I’m very careful with my iPhone; I keep it in a case, it has it’s very own pocket
in my purse and I never let kids play with it, but still I’m no stranger to that awful
heart-in-my-throat feeling that you get when you drop your iPhone.
If you’re unlucky and it hits the ground just the right way, you can say bye-bye to
your beautiful retina display.
Hi, I'm MJ with iFixit, and today I'm going to show you how to replace the front panel
on your iPhone 4.
This video is just an overview, so as I repair this phone, I’ll try to give you some helpful
tips on the trickier parts.
When you replace the front panel on your iPhone, you'll want to follow the step-by-step instructions
in the repair guide on our site.
It’s not an especially difficult repair, but it is more complicated than replacing
the front panel on previous generations of the iPhone.
For this repair your going to need a few tools:
A Paper Clip, a set of Plastic Opening Tools, a Phillips #00 Screwdriver & Small Flathead
Screwdriver, both of which are in our 26 piece bit driver kit,
A plastic spudger, our replacement front panel and a screw tray which isn’t totally necessary,
but I’d really recommend it because there are a lot of steps and even more screws.
As I follow the repair guide on our site, I like to label the compartment with the steps
that the screws came from and this helps keep them organized a lot better.
All these things you can find at iFixit.com.
Now there's a chance that Apple didn't use phillips screws in your iPhone.
Apple has also been use a 5 point tamper resistant screw, and if your phone has those you'll
want to check out our iPhone 4 Liberation kit that comes with the driver you will need
to get those screws out.
Before you get begin, make sure the sleep button is activated and the phone is powered
down.
Once that is done you can get started by removing the two phillips screws down by the dock connector.
With those screws removed this rear panel is just going to slide up and I can remove
it.
Now the next step is to remove the battery.
There’s only one screw to take out so that's pretty easy.
And then I am going to use my plastic opening tool to disconnect this connector.
And once the connector is disconnected I can use this plastic pull tab to remove the battery,
or if there's a lot of adhesive underneath and that's kind of tough I can use an iPod
opening to to pry up around the edge.
Let's try the pull tab.
Now I've got the battery out.
With the battery out, we're going to remove the SIM card and for that I am going to use
my paper clip I’ll just insert my paperclip.
There we go.
Our next step is to remove the logic board and that's being held in place by lots of
screws and a few cables so I will go ahead and remove those.
With the connector cover removed, you can see all of the connectors and the screw we’ll
have to remove to get to the logic board, so I’ll go ahead and take care of those.
Ok, we’re almost there.
Before we arrive at the front panel we’ll have to remove the speaker enclosure, the
vibrator and several screws that hold the front panel to the steel frame.
There are 6 screws on either side of the phone that have some of the smallest washers I have
ever seen, so a quick note for reassembling your phone, I like to stand it up on it's
side like this and then place the washer in place.
They're really, really small so it can get frustrating.
But this method has worked the best for me.
Now that I have practically filled my screw tray with screws, they are all remove and
I can use plastic opening tool to start to pry the front panel away from the steel frame.
There is some adhesive down by the home button, so don't be surprised when that is a little
more stuck than the rest.
When you've got that end free don't just yank these two things apart, there are still cables
that need to be gently de-routed.
It's off!
So, now we're going to put on our new front panel , and when you're doing this be careful
not to fold or pinch these ribbon cables, because that could damage them and then there
would not be enough slack to reconnect them.
When the front panel is installed properly, there should be plenty of slack in the cables
and they should be roughly the same length.
Now all that's left for me to do is reassembly my iPhone, and I am glad I organized these
screws because that might take me a while.
Of course, you can find all the parts and tools you'll need for this and many other
repairs at iFixit.com.
And if you run into problems during your repairs, there are tons of resources available on the
iPhone 4 repair manual.
Thanks for watching, and happy repairing!