So, during the last 10 years i had 3 smartphones.
I got a LG K10 that lasted less than a year, because it slipped out of my pocket and the screen just imploded or something. The phone itself costed little more than 100€ so it wasn’t really worth the hassle of fixing it. Also it was really slow and had this horrible LG Android ROM.

So tired of an overall bad experience, I started searching for something better. Mind you this was around 2017.
I set my eyes on the Xiaomi Redmi 5 plus. I think that period was xiaomi at it’s peak. Overall very good phone, it was easy to root, following ‘standard’ xiaomi procedures and I have to say that I have a very good memory of that phone.

This could be controversial but I liked the MIUI look and feel. I liked it as much as I dislike the standard (or pixel) experience. The same goes for samsung’s or one plus’ ROMs.
I know for a fact that I am biased on this because my first real contact with smartphones and such as been through iPhones, iPods and iPads. So MIUI definitely copies or is heavy inspired from iOS. Hence my bias towards it.
For me MIUI was what a phone roughly should look like in terms of home launcher, notification panel, settings, etc…Of course all the xiaomi extra spyware is not included in this ‘praise’. But as I said, I rooted the phone and cleaned it of such things.

I used it roughly for 3 years, maybe a little bit more. All was nice.
But one day, I went to a local cinema that had those old flip-up seats, and long story short I left my phone there, it slipped in the ‘mechanism’ and when I opened the seat again, it just bent my phone 90 degrees.
Yeah sad story.

Since I liked Xiaomi (only the redmi series), as a new phone I got a Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T. It felt like the spiritual successor to the 5 pro (not really but close). When I first got it I didn’t like that the camera was on the side. And also I disliked that the back of the phone was made of glass.
Over time you adapt but still, I don’t like the glass thing. Both practically and ideologically.
But, again, this is a good phone.

I waited a bit to root this one tough. Basically because I didn’t have the time or motivation to do it.
I did unlock the bootloader, though I kept the stock MIUI.
And I did delete most of the trash apps and services.
Just hadn’t enough time/energy to go through rooting.

In more or less 5 years, I only had to change the battery. The rest still works without any problem.
And I did have to change it basically because I used it as a hotspot router. Almost 24/7. While being plugged in. In a hot summer.
So yeah that fried the battery. And made it swell. So I just got it replaced and it was like new. Still rocking.

After this I decided to root it, basically because of this article from the battery university.
I wanted to cap the battery charging volts to 3.92V and set the charging range to 40/80 (so start at 40% and max at 80%).
And to do this I needed acc, the Advanced Charging Controller.
A little bit of PTSD from the battery event? Definitely.

So basically I root the phone with Magisk. Then I had Zygisk, Zygisk Assistant, LSposed, HideMyApps, PlayIntegrityFix and everything.
After all I didn’t get the Integrity check passed, but still, all my apps worked ok, so no problem there.

Fast forward 2 weeks or less later, when the alarm rang in my phone early in the morning, I went to snooze it and look at the time. In that moment, my phone slipped out of my hand and fell to the ground. The screen shuttered completely. Half gone black, half kinda working. After some time the part that was still working just got corrupted or something and just showed colored lines.

All right, you might say. No problem, just change the screen and done.
And you would be right. But since I entered the Android rabbit-hole of rooting, hiding root, the spyware, the non libre-system/OS, etc…. AND the recent statements of google, basically closing Android and the rooting and custom ROMs, I was really tempted by a TRUE linux phone.

NOW, stop right there. This is not what we where discussing here, I probably will do another post going into details with why, how, and if it’s actually possible to go full linux on a smartphone (spoiler: it is and it’s fantastic).

Following our journey, I got a new phone, a Volla Phone 22. And just left the 8T in a drawer.
For about 2 days. Then it occurred to me to EXPERIENCE the thrill of fixing your own phone.
Basically I said, I have nothing to lose, all to gain. Either experience plus a working phone or just experience.

So I got a replacement (not original) screen from aliexpress and followed this iFixit guide.
Overall, nice. The only problem with the guide is that it tells you to open the front screen from the bottom, but the bottom is where the most glue is. So you’re better from the side or top (being careful with the speaker).

I’ll leave some photos of the process here:

As you can see, the screen was in a pretty bad state.
Also, the T-7000 glue I bought just popped open from the back, spilling all over my hand.

Overall nice experience. I don’t know why, but I didn’t think it could be so ‘easy’ to change something on a smartphone. Maybe apple just traumatized me. But I really thought that everything was more finicky and strict.

From here, as I said earlier, I got a new phone and flashed UBTouch, and so I left Android behind me.
But still, now I use the 8T as a backup and for some android-only apps.

Currently I am trying to install conduit, a matrix server with mautrix-whatsapp on it. I may do a dedicated post about it some day. Basically describing if it’s both possible and usable.