Restoring an Iphone ( Front and Back)

Seen a lot of threads of people wondering how to restore an iPhone so I decided to make a DIY guide

Also pretty helpful if you want to de-brand your iPhone :P

My previous iPhone was stolen at the gym, low on funds I decided to buy the cheapest iPhone I could find that worked regardless of condition. I found an iPhone 3G that had being completely abused and had a dark spot on the LCD. On the second picture notice the gouge on the right side, out of of all the blemishes it was the deepest) Still I ended up buying the phone for a really good price

Step 1: Background

My previous iPhone was stolen at the gym, low on funds I decided to buy the cheapest iPhone I could find that worked regardless of condition. I found an iPhone 3G that had being completely abused and had a dark spot on the LCD. On the second picture notice the gouge on the right side, out of of all the blemishes it was the deepest) Still I ended up buying the phone for a really good price (first two pics)

My first attempt at restoring it was a mild success, since I used mild sandpapers/rushed. But you can see that even with 800 grit sandpaper and about an hour I got it looking better, but it still had tons of deep dents and scratches. (third picture )

Comments

[curious youth]

i love the look of the plain polished back. its slick. would it work for an itouch ?

[UbuntuNinja]

Where do you get a replacement for the front glass from?

[MrCantThinkOfAName]

You can find websites that sell them relatively cheap. Ive already bought a new one for my ipod 4g, i dropped it on concrete and front was cracked beyond recognition.

[matstermind]

where did you get it from?

[d.i.y master]

wow great job exspecially on the back it looks better than new but what you could do if you wanted was to cut an apple shape out of tape and use spray paint to make it look just like when it was new

[Electroinnovation]

That's amazing! how long did it take you to do that?

[13near]

blackra1n ftw

[reddog92396]

 OOOOORRRR Completely remove the scratch resistant coating and go to the mall to one of the "Make your device scratch free stands" I saw one the other day. The ironic thing is that they say "Scratch protect your iPhone!" Already done lol

[nerfer192]

wow you really did a nice job on this..it looked like crap at first! now its perfect.

[Popper122]

What 3rd picture?

[losrac]

Really nice.

[kpm13579]

Excellent tutorial! I've polished both my iPhone and my mom's to a like new finish!

I also replaced the glass on my mom's iPhone and everything works fine EXCEPT the backlight. I re-opened it and tried re-plugging all 3 cables to the LCD, but that didn't seem to have any effect. Have you ever had this problem? Or do you know which cable specifically powers the backlight?

I guess I might have to order a new LCD now. I was hoping to avoid that. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[podginater]

 awesome, just awesome.

[DIY Dave]

nice job

[LoneWolf]

WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's amazing!!!! What a difference :)

You might want to post this in the iPod group by Ductape man