Hi all, I don't know if this is common knowledge but I just couldn't find it anywhere. I hope I can be of some service to those with a cracked screen substrate in their beloved Kobo Touch. I have lurked occasionally on these forums before but had to create an account to post this so while I think I'm adhering to the standards here, please correct me or move the thread if I'm wrong.
A couple of weeks ago I managed to crack the display of my Kobo Touch. I had it in a home made (from an old book) case in my back pocket. When I took it out after sitting down, the screen was cracked - I sat quite carefully as I was aware of the risk but must have twisted the thing anyway.
I took it apart very easily - kudos to the designers for allowing me to pry the back cover off with my finger nails - and was quite impressed to find the screen and battery both just plug into the motherboard, no soldering required. Also the microSD as internal memory was news to me. Awesome. Problem was, replacement screens don't seem to be advertised ANYWHERE. Every other brand of e-ink device under the sun seems to have a hoard of replacement displays available on ebay. Rang Kobo support and since it was out of warranty, they wouldn't even replace it at cost to me or sell me the new part to install myself - pretty hopeless considering I was offering them more money for no commitment (yeah I know consumer protection laws about warranty make it not worth the trouble). All previous threads on this topic in this and other forums seem to end with the same story the support person gave me - "buy a new one".
I found what looked like the model number on the ribbon cable of the screen ("ED060SCE(LF)") and bought one of
these on Ali Express. It looked about right from the photos in the description even though it was advertised as being for a Nook Simple Touch. There are many other options for that ereader with very slightly different model numbers - these will probably work too but the price difference was only a couple of dollars and I wanted the best chance of success.
IT WORKS! Hooray! It arrived about 8 days after I got an email to say it had shipped, even though I went with the free, 15-45 day shipping option. I am now a very happy Kobo owner and felt like this needed to be shared with the internet.
My general comments on the device are that I love it and would buy again though it could do with a couple of hardware buttons for page turning - a Nook might be a better choice here I suppose. I do like the Kobo store and relatively frequent firmware updates though. Even though they are sometimes buggy, they make me feel like the developers haven't forgotten me. If I bought a Nook, I couldn't help playing with android and installing all sorts of other things, shortening my battery life and defying the point of a single-use device for reading books. Also, the native store front doesn't work in Australia if I remember correctly. Anyway, now I'm just rambling about things that are probably common knowledge on this forum anyway.
It makes me sad to think of all these broken Kobo Touch ereaders sitting around as scrap (modern technology is disgustingly wasteful as it is) so if anyone has any sitting around in Australia that they don't want to fix themselves, I'd love to take them off your hands and find them a new home.
Almost forgot,
here are some photographs.
TL;DR - Replaced the broken screen in my Kobo Touch with one advertised for the Nook Simple Touch.