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Smartphones are some of the most useful and flexible inventions that we get to use today. Many people will have some form of smartphone, and they can use it as a way to talk or text. However, it also runs apps, helps us keep track of things, get business done, or enjoy various entertainment options. Even more basic, inexpensive smartphones will have a number of features that their owners can enjoy on a budget.
One thing all models have in common, though, is their use of a screen. The screen is how a person can see what apps or functions are active on the phone, but it is also the usual way that they will interact with the device, too. A touch screen allows you to manipulate the various windows or programs available on the phone, and you can do this with just a few scrolls and taps.
Some owners wonder if the screens on their phones are things they can swap between models. Just as it is one of the parts of the phone with which you might interact the most, it might be one that you need to replace at some point. We will cover whether phone screens are something you can change out with other models in today’s article.
As we move along, we can try to talk about whether this practice might be worth it to the individual user. Furthermore, we will try to give some insights into why professional phone screen replacement tends to be rather expensive, and we’ll talk about losing or backing up the data on your phone prior to performing such a job.
Table of Contents
Are Phone Screens Interchangeable?
From our introduction, it is clear that the screen on your phone is one of the pieces that you’ll use the most, and it has some of the most value to offer in terms of what components the whole device has. After all, you wouldn’t be able to see or manipulate anything without a working screen.
If this was how the phone operated, it would become a basic cell phone with no access to any smart capabilities. Therefore, it is important to know how to make sure you always have access to a working screen for this device.
Part of the importance here comes from just how much the screen is in contact with other surfaces. Our phones spend a lot of time in your pockets. Even when they are in there, other objects might be bouncing around with them.
Additionally, we have a habit of laying our phones down on other surfaces or objects when we are not using them. Along with all of this, there is the unfortunate potential for people to drop their phones from a standing height, and they might land on hard surfaces as a result.
All that is to say, there is some possibility of cracking or otherwise damaging your phone in some way over the course of its lifetime. Although your typical smartphone tends to have a glass face, most manufacturers use something we can call Gorilla Glass. This is a special type of glass that developers decided to strengthen beyond the limits of the normal glass panes with which you might be familiar already.
They perform this enhancement by adding special ions that are larger and more robust than the ones you might find in glass of other types. The whole process should make your basic smartphone resistant to cracks, large fissures, or other damage.
However, as strong as these screens might be for average use, they are not immune to damage of any kind. Your screen might develop a large crack that makes viewing content difficult. If it manages to take damage in a particular way, the layer that responds to your touch could also lose some of its functionality.
In any case, replacing the screen might be something you have to do at some point. Most developers in the industry manufacture their smartphones using some fairly tight specifications that they do their best to enforce quite strictly.
Therefore, phone screens are not necessarily interchangeable. Before we move on, it is important to remember that you might be able to make a swap between one screen model and another. However, this is not a rule that you should expect.
Below is a list of some of the main things you need to figure out in order to find the compatibility of your phone with that of another model.
This list may not have all the possible things you might be able to do in order to check out the compatibility level between your phone and a replacement screen that interests you, and we cannot guarantee that checking everything off it will result in a successful match.
1. Check whether the LCD part and the touch screen itself are two parts that are together or separate.
2. Additionally, the PCB board connecting strip should match. This strip helps to link the screen to actual functions that respond to your touch.
3. Other factors you should consider will include the breadth of the screen, the corner radius, overall thickness, sensor point, the position of the front camera, and the speaker slot.
Is Replacing Your Phone Screen Worth It?
When we talk about worth here, we’re differentiating between just getting the screen of a phone fixed or replacing the phone entirely. Of course, part of the answer to this question will depend on an individual’s preferences. However, there might be some benchmarks that we can use in order to help our readers decide on the correct course for their situations.
For example, some phone screens are easier to replace than others. It is possible that, with the right tools and knowledge, you could do it yourself in a few hours. Should this be the case, it may be wiser to just get a cheap, alternative replacement for your screen instead of a whole new phone.
A more difficult repair might require you to take the phone to a qualified technician to perform the job. This could incur extra costs or wait time on your part, so having some kind of backup communication device and a budget for this would be good.
On a related note, if your phone is under warranty, it might be possible for you to have someone replace the screen for free. However, this could depend on the type of damage it sustained, and the warranty may limit what the company’s obligations are for this sort of thing.
Furthermore, you may have an exclusive or expensive flagship model. Although this might increase the cost of getting the right parts to repair the screen, it usually means that getting a different screen might be cheaper and less of a hassle than trying to replace the whole phone.
This is particularly true if you would have to front the cost of that replacement by yourself. A more exclusive model might be one that has less likelihood of interchangeability with a similar one, too.
Why Is Replacing a Phone Screen So Expensive?
In short, the screen is one of the most difficult and expensive parts to manufacture for the modern smartphone.
This difficulty level, combined with the initial cost, means that users who break their screens may need to spend a bit in order to restore them to good working order. Each screen has several layers to it, and each layer needs someone to manufacture it separately before the developers put everything together at the end.
Because smartphones have so many small or unique pieces, this is a process that can be painstaking, and most makers will use only the tightest tolerances for each layer. If anything is off, the parts will not work well together.
The motherboards inside a phone are small and complex, and builders may need to use powerful microscopes to get everything right. Much of this same process is something a technician will have to repeat when they build or install replacement screens, so the cost can be high.
Will I Lose My Data if I Replace My Phone Screen?
In most cases, you should not lose any data when you replace the screen of your phone. The data on your phone is something that it stores in its memory, and this part of it should be unaffected when you are just replacing the screen.
Do I Need To Back Up Phone Before Replacing Screen?
Although a standard screen replacement job should not do anything to your data, it might be wise to back up your files first. In fact, it is good to get into the practice of backing up all relevant or important data that you might wish to keep, and you should do this on a regular basis anyway. This is usually something you can set your phone to do automatically at various intervals for your convenience.
Conclusion
Phone screens are parts of the smartphone that users need to interact with a lot by default. Although you might be able to change one screen for another if the models are similar enough, the slight differences between so many phones means that there is no guarantee of this. Furthermore, some phone repairs for the screen might be more expensive or harder to do than others.
Although data loss should not be likely in the case of such jobs, it might be prudent to back up the files that you know you want to keep. Any kind of operation on the phone has the potential to corrupt data.