After almost three years I the glass of my OnePlus One broke. A repair shop in town refused to repair it, because it was a “not so common” model (i.e. no Apple or Samsung phone).
The good thing is there’re several tear-down/screen replacement guides on the Internet. Also the screen + touch digitizer assembly + tools can be ordered from Amazon (for around 40€).
The phone is fairly easy to disassemble, and there’re tons of videos showing you the step by step (dis-)assembly.
There’s not much adhesives and it’s not very strong, so they’re not much of an issue (except the one for the battery, see below).
There’re still a few points to look out for:
- the adhesive for the battery will deform the red wrapper around the battery
- beware of the antenna connector behind the main board
- don’t remove the ear piece speaker. It will more easily come apart than come out (and cost you around 3-5 € and 2-6 weeks of waiting time for a replacement) … been there, done that. 😐
- there’s a thin black frame around the screen, don’t remove it. It has a small ledge on the inside where the screen assembly is fixed to with adhesive.
- It’s quite a tedious task to heat up the corners of the screen frame and remove the old screen especially if it has splintered … and splinters of glass in the corners are the worst. 😫
In the end I managed to repair it, but the ribbon cable coming from the display is 3-5mm to long so it’s pushing on the display from below. After a few days one side of display separated from the adhesive tape below opening a gap. 😕