Hairy growths on my phone screen
On March 1st, my phone falls out of my jacket pocket onto the PVC/wooden floor of Aleks’ bathroom. It’s tucked into its rubber sleeve, so the fall isn’t any harder than any other day. However, it doesn’t start again afterwards.
I charge it for twenty minutes, wiggle the cord and press the power button. Then I think “I know!” and search on google fairphone shiftphone, because one of them will be my next cell phone. I haven’t read more than the first few lines of the first comparison test before the phone turns on again. You can rely on the threat of a new purchase.
But it’s not like before. So far, the display glass has only had a few inconspicuous cracks, which were caused by further dropping the cell phone a few weeks after the bloody display replacement in summer 2021. One of these cracks develops over the next few days into a thick gray line that sometimes blinks ominously at night.
Then red hair grows on the sides of this gray line, they look like the roots of ivy. Hair is becoming more numerous and longer. I’ve watched enough horror movies and novels to know that hairy growths appearing where there weren’t before is an inexorably progressive and fatal process.
Minutes before the exchange, a quick photo was taken with Aleks’ mobile phone
I order a replacement display from Ebay. Now it’s cheaper than last time, it only costs 30 euros. My lovely multi-piece cell phone repair tool kit is in Berlin, where I’m not, but the replacement part comes with two special screwdrivers that may fit (“gift only, no complaints, no return policy”).
When I started writing this post, the display was still in a distribution center. It’s now been loaded onto a delivery vehicle, so I’m confident of being able to make the replacement before the red hairs eat up my entire display and spread to the rest of the household.
Update: One of the two free screwdrivers fitted and this time replacing it only took a quarter of an hour. I spent another three quarters of an hour scraping the very good sticky glue from the last time out of the phone.
(Kathrin Passig)