Today, literally everyone has a cell phone. Some people even have two or three. We all have that friend that needs to get theirs repaired. We have all heard of that person that dropped their phone in the toilet, ran over it in the driveway, threw it at the wall, or the mysterious; “I don’t know what happened.” So we asked a local cell phone repair store what the most common repair was. According to Cell Phone City in Fort Wayne Indiana, broken screens are the most common cell phone repairs of all. They said that 7 out of 10 repairs are screen related, on average.
The good news is, there are plenty of local repair shops across the country and now there are even some large franchises that can fix your cell phone screen, on the same day. Most repairs shops have access to high-quality aftermarket replacement screens and do a pretty good job fixing them.
At Cell Phone City, they suggested that consumers check the reviews of the repair shop they choose, before getting the repair done. The worst repair shops are usually the cheapest. It is the only way for them to maintain a steady stream of customers. The best repair shops tend to be in the middle when it comes to price, but their reviews usually stand out. When a store takes pride in there work, it shows and their customers generally are open and upfront about their experience.
The bad news is, all of the most common phones, from Apple to Samsung, are at least $200-$300 to have the screen replaced. Some are even more. Why are cell phone screens so expensive, it’s just a piece of glass, right? No, that is not correct. All modern, high-end cell phone screens are 7-10 individual components that are actually bonded to each other with very strong optically clear adhesives. Even though the videos on YouTube make it look easy, it’s actually very difficult and nearly impossible in many situations to separate those layers without damaging the OLED. This requires the entire screen, or all the layers to be replaced, even if only one or two of the layers was damaged.
OLED screens are the most common technology being used on cell phone screens. While OLED is a very nice looking screen and does provide the user with one of the best viewing experiences possible, the screens are very expensive to manufacture compared to the alternatives (LED, LCD). This results in a limited amount of screens available to repair your phone, which of course makes it more expensive to complete the repair.
Cell Phone manufacturers have spent the last 10 years trying to engineer a way to keep consumers from repairing their devices. It seems that they may have figured it out. As a consumer, if you want to keep your cell phone for a long time, be careful and always find a top of the line repair shop for your devices.