I've been either careful or lucky with my mobile devices, as although I've never used any kind of holder, bag, pouch or whatever protector I've never managed to break the devices. I've dropped them plenty, even on asphalt, but devices have survived, although most at the end of their useful life have carried their share of dents and scratches.
Kids, however... Well, our kid managed to somehow wedge tablet between balcony door and even as it seemed there was only slightest hint of force involved the glass cracked. Just great. Last five months or so the tablet has had clear plastic over the cracks so that we wouldn't get glass shards on fingers, but it has been usable.
But let's go back a bit. When I first wanted a tablet, I went for Asus Transformer, the original one (TF101 or whatever the model was). The keyboard seemed useful, but the extra battery within the keyboard even more so.
Well, it turned out that keyboard in tablet isn't actually too useful. Occasional quick email aside I'll take a real computer for work any and every day. Tablets just aren't really suitable for anything else than browsing relatively static data (maps, videos, internet as long as you don't need to post anything lengthy and so on) or maybe some light instrumentation (review values, adjust something and done). And some relatively simple games. That's it.
The extra battery the keyboard had in it was great however. So when that tablet started dying - it wouldn't charge anymore and I couldn't figure out why - I went and got newer model transformer. Which, compared to previous one, was pretty damn disappointing (yes, should've read more about it first...). New model no longer had extra battery in keyboard, the keyboard never worked reliably (it sometimes needed full reboot to detect keyboard again) and in general it felt sluggish (maybe the change from ARM to intel atom wasn't helpful?). So when the screen now broke (keyboard wasn't attached at that time so it couldn't protect it) I wasn't too happy, of course, but not devastated either. And that clear plastic did its job just nicely enough for some time, keeping our fingers shard-free.
As I have never repaired any this kind of screens I was hesitant about doing it myself. I asked around, but none of local shops that specialize on repairs wanted to work on Asus. One place straight up said they wouldn't do it, one took my contact and told me they'd get back to me. They never did. And I didn't feel like sending old(ish) tablet anywhere far away for repairs (like Asus' official repair, which IIRC isn't even located in this same country - hell no, I don't want to deal with that!)
Crap. Guess I had to do it myself.
So I watched some videos (unfortunately my model seems to be slightly different than ones everyone else in those videos seemed to have). Ordered glass/panel replacement. And when it got here went to work.
So... This is with the contact plastic still on. I had to change the plastic a few times and last one was kinda grainy matte instead of completely clear. By the time I noticed it it was already on and I didn't feel like starting over, as it didn't distort the picture too much.
I used my cheap chinese hot air station, set to 120 degrees C to loosen the glue a bit, and after a while took small knife to start prying the old glass off.
After a while I set the hot air nozzle "hanging" onto my microscope stand. It may look like it's touching the base but it wasn't - it was some 5cm away. This freed my other hand to work on the device itself. I used larger (and stronger) knife to hold already loosened part of the glass up so glue wouldn't set again.
If you want to take glass off from your device, do consider wearing some king of light rubber gloves. It's very easy to get glass splinters into your fingers (I didn't, as far as I can tell, but at some points I think it was very very close).
It took a while but old glass came off! In pieces, but still...
Before putting new panel there, just a quick try... Well, fsck me. At some point I apparently went a bit too deep and managed to cut into the edge of the display module, cutting the flex cables within.
So pretty much an almost complete failure. "Almost" comes from learning from your mistakes, next time I'll be even more careful. Hopefully I don't have to do this very soon again, though.
After some more research I found out that new displays aren't easily available. I could try to order one from China, of course, via Aliexpress or other even sketchier sites, for relatively high price (compared to value of tablet itself). So instead I chose option B - destroy electronics of this one sufficiently enough that one retrieving my leftover data won't be easy, then get a completely new tablet. One without keyboard. (now, Surface Pros seem like very tempting devices, but I haven't had any hands-on experience with them and anyway they're way too expensive for a family plaything - it'll be almost exclusively videos, games and light browsing with it anyway)
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