The Case of the Broken Dock Connector and the Sinister Phone-Buying Conspiracy

My Problem

I know a lot of people lie about why their phones break. They tell the people at the Apple store that they swear they have no idea what could have possibly made their phone stop working as images of them flying out of a water slide and splash into a pool go through their minds. However, I charged my phone on a Monday night and then was unable to charge it on Tuesday afternoon. The phone, unable to feed itself the electricity it needed, slowly and pitiably wasted away.

My warranty was long past and I wasn't eligible for an upgrade for two months, so I found myself with this dilemma: buy a phone at retail for between $500-$750 or buy a flip phone or, to take a page from the TV show "The Wire," and buy a "burner."

Unless there was another way...

My Fix

The repair was stressful and took a little more than an hour. I had the help of a friend who had performed a battery transplant recently, though his support was more moral than technical. I felt the Fear when I detached the battery and a small metal piece went airborne--note: You never want anything airborne during phone repair--but I recovered the piece and everything was cool.

My Advice

The best advice I could give is to be patient and to make sure you are following the directions properly. The hardest part is that sometimes you have to be a bit rough with some very fragile pieces. Take heart! The directions are good, look at all the pictures, use an ice cube tray to house the screws and miscellaneous parts, and have confidence that you can save yourself hundreds of dollars and/or the shame of using a burner in a non-drug dealing professional setting.