Wesley's Tool-Box

After replacing the entire display assembly on my iPhone 6 Plus, everything seemed to be okay, except for one thing. The Touch ID sensor was not working for some reason, and it wouldn't respond to my fingerprint touches. The home button itself was working, and I could press it to go back to the home screen or call up the multitasking view.

When I went to the Settings app, Touch ID option was disabled. When I tried to re-enable it, the process immediately failed, showing the above on the screen. Also, the Reachability function that brings the screen area down half way did not work, either. This relied on lightly touching the home button quickly twice, so it must have been recognizing the fingerprint to function.


I remembered that the Touch ID cable on the display assembly's shield plate got weak while applying heat to loosen the adhesive. Thinking that maybe the connector was damaged, I ordered some replacement shield plates with the Touch ID cable on them.

Seeing that the glue can no longer cleanly fix the cracked screen, I decided to order a 3rd party replacement display assembly for my iPhone 6 Plus. Currently, they're pretty expensive - easily fetching more than US$300 with shipping cost extra - and some sellers don't really have them in stock or ask for more money once you pay the listed price. In my case, it took me three tries to get one shipped, paying about $260 for the display and $35 for shipping.

With the replacement in hand, I started disassembling the phone. After removing two pentalobe screws on the bottom and lifting the screen with a suction cup, I was able to easily disconnect the display assembly from the rest of the phone. All I needed to do was to take off the five screws holding the cable bracket, and then carefully disconnect the four cables from the display assembly.


But there were a lot of modules on the display assembly that had to be separated. They did not come with the replacement display, so they had to be re-used. And in the case of the home button, the integrated Touch ID sensor is uniquely paired with the phone and any replacement will not have the fingerprint sensing enabled due to security reasons.

So I carefully removed the earpiece speaker and the front-side camera & sensor assembly on top, and then the home button on the bottom. Where they were stuck using adhesives, I used a heat gun at a setting of 50C (122F) to loosen them.

I had been using my iPhone 6 Plus with the repaired screen for a few weeks without issues. But one day, I put the phone down on the desk a bit hard... and the screen somehow cracked like crazy even though the screen was facing up. I suppose the previous incident weakened the screen already and this was sort of a final blow.

You can see that the cracks occurred near the original hairline cracks and spread dramatically. Much of the original cracks were held together by the glue, but the nearby areas were already vulnerable to crack anyway. While the touch screen functionality was not affected, the cracks undermined the safety of my fingers and the visibility. It was time to try the Screen Glue again.

I've cracked the back side of an iPhone when it was made of glass, but never the front side. That changed with iPhone 6 Plus - the screen got hairline cracks when the device was dropped from about 50cm (1 1/2 feet) high onto a brick road. Getting an iPhone bought overseas serviced by an Apple designated service center in Korea isn't possible due to local warranty (as opposed to world-wide), so I looked for other ways to get this fixed.


This is when I found this "Screen Glue" manufactured by DiYPRO which claimed to fix screen cracks by filling the gaps with a UV-curing glue. The package, which costs about US$17, comes with 5 ml of the glue and a sheet of instructions. Frankly, the price seemed steep for the amount of glue provided, but if it could get the job done, I thought it wasn't too bad. So I bought a bottle and got to work.

There's been an uptick in interest in viewing contents in 3D due to many movies being created and shown in 3D format and televisions adding 3D support to accommodate them. Unfortunately, you need wear a specialized pair of glasses in order to see these 3D contents, making the experience cumbersome. Hence the glasses-free methods are being sought after. There have been some success with this in the handhelds due to needing only one set of eyes to care for, such as the Nintendo 3DS.

While Nintendo 3DS employs an active solution that uses head-tracking, a passive method that uses lenticular lenses exists as well. EyeFly3D is bringing the latter to the smartphones, so that anyone with a compatible device can enjoy 3D contents without wearing any glasses. It's certainly an intriguing concept, and as luck would have it, TodaysPPC provided me with a sample that was compatible with my iPhone 5S with the condition that I write a review. So I eagerly took upon the request.

As you can see here, the EyeFly3D package looks nearly the same as what you would get when you order a set of a regular screen protection film. That's because the product itself is just that - a screen protection film. It just has the added benefit of enabling glasses-free 3D viewing with the use of the lenticular lenses. To avoid redundancy and maximize the effect of the lenses, one is instructed to remove any existing screen protectors before installation.


You can see the blurring effects of the lenticular lenses here, which makes it evident that the regular film covers the area outside where the display is supposed to be. You'll also notice the black tape with the EyeFly3D logo on it that covers the bottom of the film. This is an important feature that we'll see in action shortly.