It was only after we got home, brought everything in from the car and settled in that I realized my phone was still in my pocket. I pulled it out and all looked well and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was only when I made a call to a buddy a little later that I realized that I had damaged the LCD. There was now a 1 inch long diagonal purple colored line in the top right corner where it was bleeding under the digitizer. There was nothing wrong with the digitizer itself. I used it this way for a couple of days, but it was annoying the heck out of me. I wanted my device to be perfect like it had been.
Having replaced the digitizer once already when I first got the phone, I figured I was up to the challenge of replacing the LCD. My volume buttons, especially the up, and my power button had been becoming more difficult to use as of late, so I figured that I'd order all of the parts required to completely recondition and repair it. So I ordered the bottom button strip, the volume/camera flex cable, a new LCD, and since I was going to have it apart, new loud speaker and receiver. I continued using the device, but waited with anticipation for my parts to arrive.
They finally arrived Monday afternoon. I prepped my kitchen table and began the repair. It was only after I opened it and began the tear-down that I remembered that it was no small task to repair the last time. In fact my best friend stopped by while I was working on it and reminded me that the first time I fixed it I had told him that it was crazy difficult and that I swore I would never do it again and leave it up to professionals. No truer words were ever spoken.
While the tear-down went relativity easy, the reassembly was a bitch. Trying to feed the ribbon cables while keeping them connected and routing the others correctly proved even more difficult than I remembered. I began the repair at 6pm, but didn't finish until 1am. Then when the moment of truth arrived and I turned on the power button I was greeted with..... nothing.... a black screen. My phone was dead!
The next day when I got home from work I tore it down again, but could find nothing wrong with how I assembled it. Desperate, I tried replacing my old parts back trying to find which part was the culprit, but to no avail. I basically tore it apart and rebuilt it 4 times over the course of 3 days. Finally, I came to the realization that my beloved HD2 was dead, that I had killed it and no one else was to blame, and that I needed to find a replacement ASAP because my trusty old backup (an old RAZR flip phone) wasn't cutting it.
The ironic thing is that if all of this had happened a week earlier I would have purchased a Nexus 4 before they had sold out, which I had been thinking about getting anyway.
So for the next couple of days I scrambled to find an inexpensive replacement locally. I checked out pawn shops, flee markets and Craigslist. Finally, I found a nice HTC Amaze in perfect condition on Craigslist that a gentleman was selling for 130 bucks. I spotted the ad just a few minutes after he had posted and immediately made arrangements to see it. I made the 40 mile trek from my place in Miami to his home in North Ft. Lauderdale. It was indeed in perfect condition with not a scratch anywhere. He was only selling because he had just purchased a new iPhone 5s the day they came out. I called up T-Mobile to check the IMEI and the Rep. said it was clean. So made the owner a low-ball offer of 75bucks and began haggling to consummate the purchase. Eventually, we settled on 100 bucks and shook hands on the deal. Thus, I am now the proud owner of an HTC Amaze.
So far after living with it for a couple of days, I'm not too impressed. For a device that sports over twice the CPU power and RAM of the HD2 it feels like a slug by comparison. It's heavier and gets extremely hot with use, much hotter than the HD2. I spent much of yesterday and this afternoon looking for alternative ROMs, but let me tell you there is no Tytung developing for it. Every ROM available has some issue, whether it's a lack of adjusting in-call volume, or no bluetooth, they all have something wrong.
In the meantime, I've unlocked the bootloader, rooted it using SuperSU, installed busybox, and installed TWRP. I still need to get "S-off" which requires running a hack while doing the "bare wire trick" and change the CID, so I can gain complete access. I so much miss my HD2
I plan on staying active here though. And I'm on the lookout for a clean pristine HD2. If I find one for the right price, I'll gladly sell the Amaze.
The lesson in all of this is as old as humanity itself. I could have lived with the slight bit of damage to my HD2, but I was anal about having it be "perfect". I could have left it as it was and waited for something more serious to affect it. Instead, I hastened its demise. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!!!!!!!! A lesson learned the hard way!!!
Ciao
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