Scratches are one thing; you can work around them with disposable screen protectors. But we're talking about a device that's constantly carried around and used (I probably have my phone on me more often than my wallet). Gorilla glass or not, it falls from a meter onto a hard surface, and you have a screen to replace. You accidentally sit on it, and you may have a screen to replace. And given the prices of replacement parts, it often makes sense to just live with the crack[0] until you get a new phone, which is probably why I see so many people with spiderwebs on their phones every day.
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[0] - Unless you want to take a risk and get someone to replace you just the broken glass, a process which involves some manual fumbling with heatguns and UV-hardened glues. Or, unless you live in Shenzhen, where they'll replace you the whole phone front (with electronics and all) for cheap, if you give them your phone front (which they presumably fix up later and resell to the next person).
That's an interesting insight on what happens in Shenzen. If the cost is a 2x or more lesser, I wonder why that is not a thriving business, even across countries
Yeah. I fixed my S4 in Shenzhen this way about a year ago. The official way to repair broken glass is to replace the whole screen, which then went for around $170. A repair shop once asked me for somewhere around $60 for just replacing the glass manually (heat & UV glue method, glass cost included). In Shenzhen, the girl replaced the whole phone front with all electronics and replaced my back camera for total of ~$20, in exchange for my broken phone front.
I used the occasion to ask for a front for S3. She sold me one for somewhere around $50 - because I didn't have the broken one for exchange - which I later used to fix my SO's phone myself. It's not that hard after you've seen how the Chinese do it, though a little stressful - I had to use a needle to punch through a speaker canal, which for some reason wasn't hollowed out properly :).
I guess the reason it works in Shenzhen is because that's the place where the phones are made and recycled - they have tons and tons of parts for every model imaginable, both from factories and from broken phones. Given how many different phone models are out there, I doubt any city except a major metropolis could sustain this type of market.
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[0] - Unless you want to take a risk and get someone to replace you just the broken glass, a process which involves some manual fumbling with heatguns and UV-hardened glues. Or, unless you live in Shenzhen, where they'll replace you the whole phone front (with electronics and all) for cheap, if you give them your phone front (which they presumably fix up later and resell to the next person).