Cracked Screen

Disaster hath struck:


I've been running my tablets "naked" (shorthand for without a screen protector) and it's finally taken a toll.

How it happened: The Note was balanced right on the edge of stability on the table edge. A small nudge sent it flipping over and it landed flat, face down, on a tile floor.

Interestingly, I've dropped the Nook 3-4 times now, and its screen is still in perfect condition. I think there are two main differences here;
  1. The Nook has a smaller screen, so for a given thickness of glass the aspect ratio (diagonal to thickness) is smaller for the smaller screen, providing added strength.
  2. The Nook impacts have all been at an angle and not face-on.
Repair: I always like to do things myself, but after watching a few videos on removing the screen on YouTube, I opted to find some professionals with some more experience. The screen replacement cost $130, about half as much as I had initially purchased the tablet for on ebay (ouch!). The screen repair shop I went to was very professional though - they had obviously done this before (they had 2-3 Note's sitting in various stages of disrepair) and had a good turn-around time of four days (including the weekend).

The one down-side is that they weren't able to source the dark-gray screen, so the front of my tablet is now white:


But it works mostly as well as before! The new digitizer works well with the pen - it's responsive and there are no dead-zones. But there are a couple of new dead-zones for touch (right where the spacebar / web navigation tab is in portrait mode. Unfortunately, that is really annoying spot for a dead zone. Still it works, and works well enough.

Guess it's time to invest in a case.

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