[Galaxy S 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stevey500:
As a photographer, I especially apologize for the lack of photos of the process... this is a story of my S5 getting broken and repaired.​

I left my S5 on the hood of my girlfriends Jeep while cleaning up the dog's feet and being distracted, I forgot to grab my phone. Driving down the canyon road 50mph back home, noticed something thunk off of the front of the car... yep it was my phone. It was in an Otterbox Defender series case.

Upon inspection, I was very impressed to find the phone in very good condition. The front glass totally unbroken with no scratches, the only visible damage was a scuff on the chrome of the top right corner and what looked like a tread mark from the tire. The otterbox case looked very good as well, it took some damage where the tire marks were on the upper right.

The phone's internal display took too much shock/flex and was shattered but still hard a partially visible image and the digitizer worked fine. I ordered a new display around $150, it came with a pre-installed homebutton/fingerprint scanner module. The display I ordered was pre-owned in a+ condition, so it had the old factory adhesives stuck to it.

I removed the small plastic cover on the rear to unplug the home-button cable, removed the old display using a heatgun to ease up the adhesive and it come off pretty smoothly (start at the top from the earpiece), you have plenty of room to get tools behind the screen to unplug the display's flex cable and pull the home-button's cable free.

I was impressed in how well adhered the glass is and how the home-button works, very waterproof design. The metal frame has a texture etched into it to promote even better adhesion.

-I carefully removed the old adhesive from the new display and from the frame. I used alcohol and microfiber rags and took my time, both parts come very clean with some fingernail force and patience. I applied the new adhesive, this part was very easy, the applicator-design the adhesive comes packaged in makes it a breeze to line up and entirely avoid wrinkles or mishaps. I'll link what adhesive I used, it seemed to be factory OEM and ridiculously sticky stuff, several times more powerful and pliable than the 3m strip-tape.

I made a double-check that the frame adhesion area was clean and began to hook the connectors back up, plugged the home button and LCD connector back in, I started applying the screen from the earpiece (earpiece metal fits through the hole in the glass to make lining up perfectly easy. and pressed the entire display into place. Bam, brand new. That adhesive WORKS perfectly. It grabs and holds, very tight. I feel very confident that the phone still carries its same waterproof spec.

I hope this helps any others with broken screens that want to bring their S5 back to life and to be unafraid to dig into this yourself.

Tips:

-You can likely use a hair dryer to heat up the old display when removing, feel it with your hands, don't get it so hot that you can't keep your fingers on it for a few seconds, you don't want to damage your earpiece, front sensors, camera, etc.

-When removing the old adhesive from a good-used display, use plastic to scrape at it, metal will remove the black dye and make scratched in the bezel around the screen.

-The capacitive sensors for Recents and Back have tabs that allow you to push them into the frame of the phone before applying the new screen, makes it much easier to align and worry-free.

The adhesive comes from Ebay seller diy_iparts "Pre-Cut Adhesive Tape for Samsung Galaxy S5"

(unsure if I'm allowed to post direct links to ebay) I am giving you this information because I read that a lot of pre-cut adhesives from other sources are bad quality and not up to OEM spec, made of totally different materials, etc. This won't matter too much if you aren't worried about the water resistance of your phone and the display sitting perfectly flush to the frame.