is why I pay for phone insurance.

if I break the screen. I pay a hundred bucks and get a phone refurbed with OEM parts. It's not new, but it's a helluva lot better than I could do myself given the crap out there :D
Click to expand...

See, I did this with my Galaxy Nexus... paid $8/mo for 2 years without a scratch on the phone. So I cancelled the insurance and 1 week later I dropped it. That's when I got my N5. I also switched from Verizon to Ting, so even paying for the new phone I saved a ton of money the last couple years. Now, I can't justify the monthly plan savings helping the cost of a new phone because we're already paying less, and it's a bit harder pill to swallow. Consider it a baseline change. But I digress...

At $8/mo for 24 months, you're paying $192 so you have the privilege of paying $100 for a repair that I can do myself for $50... OEM parts are not worth the difference of $242 to me. I can get a refub N5 for $180 even. It just doesn't make sense IMHO.
 
OK, got my new screen installed and this one is much better quality than the last. The screen has better colors, brightness, contrast, and less screen door effect. It does have a bit of light bleed, but I can put up with that over the all around crappiness of the last one. The fit is generally better too, and the glass seems to have some sort of oliophobic coating like the original nexus 5 did... The old one would catch your finger as you swiped and it just felt cheap and nasty all the time.

So, idanno if it was mobiledefenders.com, or if it's just luck of the draw, but I'm much happier this time around. FWIW, I'd get my next one from this retailer.

EDIT: AHHH I'm so happy. I've hated this screen for so long and its finally back to the way I bought it. Sucks I don't have an excuse for a new phone anymore, but now I'll just get an even better one when its time for that finally. I'm always up for saving money too, where it makes sense.
 
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