Fairphone 3: How to deal with stripped screws

[TheLastProject]

Hey everyone,

I have a Fairphone 3 that has “snow” as display now:

So, logically, I figured it was probably just some connection getting loose.

Sadly, I’m not managing to unscrew everything, as some screws are stripped so much I can’t get any grip on them:

Does anyone have any tip as to how I’ll get this open so I can reconnect the display? Sadly warranty expired about 2 months ago on this phone so I want to not send it in without trying the basics myself first for cost reasons.

[Lidwien]

Take an old screwdriver and glue it with superglue on the screw. If you’re lucky the screw will come loose.

[anon9989719]

One idea is to place a wide rubber bad over the head to help mold to the shape. The main problem is using a lot of force but turning very slowly.

Another option is to use a flat head screwdriver that will fit in the wider gaps 1 pm to 7pm Again pressure and ease are essential.

You can also try and glue a screwdriver tip or a piece of metal and then try and turn with a pair of pliers.

All esle fails it will reuire drilling, which you may want a phone shop to do for you.

Take care

There are posts here where this has been dealt with before.

https://forum.fairphone.com/search?q=Stripped%20screws

[TheLastProject]

Sorry, I did search but must’ve used the wrong terms because I wasn’t finding anything useful.

I want to avoid glue, so I think I’ll try the the rubber band trick. Thank you, will hopefully report back with good news after I find some rubber bands next time I go out shopping

[theyaman]

Hello @TheLastProject ,
You may check following post as the solution might work for you without unscewing anything:

FP3 Display freezes! Display noise issue

Hi there, Since my last post on this topic a few months ago, the problem did not reoccur… until my phone fell from about 40cm height. The screen was rainbow pixelized again. I was scared… I just did a “twisting” thing and it immediately came back to normal, without needing to open it or removing the display. I did even not turn it off. Cheers

[TheLastProject]

What do you mean with “twisting”?

[AnotherElk]

Perhaps something along these lines …

Screen displaying colorful noise, broken?

Have you tried carefully pressing along the display module margins? Display module and the rest of the phone are held together by screws and plastic clips, and the latter sometimes get loose from shocks like a drop. You will hear the clips clicking back into place when you press the margins if this is the case here. I also seem to remember a previous topic in this forum where someone described a trick s/he did with the contact areas (inside) between display and core module, but I cannot recall …

[TheLastProject]

Ah, nope, that’s definitely not making a difference. So removing screws will be the only way to go for me. Thanks though

[urs_lesse]

If you succeed in removing that unfortunate 13th screw, you can (later on) already test if there’s progress once all the plastic clamps have properly clicked into place – my experience is that this is often enough to have the display lit again. You can still put the screws back into place later then. Just mentioning because sometimes going back and forth more than once is necessary – and much easier if you don’t go through the whole screw hassle each and every time.

[theyaman]

@TheLastProject

What do you mean with “twisting”?

Grab the phone by the two shortest extremities (one in each hand) then rotate each hand in opposite directions…

You can read the full thread as there was quite a lot of info in there.

Original post I am referring to