My work gave me an HTC Shadow to use. Not great, not bad. It is an acceptable phone which makes it much better than my last phone. (Sprint ppc 6700- worst phone I’ve ever used.)
Somehow I broke the LCD in the phone. I called t-mobile and since we didn’t have insurance on the phone we were out of luck. A replacement would cost over $300. That didn’t make anyone happy. While I figured out what to do, I was given a G1 as a loaner. I used that for the last couple weeks and really liked it. But what I decided to do in the mean time was order a replacement LCD and try to fix it myself.
I got a new LCD from RepairsUniverse.com for $45, including shipping. It included a little pry tool for helping with disassembly. They also have a video on youtube that shows the Shadow LCD removal process. The part arrived, I followed the video and my phone is all better. $45 and an hour or so of fun pulling apart my phone vs. over $300 to replace it. Not a bad deal. So – I recommend RepairsUniverse.com based on this experience. They would have also fixed the phone for me for an additional $25. Which might be worth it for some folks. But I really had fun doing it myself.
I do think the video, they have taken that particular phone apart a few times because getting some of the clips undone wasn’t nearly as easy at it looked in the video. I also saved because I found someone who had a nice set of Torx screwdrivers that I could use. They aren’t hard to find on the web and repair sites sell them, but I didn’t want to if I could avoid it as I don’t know that I’ll ever need them again.
I was sorry to give the G1 back, it’s a lot nicer than the shadow. Though it is quite a bit bigger, so I guess there is that. But I feel pretty confident that my next phone will be an Android based phone.
