A little while ago, I dropped my phone on pavement and cracked the corner of my screen. It didn’t affect the display or the camera so I didn’t think much of it and never got it fixed. It wasn’t even that bad.. I found the photo above on Google but the damage looks similar.

Fast forward to last week when the iPhone 7 preorder was announced.. The deal was too good to pass up! Trade in my phone and only pay $250 for a new phone?? SIGN ME UP! But in order to trade in my phone, I had to get my screen fixed.

My dad had just fixed my brother’s camera after learning how to do it from a YouTube video and was feeling super confident that he could fix my screen. I mean, why pay someone $80+ to do it when we can do it at home for $20?! When the new screen came in the mail, we sat down at the dining table, rewatched the YouTube video, and took apart my phone.

The screws and pieces were so tiny. It almost felt like we were doing surgery. Finally, we connected everything back together and…

Blue screen of death.

YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME.

For the next three hours, we took it apart, put it back together, took it apart, put it back together.. But my phone was dunzo.

Apparently, Apple likes to be tricky. There’s a small panel held down by 4 tiny screws: two 1.7mm screws, one 1.3mm screw, and one 1.2mm screw. If you screw in even the 1.3mm screw where the 1.2mm screw is supposed to go, you scratch up and destroy the motherboard.

RIP iPhone 5s. 🙁

I went on a search for someone to fix my phone, which I found out online would require micro soldering. Luckily, I found Sunset Wireless in LA. They told me it depended on the extent of damage but they couldn’t guarantee a fix. Two days later, my phone was fixed and alive again!

Lesson learned.. When following directions that say not to mix up the screws, don’t let your dad say “no it looks the same” and DEFINITELY don’t let your dad swirl all the screws together, mixing them all up.