work of art

broken iphone

My iPhone Screen shattered over the weekend. After I looked up how much a replacement screen is, I taped up my screen and guess what, it still works. In only 48 hours I’ve come across 5 (!) iPhone users that also have a taped up screen and are not even considering getting it repaired, as paying $200 for a new glass seems outrageous.

So, here I am, embracing my taped up iPhone and ask you, my lovely readers, to also, proudly share yours in this Flickr Group I just started.

My iPhone’s not broken, it’s a work of art.

33 Comments leave a comment below

  1. I stepped on my first gen iphone which lead to some interesting lines in the LCD. I took it into a shady phone repair place (the first gen iphones aren’t supported by Apple Canada) and it was going to be $400 to fix.

    I like the lines…. they move around all the time, it’s like an adventure!!!

  2. Hurts my apple-heart :o(

  3. I like the way you turn things around about sad or problematic things. I can’t wait the posts of someone else “tape” pieces of art. :)

  4. The last version of the iPhone had the glass glued to the LCD screen. So when they broke, they broke the LCD too.

  5. I dropped my iPhone a few too many times and the LCD cracked but the glass stayed intact. The screen is now dead in the lower left hand side and it looks like it’s getting worse day by day. I expect by the time the next iPhone comes out, the entire bottom centimeter of the screen will be dead.

    The weird thing is, if you look at the screen in bright light, you can see it still works.

  6. i dropped mine on cement and just broke the upper corner of it and it stayed like that for months. then i recently dropped it again and it did the full spiderweb across the front. fortunately for me i had a friend who is a mac genius and he took care of it for me. and i just put a little rubber incase shell around it so i don’t break it before the new one comes out (which of course i’ll have to get)

  7. I dropped mine and it shattered pretty badly, but was still fully functional.

    To avoid slicing my fingertips on the shards, I applied a screen protector that I had lying around. It worked pretty well, despite the crunchy glass feeling underneath and the difficulty reading certain portions of the display.

    I didn’t hold out for long, and got a good deal on a refurbished 3G model through AT&T. Not sure what to do with my old banged-up original.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachmiller/3445384466/

  8. I dropped my laptop charger on mine, right where the home button is, and it shattered. Luckily, I had a screen protector on, so all of the glass is still in place. This happened in September, and it’s still going strong! (Well, the glass is. I dropped it on the street more recently and now the power button doesn’t work.)

  9. Seems to happen to the best of us. If you’re in LA anytime soon you could take it to Joe Kempe “iPod Surgeon.”

    http://www.ipodrepairclinic.com/#

    Joe replaced the LCD screen on my iPhone in 10 minutes and charged me $95 (a pretty standard cost at Joe’s place). Beats dropping hundreds on a new phone.

  10. well maybe you can try using these tapes from Carrie Chau (http://ilovestickytape.blogspot.com/2009/04/carrie-chau-tape-wun-ying-collection.html) Transparent with the pretty pretty art at the side to ‘bandage’ your iphone

    :)

  11. are you taking a picture of the broken iPhone with another iPhone? that would be classic….

  12. weirdly enough this happened to me over the weekend as well. I have been looking at repair services, ebay has a bunch of repair guys ranging from $59 – $90 but you have to pay for shipping to them.

  13. New iPhones coming in July.

  14. Or sooner, if Apple is on the ball.

  15. After Marcel Duchamp worked on the “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors” (aka “the large glass) for over 8 years, he finally declared his work complete when some museum workers accidentally shattered the glass in transit. The spider-web like design serendipitously added the completing element to his work. And now your iPhone is perfect.

  16. I had mine taped for about 10 months before I realized that the “screen protector” stickers that they sell in packs of 5 for about $10 would work way better than the tape, which I had to replace every couple months. I’m going on 12 months now of cracked screen. Can’t wait until the new one is released. On the positive side, I never worry about dropping my iphone, which is nice.

  17. LOL! As much as I love your initiative, I hope my iPod Touch’s screen is not broken in a near future, or at all.

  18. but I was thinking, may be next monday Apple will present the new iPhone, so you were going to replace it anyway… hehe ;D

  19. I dropped my Nano 20 floors and it lasted four days. People didn’t understand why I didn’t get a new one under warranty. These people have never worked in retail.

  20. my iPod classic 5G once got soaked during a thunderstorm. didn’t work for a month. now it does again!

  21. o noooooooooooooooooo!

  22. Did you check Mikey’s Hook Up on Front Street?
    http://www.mikeyshookup.com

  23. I got mine wet last week and the screen became discolored and strange looking but it still works. The next day I drove out of my brothers driveway and down the street with it on my roof of my car and it slid off and hit the pavement at 30mph. Not a bit of damage except a few scratches on the bezel. Amazing. I swear by this device.

  24. Oh, it’s art. Now I understand all those cracked windshields. ;)

  25. I had a dream a few nights ago and in it I tragically dropped my first generation iPhone – we were both shattered! All I can say is I hope some dreams never come true and do yourself a favor and invest in a sturdy case, my DLO has nice beefy corners that have saved my screen after a couple of tumps. And forget the cheesy screen protection films, a waste of time and money and they scratch wicked easy – I messed with them for a couple of months and they’re just a pain in the ass – it’s been almost a year and a half and my screen, it’s glass after all, looks perfect.

    HMK

  26. that sucks…but I love the flickr group…I can’t believe how bad some iphones are and are still working!!

  27. sorry for being a hater about all this but –
    wow. look at the world we live in.

  28. My friend also keeps the tapped iPhone. He can’t let go. And who blames him for that. He paid a crap load of money for it!

  29. http://www.thepocketsolution.com/PSI-35752/Apple+iPhone+Hi-Def+Screen+Film+(screen+cover).html

    i did the same thing and am using this screen cover (works perfectly) until the new phone comes out

  30. Mine just recently stopped working for no reason. I’ve only dropped the thing maybe once in its two year life, and one day it just stopped responding to touch. Bah!

  31. i was charging my iPhone 3Gs and it got stepped on a few days ago by one of my friends. The glass screen wasn’t damaged (thank God) but there is a little crack on the LCD and it seems to be bleeding (but the bleeding gets less every day)
    Until now i am still sad about it and i even cried at the mall (O_O) when they said it had to be taken to the main office where they’ll check if my warranty is void. (oh dear Lord, I hope it isn’t!)
    Its nice that you guys see the bright side of things and see your broken iPhones as a ‘work of art’. I wish I could see the same thing. :(
    i will be getting the news on whether it can be fixed/replaced or not within 2 weeks. I will be praying hard ’til then.

  32. I had to tape my iphone screen back together too just now. It seems to be working allright, I just hope it won’t get destroyed in my pocket tomorrow (or at all)