What to Actually Do With Your Cracked iPhone

iphone-4-broken screen Like the majority of iPhone users, I have fallen victim to dropping my iPhone and shattering the front screen. Fun fact: if you flip your phone in your hands, it is not guaranteed you will catch it every time. Of course it was about a year before I could get a new phone with my current cellular plan, so I had limited options of how to move forward. Even with the insurance for my phone it would have been over $200 to replace my phone and being a poor college student, that is not my number one choice. I live off my phone and although iCloud is extremely helpful, the idea of reconfiguring a new phone to my liking sounded pretty terrible. So what to do? In my experience, these are your best three options:

1 Get it Fixed.

There are stores in your local mall whose sole purpose are to fix broken phones. What a time to be alive! It cost over $150 after service fees/taxes to get mine done and they did a really good job. The service only took about forty-five minutes and once I readjusted the screen sensitivity I was golden. Do not try and fix it yourself because the odds are you will definitely have to buy a new phone when you destroy all the wiring. Although the primarily sketchy sounding craigslist ads that say if you send your phone to them they will fix it are about $20 cheaper, I would just get it done through a professional company. With shipping, the cost will probably balance out anyway.

2 Downgrade.

Honestly, the iPhone 4 or 4s are not that far of a cry from the iPhone 5. Instead of paying a fortune to get a new phone, just downgrade to the older model. The 4s is currently $39 at most retailers Let’s be real: by the time your plan is up the iPhone 5s or iPhone 6 family will be out anyway (estimated release dates are October 2013 and early 2014 respectively).

3 Live with it.

Before I got my phone fixed, I dealt with it for six months. Of course the crack spread, but with a screen protector on it none of the glass came out. The touch function still worked perfectly fine and I could read mostly everything around the cracks. The only real burden it caused me was not being able to see which number was which on solitaire sometimes, which is the epitome of the term “first world problem”. If you are towards the end of your current phone contract, just live with the Spider-man edition for a while.

If you do fix or replace your phone, be smart with it. In order to keep the screen from making contact with the ground you are going to need a case with a raised rubber bevel on the edge. There are thousands of them out there and they also come in pretty colors while still being able to fit in your pocket. Shattering your phone is not the end of the world, but if you’re not willing to shell out the money to fix it when it does, spend the money on a good case so you won’t have to.

By Brittany Coyne

Brittany is a Theatre Arts major and a French and Film minor at the University of Pittsburgh. She is an uncertified tea connoisseur and a multifandom queen. She would like to thank her iPhone and MacBook for helping her survive college thus far.

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