Lumia 950 XL Screen Repair, Teardown, Mobile liquid Cooling

Today’s post will go over a complete disassembly of the Lumia 950 XL for those of you who need to repair your screens and such. After reading though, go over to YouTube to watch the video:

and follow along to JerryRigEverything!

Find the smartphone repair tool kit at this link.

A replacement screen can be purchased from Ebay by following this link.  

Gather these tools for the job: a T5 or T4 screwdriver depending on your set, tweezers, and a plastic non-marring pry tool. Before you begin, as with most other repairs, make sure you have turned your phone off completely. Additionally, keep your screws, brackets and other pieces organized so you don’t mix them up when it comes time to reassemble your Lumia 950 XL.

 

To begin, you can push your fingernail underneath the edge of the removable back cover to get it off of the phone. This exposes the 3300 milliamp battery and the QI charger. Grab your screwdriver to remove 12 Torx screws from the phone and then put your tweezers into the charging port area and lift the panel up, being careful to notice the clasp near the camera.

One of the cool features of the Lumia 950 XL is the copper water cooling system. It is composed of a small copper evaporator box and a long flattened copper pipe. The system works like this: water heats up inside the evaporator and then flows into the pipe to cool down; after it cools it flows back into the evaporator box to cycle through the process again. Another cool feature is the removeable SD card reader, a feature similar to that of the older Note series phones.

Next, unsnap the reader from the motherboard like a Lego piece. The vibrator motor has a ribbon cable that unsnaps from the side of the phone and the front camera has a similar snap connection. Remove the camera and you’ll notice that it is mostly attached to the retina scanner. Unsnap two more ribbon cables for the screen from the motherboard and remove the headphone jack that comes away like the other pieces. The battery is covered by a sticker, so take that away, but don’t dispose of it, to gain access to the ribbon cable that sits on the back of the motherboard. Unclip the motherboard from the plastic frame by unclipping it around the outside of that frame and pop the motherboard out and unclip the battery’s ribbon cable. Next, pry the rear camera away from the main board. Back to the infrared iris scanner, it is part of the phone screen, so that your eye scan can open the phone; the scanner is used for Windows Hello.

If you needed to replace your screen it would be ideal to find the screen glass with the AMOLED display attached to a frame, but if that is not the case you would heat up the screen with a hair dryer or heat torch. Then, you separate the glass and AMOLED to harvest your old frame and attach the new screen to the original frame of the Lumia 950 XL. Watch a screen replacement video on the JerryRigEverything channel for more on that process.

Putting everything back together starts with returning the camera back to the mainboard, clipping the last ribbon cable that was removed back onto the motherboard and setting the motherboard back into place and clasping into the frame. Now, return the headphone jack and the front camera to the motherboard and clip the screen and vibrator motor cables into the motherboard. Replace the battery sticker and the entire back panel goes on with the 12 screws. Finally, stick the battery back into your Lumia 950 XL, push the back cover back on and you are done.

 

Share the post and the accompanying YouTube video with your Windows phones friends!