Welcome to the busted crack phone club. Like me you were once a proud owner of a fully functional iphone and now it is the laughing stock of the dinner table. You probably also had a case on it like I did and found the one way to drop and crack the screen! Guess what, it still fully functions...just has a giant crack...or worse...spider webbing!

Well after spending a ton of time looking for DIY repairs I came across this youtube video of a guy hacking away at his broken screen with a kitchen knife! AAh it was terrifying but he had a point. I bought the necessary replacement parts on ebay($5) I suggest buying to replacement glass pieces(jic). The kits that come with the removal pieces don't really work. Go to target and buy a kitchen scraper tool it works much better. Also go to Home Depot and buy some paint thinner.

Now that you have your tools(if you are electronically uninclined like I am pass your phone and tools to a trustworthy techy friend) I gave the phone to my brother. He painstakingly scraped off all the glass from the front of the iphone. No need to do the crazy back removal and deal with all of those tiny wires. It takes about two hours, and you will want gear to protect your eyes and a space you don't mind being covered in tiny glass shards.Now you have to apply pressure to remove the glass from the glue but not so much that you crack the digitizer. If you have someone with a phone that no longer functions practice on that one first to find the pressure balance.

Once all the glass is scraped off use the paint thinner to remove the intensely sticky glue that apple uses to attach the screen to the digitizer. He placed the new ebay glass on the phone and used my griffin case to hold it in place. He opted out of re gluing because the process was kind of lengthy. Now if I break it again(and I did) I can just buy new glass from ebay and place it in the case.

On a sidenote, the responsiveness of the screen is decreased because the glass is not glued down. Google maps is really the only app that has problems with this, and it is only the zoom in and out function with two fingers that is the worst offender. To correct this just put the phone in sleep mode and then press the home button and it resets the touch screen sensitivity.

Good luck fixing!! If your phone is beyond repair you can read my write-up and review of a site that lets you get a free iphone 3GS. Just click here. Please leave comments of your attempted fixes or free iphone success stories on my hub. Thank you!