One of the other things beside my bike and me that got damaged during my little oops back in December was my personal Galaxy S5 phone. I had it in the same pocket as a set of keys (dumb…) and when I hit the ground, even though the phone itself survived, the rear facing camera got smacked, the glass cover for it got broken and it didn’t want to properly focus anymore.
Back a while ago when I had to replace an iPhone battery, I found ifixit.com. They have a great selection of not only tools and replacement parts, but also very detailed pictorial guides for performing the various repairs.
Unfortunately, the S5 requires pretty much a complete tear down to the motherboard to replace that rear facing camera, so here goes:
It took me a little over an hour to do the entire repair once I got everything gathered together and ready to go. As you may notice in the video, the longest and most fiddly part of the repair was getting the screen off – without breaking it or the connections to home button or the soft buttons at the bottom of the display.
All went well. The phone works perfectly, and the object of the repair – the camera – also works perfectly again. All buttons and sound i/o devices work perfectly as well. The actual camera only cost 40 bucks and the mini-kit of tools was roughly another 40. Not that I’m doing a commercial for ifixit.com, but they do quite a nice job with this stuff and with the basic philosophy that “Repair is Noble” they feed that old Yankee side of me that believes in “Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do or Do Without”. There is no reason in the world why a small bit of damage like this to my phone should have to result in trashing the whole device and having to buy a new one.
REPAIR!! Yet another sentiment of the true Luddite…