HD2 LCD replacement

Six6siX

Six6siX

Six6siX

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Joined
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Ok, so long story short, after a year and a half of no incidents, I shut a car door on my HD2..

I'm surprised at how well it held up actually, its totally fine on the surface glass, and the digitizer still works perfectly. In fact, when the screen is off/on standby you can't even tell its damaged. There is however, a hairline crack on the right hand side of the LCD panel (not bad and doesn't really affect usability, but it annoys me).

I have read around XDA Developers and there are a few guides showing the LCD replacement process (looks like a tricky one...) Problem is, is there are a couple of different types of screens and I can't really be doing with taking it all apart to find out which one I need only to re-assemble and then do it all over again to fit.

So I'm posting here on the off chance that anyone knows what type of screen the O2 UK HD2's have? Has anyone here replaced an LCD in these?

Is it the plug and play ribbon cable to the digitizer or the one that requires soldering or a combined digitizer/LCD unit?
 
It will more likely be dependent on the age of the device (as in how far along it's manufacturing cycle it was made) rather than the telco you got it from. Other examples: TFT screens in HTC Desire / San Francisco etc... You can usually work it out by serial number if that helps at all.
 
Myshra said:
It will more likely be dependent on the age of the device (as in how far along it's manufacturing cycle it was made) rather than the telco you got it from. Other examples: TFT screens in HTC Desire / San Francisco etc... You can usually work it out by serial number if that helps at all.
Click to expand...

Serial number? Ok interesting, thanks.

The reason I was thinking the network that provided it might be significant was that I got the impression through some reading that the handsets supplied to European distributors were of a different design to the US ones?
 
US phones can either be GSM like us but on frequencies used specifically in USA/Mexico (more of a configuration issue rather than a hardware thing) or CDMA, which can't be used in Europe at all. This gives us basically 3 major types: GSM Europe, GSM America and CDMA America. They will have different blueprints if you like but the core will stay the same, only the antenna design/position and radio chipset typically change on the hardware front.

Now we are really only interested in one hardware design really, GSM Europe but within this there's about 30 operators who all want their phones customised with stupid case colours, crap inbuilt apps etc... but they all crucially use the same base design. What you ideally need to find is a breakdown of a GSM HD2 and see what that's like.

As for changes as time goes on manufacturing techniques, less human interaction, quicker tooling etc... all contribute to a bottom line of production cost and foxconn & co are fast at making changes, sticking it all together may have improved screen touching by 10% and saved 3 employees who can now do something else. Ideally you want to find a couple of breakdowns of GSM HD2s (or breakdowns by EU people on XDA for example) and see if they changed over time.
 
I have done a bit more searching...

There are two different types of LCD/digitizer modules

1) Separate modules and require soldering to replace just the LCD panel, keeping the original digitizer. You can buy combined, pre soldered units but these are more expensive obviously and include the digitizer (which I don't need)

2) Separate modules but use a ribbon cable attachment between the two.

The two designs are incompatible with each other so I can't just get the ribbon cable one and if it doesn't fit, solder it!

From comments here and there it appears the EU ones use method 1 and US ones use method 2 but I can't find anything more conclusive that states that.

No luck finding anything from serial number as yet. Will keep searching for UK/EU model disassembles and comments.

Thanks
 
Another option is to buy the combined pre-soldered LCD / Digitiser (if thats the one thats needed) and sell your digitser on ebay.

I think you're gonna have to strip it to find out - its the only definite way.
 
Six6siX said:
I have done a bit more searching...

There are two different types of LCD/digitizer modules

1) Separate modules and require soldering to replace just the LCD panel, keeping the original digitizer. You can buy combined, pre soldered units but these are more expensive obviously and include the digitizer (which I don't need)

2) Separate modules but use a ribbon cable attachment between the two.

The two designs are incompatible with each other so I can't just get the ribbon cable one and if it doesn't fit, solder it!

From comments here and there it appears the EU ones use method 1 and US ones use method 2 but I can't find anything more conclusive that states that.

No luck finding anything from serial number as yet. Will keep searching for UK/EU model disassembles and comments.

Thanks
Click to expand...

The HD2 launched quite a bit later and I remember from flashing mine at the time that the US ones had a very different setup. They had a much smaller rom and I remember there being a number of other differences.

I think that the US/RoW split is likely to be the case with the HD2 screen as well
 
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