[Touch HD General] Rafael K:
Another sad story // hopefully with a good ending

I kinda have the same problem as Viba and others. Sorry for the looong post. But decided to describe in more details my experience up to now, and hope you can help as well.

All of a sudden, I started having problems with the touch screen of the Touch HD. I started noticing that whenever I touched the Touchflo buttons, the phone vibrated. Soon I came to realize the if I touched in some spot, the phone recognized that I was touching lower, to the point that it could not recognize touches in the taskbar, for instance.

The united has 2 or 3 months max. It had some falls before and I do not really know who (or which one) was the culprit.

Tried this as fix: re-alignment, hardresets, Official ROM upgrade. Then I started reading and understanding that the problem was probably the digitizer ("nice to meet you").

I live in Brazil and the Touch HD is not expected be released here any time soon. So the few HTC service centers do not know how to fix it and do not have parts for it. And also, I bought mine from an auction site by some user who bought it abroad, with no warranty whatsoever. I am left alone in this.

I was very frustrated and eager to get my device running again. So I started looking for a new digitizer and also the tools to open my phone. The digitizer (just the digitizer, not the LCD screen) I ordered from an ebay shop in Hong Kong on Monday and is expected to still arrive sometime in this century (IF Brazilian port authorities do not mess up). The tools arrived yesterday.

I downloaded the service manual and said to myself, let's see if the digitizer problem is maybe due to a loose flat cable. Got to work and carefully disassembled the device as per the service manual. (I have to say that, although I try to be carefull, I always scratch, bend or mess something up when I do jobs like these. So I was afraid of cracking some plastic or worse and actually did some.)

Up to where the service manual show, it went incredibly very well. But that's the problem. The service manual guides you to disassemble the unit up to the point where you are with the bezel, LCD and digitizer in one piece.

But hey! I saw zillions of internet shops selling the bezel (actually, the hole housing, but with no LCD), the digitizer or other parts separately! What is going on?

So I started trying to unmount the bezel, LCD and digitizer. Tried several things. It got really late. I was impactient. So I tried splitting the digitizer from the LCD, by inserting a hard plastic aluminium tip between the digitizer and the housing. A very thin plastic kind of tape came out (at lest part of it). So I tried doing it more. No success. And then I put a very thin screwdriver between then (just enough to get an ulgy bent it the plastic housing).

When I had played enough with that puzzle, I gave up and began mounting everything back. The good part is that I was able to get everything back and the phone is working. Well, except for the digitizer.

First thing I did was to kidnap the wife's Nokia E71 I bought her last month and she is not using yet (she couldn't learn to use yet; well, she hasn't even tried it), because I have to have mobile access to my emails.

And I really started now to consider other alternatives. Will some user like me EVER be able to change just the digitizer? Is it even possible? If it is, I would like to give it at least another shot.

But I am also afraid that it could be another part which is in failure. I just don't want to spend more $$$$ in this. It would be better to buy another phone (and maybe not a complete touchscreen - gosh, I miss my Tytn II). I so regret being a gadget freak and not waiting a release in my country.

Shoud I send my phone abroad for a service center repair? My sister lives in Dubai and she may be able to help.

Should I give up my unit and seel the used parts in ebay?

Hope to hear your suggestions. Thanks anyway.