How to change a broken screen?

Hi Carl,

Sorry the other answers aren't much help to you; I'll see if my answer is a little more useful.

iFixit doesn't have a guide to replacing the screen on your phone, but fortunately the French site SOSav has just what you need. As you might guess, the site is in French, but if you use it with a browser like Chrome that does translation, it will be quite useful and their guides are well written.

Réparation Bloc écran Galaxy A04s - Guide gratuit - SOSav.fr

Your phone is like most Samsung and many other Android phones in that there are two ways to replace the screen, The recommended way is to purchase the screen already mounted on the midframe, then replacement consists of essentially gutting your old phone and moving everything inside to the new midframe. It may sound daunting, but Samsung actually makes it pretty straight-forward. This gives you a brand new midframe and screen, and saves you the difficulty of gluing the new screen onto the frame. That's the method shown in the guide I linked to.

The other way to do it is to only remove enough parts to access the display connector, then you have to separate the screen from the midframe. Once that's done, you clean all the old adhesive from the frame, run a bead of glue all around the edge of the frame, then glue the new screen on. It will need to dry for some time, and it should either be weighted down or bound with rubber bands until it does. That process requires an entirely different guide. I wasn't able to locate a written guide to that repair for you, but this YouTube video shows you the process.

How to replace the screen on your Samsung Galaxy A04s: Easy steps - Asha Mobile - YouTube

The price difference between buying the screen alone vs. the screen+frame assembly is usually only a few dollars, and you can easily make up that difference by having to buy a tube of glue, so price shouldn't be a significant factor in deciding which method you want to use.

After going through the first guide, here's a list of the tools they use.

• SIM card removal tool (a paperclip will work in a pinch)
• A hair dryer, heat gun or iOpener
• An opening tool such as an iSesamo
• Opening picks, similar to a guitar pick
• A spudger
• A small Phillips screwdriver
• A wide, flat plastic spatula for removing the battery (note, I only linked to the one in France as an example, as it doesn't appear that iFixit sells a part like that)
  Or plastic cards
• Fine tip tweezers

You can support iFixit's repair efforts by buying most of the tools you need from them, or they are readily available on major sites like Amazon, eBay and AliExpress. Those three sites should also carry replacement screens, with or without the frame already attached.

Good luck and let us know how it all turns out for you!