When your repair attempt fails 😰

I seldom make written blog posts like this on Steem, but this is exactly what happened to me today.

So for some reason, the physical power button on my P6200 tablet broke as I have to press it hard to register a press. The flex behind the button is working properly, just the button itself. Then I found that this is part of the entire back cover, so I spent $9 SBD (yes SBD is finally worth exactly $1 USD so I can quote that) and ordered the back cover with the tools needed to replace it.

I figured that although this is a 9-year-old tablet running a 9-year-old OS (I could not update it for some weird errors), $9 in repair costs is way lower than having to spend $58 on a Nokia 8110 (the cheapest phone that works on my carrier that I don't even have the budget for), or hundreds of dollars on a smartphone, considering phone prices these days have skyrocketed in the last 3 years. Flagship phones are pushing upwards of $1,000, mid-rangers (including "flagship killers") now cost what used to be the price of a flagship phone 5 years ago, and even budget phones have doubled in price.

Not only that, newer phones have fewer features (no headphone jack, lack of microSD card slot etc) as compared to the ones released a few years ago.

When I was trying to pop the new cover back in, here's where the problem begins. Most of the time it fitted well, but for some reason, the bottom part did not fit well. When I pushed slightly harder so that it will fit, instead of fixing it, instead it cracked the screen 😩

The cover that I bought is the cheapest I found (and probably one of the only few) and doesn't look like an original part. Also, the opening tool (in blue) that came with it broke as well if you look closely in the photo above.

What now?

Now I'm left with an unusable phone with no spare budget for further action. This will get very costly if I want to fix the screen as I might risk breaking some other parts as there are no detailed teardown guides, so I am stuck with low-quality videos on ThemTube (now you know why I hate this website since I left them).

For now, the only ways I can proceed is:

1. Shut down my Steem witness that is currently running at a loss (worst idea ever as I'm in it for the long run and I want to have control over my rules by running a full node myself). not happening at all
2. Dump some of my BTC (also a horrible idea right now).

I have no idea where to go from here. 😱