Replacing glass on smashed screen

[urs_lesse]

Unfortunately, there is no way around replacing the whole display module. It was a wish of Fairphone at the very beginning to replace just the glass in the display unit, but it quickly emerged it was not feasible.

EDIT: After some searching, I found what Fairphone’s first Community Manager said about this question six years ago. It might not directly address the “why”, but still I think it makes sense to link to it here because I or someone else might want to find it again in the future (and last but not least because the former employee’s username got anonymized in the meantime, making the statement harder to find):

@anon90052001

I want to talk about the topic of the use of adhesives on the display with the glass and the touch sensor*. I have discussed this with members of the product team, and I learned that such a scenario where the glass and the touch sensor are NOT glued together is almost non-existent in the industry. Therefore, the adhesive between the touch sensor and glass is an industry standard and even if we wanted to change it, it’s not happening overnight. Still, the design of the Fairphone 2 is a large step for repairability. We’re enabling a tool-less repair for the screen that users can do themselves in just a few minutes, one of the most common needs of phone repair.

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*I changed “touchscreen” to “touch sensor” to be more precise. The entire display could be considered a “touchscreen” when the glass and touch sensor are combined.