Need some repairs (screen near front camera, USB) on Pixel 3a, but...

[PianoPlayer88Key]

 Hey ... so I need to get a few repairs done on my Pixel 3a:

• Screen's cracked near the upper left, affecting the selfie camera (I forgot to open up selfie mode in the video clip below, but it probably wouldn't have been very visible anyway),
• the USB-C port doesn't have much of a grip on cables.  The cable falls out easily easily, and when it is in, it will only charge if it's in a certain way, and bump it just a little and it disengages.  Putting the same cable in a Samsung T5 portable SSD then dropping it, the cable holds the SSD just fine, but it was falling right out of the phone in a later part of the video.  (Earlier in the video it wasn't falling out as easily, idk why.)

 

56-second video:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/xFUsKkXb5d9tpW1i8  (Hopefully this doesn't need to get deleted, a moderator deleted a video I posted a little while ago of a timelapse of booting my laptop, trying windows update, failing at that, then opening browser and it taking like 15 minutes or so just to open Chrome, was trying to see if I could get help figuring out some things related to it in that thread.)

 

A pic of the phone:

 

And, in a spoiler, comparison of selfies (via screenshots from the phones) with the Pixel 3a vs my Moto G4 Play.  (I would have liked to use my dad's Pixel 4a for the comparison but I'm not sure how I'd get the picture off of it.)

Spoiler

Pixel 3a on the left, Moto G4 play on the right.  (May be top & bottom respectively on a small screen like a phone in portrait mode.)

 

  

 

So I was looking into taking it to my nearest ubreakifix location (Santee, CA) ... but....

(BTW I see some guides on iFixit, but I'm afraid that I might muck something up)

For one thing I'm having some difficulty finding out how much it would cost to repair.  A while ago, I had somehow come up with a figure of around $110-130 or so for the screen repair, which I'm prepared to pay, but I can't remember where I found that.  I'm hoping that repairing the USB port wouldn't be the same amount again.  I really don't want to pay much or any more than about $120 to $150 or so, cause then I'd be getting into new phone territory, and I'm really not ready to get a new phone for a few more years.  (I was anticipating spending about $300-400 or so for a phone around maybe 2024 or 2025 or so, maybe a bit later.)

 

Looking up that location online often shows a several hour (most of the day, or into the next) wait before my phone would even be looked at for a walk-in appointment.
I don't get to that area very often, and when I do it's usually spur of the moment (both ways - I sometimes decide to go at a moments notice, and sometimes I'll cancel a trip to the area quickly as well), so making appointments ahead of time isn't really practical for me.
Also I wouldn't want to be far away from my phone for any length of time away from home, and I don't see any other place (store, whatever) within sight of the ubif storefront that I'd want to spend an hour or two in while waiting for the repair.  (There is a Subway across the parking lot, but I probably wouldn't hear them calling my name and they wouldn't be able to contact me via phone, and I wouldn't want to spend a couple hours there and I might not even be hungry anyway depending on time of day and other factors.)

 

 

Also just earlier today I came across an article that mentioned the issues people were having with pictures leaked, etc, and the article mentioned a policy of factory resetting / wiping the device before any repair commences.
Problem is ... I don't know how I would do a full backup of my phone.  There's 64 GB internal storage, and my Google account only has a total of about 17 GB, and just about 12GB of it is used already.

When I say "full backup" I mean "full backup" - backing up EVERYTHING!  An equivalent for Linux (which yes, Android runs, so if I was to open a terminal....) might be something like "dd if=/ of=//drive.google.com/...(whatever location for my account / backups)" ... but ... idk.   A while ago I was seeing some things about adb backup via a usb cable, but my cable / port is very flaky so I might not be able to use that option.  Also, on past phones with micro USB cables, the cables would frequently deteriorate so that they wouldn't work for data connection quite early, but would still work for charging for a relatively long while --- "relatively" cause even the charging part would die after a few months or so.  This cable has actually lasted the entire time I've had the phone, since about September 2019 or so.

 

 

 

Any ideas what I can do about it?

 

 

 

The screen got cracked probably a year and a half ago or so, maybe more, when the phone was dropped onto a tile floor at a local ice cream shop that I used to frequently go to before Covid.
 

I did recently (few weeks or so) buy an Otterbox Defender case for the phone, for about $18 or $20 or so (too lazy to look up my Amazon invoice) in anticipation of having it repaired.  I would have bought one a lot sooner, but there were a couple issues...
Somewhat recently (several months ago maybe) when Amazon had it for like $12 or $13, I didn't have enough other stuff ready to order to make it free shipping (I don't have Prime cause I don't use Amazon & related services nearly enough for it to be worth it).
And back when the phone was new, I was hesitant to buy a case cause they were like $50-60 then ... AND I had previously, maybe a couple years before or so, bought one for an LG G4, but didn't even have time to put it on before I got the bootloop issue.  (I had to get a new phone - a $100 Moto G4 Play - at the time, although later I was able to get the LG G4 repaired due to them extending the warranty for that issue, but by then it was impractical to go back to the LG phone as a main phone.)

 

 

 

It's almost looking like the best course of action would be to get the parts and use the ifixit guide to repair it myself, but I'm afraid of ____ing something up in the process.   And I'm not sure that I have the right toolkit anyway...

 

[WhitetailAni]

At this point I'd suggest just getting a new phone and then using Google's handy "transfer data from an old device to a new device" to move everything over. To repair, you'd be replacing the charging port, screen, and front camera module, which is a hefty repair job and might end up costing more than a new phone - a replacement 3a screen and camera module on iFixit is $135 before tax, and they don't sell replacement charging ports (which are replaceable).

9 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

An equivalent for Linux (which yes, Android runs, so if I was to open a terminal....) might be something like "dd if=/ of=//drive.google.com/...(whatever location for my account / backups)"

It likely doesn't work that way, though I don't use Android. One suggestion I can give is installing a file manager app on your phone that allows you to mount your phone as a network drive (my jailbroken iPhone 7 with Filza can be mounted as a WebDAV server) - it's how I make periodical root dumps of my phone.

[dizmo]

I agree with @FakeKGB It's basically time to replace the device, the repairs aren't worth the cost it'd incur.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

(crap, thought hitting tab would autocomplete a user entry, not highlight the post button ... come on, can't we have a standard user interface across software, platforms, generations, etc -- if you use a certain key sequence to do a certain thing on one platform/generation, the same should work across all, I've lost count of how many times I and others have made mistakes like that)

Still working on the post... okay done finally  

Ahh @FakeKGB & @dizmo ...  ... 

Yeah, I really am not ready to get a new phone, at least from a financial perspective.  (More psychological than actually not having the funds, tbh, although I still need to be careful with my $ - buying something a bit more expensive than I normally do is okay as long as I only do it very infrequently (see spoiler).)
 

Spoiler

I don't spend a lot of money at once or on single items very often for the most part:

• > $10K - never have in my life
• >$3K (or sqrt(10)) - only twice in my life, both were cars, and the second one was necessitated because of the first one being totaled otherwise I'd probably still be driving that first car, although it was starting to have some other issues anyway.  Turned out to be a better deal though - cheaper price, AND lower mileage and better car.
• >$1K - maybe about once every 7-10 years or so I guess
• > $300 - maybe every few years or so - btw this ($300, not much higher) is the approximate price point I'd be looking at if I bought a new phone and it was not "under duress" (as in not needing to replace a dead/dying/broken phone), but this includes ALL $300-class things I spend money on.
• > $100 - idk, maybe once or twice a year if that, or every couple years?  Also $100 would be my "duress" phone purchase price point - what I'd spend if I needed a new phone right away.
• > $30 - if you take gas in the car and grocery shopping out of the equation (the latter of which slips into the above category sometimes), maybe a few times a year, idk.
• > $10 and lower - now we're getting to where I might consider spending this amount on non-essential things (as in not food, clothes, etc) more than once every month or two.

 

I was planning to keep the Pixel 3a for at least a few more years, yes, beyond the "end of support" date.  (I was thinking like 5 or more years originally, possibly a bit longer, bought it in September 2019, so was thinking of replacing it in late 2024 or 2025 sometime with a $300-400 phone then, keeping that one for 5+ years, and so on.) 
I'm not about to join the club of people who spend a thousand dollars on their phone and replace it ever year or two.   (I might spend a thousand dollars in a DECADE on phones, if that.)  Even the people that only spend several hundred dollars every few years ... I don't even spend that much on my COMPUTER if you were to average it out, probably.

 

I wouldn't even have any idea what phone I'd go for if I was to get a new one, except I know I don't want an iPhone.  I also strongly prefer a headphone jack, or at least something that works with my existing headphones (or a future pro-grade pair of headphones that I'd want to be compatible with everything from home / studio equipment from <=1950s to stuff that's just now being invented, but more on that would be better in a different topic which I'm not ready to post yet) without needing to use something that prevents me from charging the phone simultaneously, and expandable storage would be a huge plus, also repairability, etc (like fairphone, etc) is a big thing.  I don't need (or even want) a "super thin" phone - I'd actually love something that literally has a SO-DIMM (or DIMM) slot or two (that supports registered ECC so I could put plenty of RAM in it) and an M.2 slot, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist.  

 

 

And hopefully the "transfer data from old to new device" would work better than it did for my dad.  He upgraded from a Samsung Galaxy Core Prime (running Android 5) to a Pixel 4a (Android 10 at the time I think), and while it transferred some of his data over, pictures, phone background, etc ... it failed with some apps.  For example there was a notepad app that he used with his Samsung phone and he had a lot of notes in it, and that didn't get transferred over.  Also he's still using his old phone for some things, like alarms.

I want literally *EVERYTHING* transferred over when I migrate phones.  On my last one (Moto G4 Play to Pixel 4a), not everything got transferred either - many of my text messages are still on the old phone and not on the new one, same with archived voicemails, and some other stuff.  Also there might still be some untransferred things on the Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G I had before the LG G4 (skipping that one cause when it was repaired it was factory reset, bummer cause I wanted to salvage some things off that but couldn't cause of bootloop), and even my T-Mobile G1 might have had some stuff, but it's essentially dead so idk how I'd get anything off of it now, same with the Motorola A1200, MPx220, V300 and V188 I had before that.

 

A couple recent successful "transfer" experiences with PCs, that kind-of reflect what I want to be able to do with the phone:

 

1 -- dug up an M.2 SSD that I'd installed Linux on in my laptop, which uses an i7-6700K CPU.  (I didn't have it in the laptop, cause of some complications regarding M.2 vs SATA ports, drive configuration I had set up, etc, beyond the scope of this post.)

Popped that SSD in my newer desktop build (using a Ryzen 9 5950X) ... and it booted up just fine pretty much.  (Sometimes I get a popup that mentions something about a system issue, but I think I was getting that before as well.)
 

2 -- pulled a 240GB 2.5" SATA SSD I have Windows 10 & Linux on out of my dad's old laptop (Core 2 Duo T7250 - Dell D830), plugged it and a 1.05TB SSD into my desktop, used "dd" to clone the drive,

then popped the 1.05TB SSD in the old laptop, and that booted up just fine too.  (Also expanded the partitions - did it separately cause I wanted to test without expanding first -- both scenarios worked, although interesting thing, the expansion process for the Linux partition froze up in GParted to the point where I had to hit the power switch on the PSU, but I wanted quite a while (like a couple hours or so) before doing so and it turned out alright.)

On the other hand, one reason I still boot from a SATA SSD in my laptop even though it supports NVMe is ... I tried cloning from SATA to NVMe, but couldn't get it to work.  (Also I didn't even try cloning from my 6700K laptop to 5950X desktop, cause I've heard Windows doesn't play nicely with being migrated to new PCs.  I have a fresh install on a cleaned 1TB SP P34A80 that I'd pilfered out of the laptop.)

It's just a huge disruption for me to have to reinstall / reconfigure things.  This 6700K laptop I'm typing on now is like 6 years old and I *STILL* don't have it set up the way I want, and am still missing some things I would have like to have from like 2 or 3 or 4 PC upgrades prior, dating back to like the 1990s or so.

[dizmo]

No one said you had to spend a thousand dollars, though. You can easily pick up a new phone like a Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3, 3XL etc for like $200. If not less. Which is cheaper than getting yours repaired. That's why it doesn't really make sense to repair your phone.

[WhitetailAni]

47 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

It's just a huge disruption for me to have to reinstall / reconfigure things.  This 6700K laptop I'm typing on now is like 6 years old and I *STILL* don't have it set up the way I want, and am still missing some things I would have like to have from like 2 or 3 or 4 PC upgrades prior, dating back to like the 1990s or so.

I feel you, I hate setting things up again. It was a pain in the butt switching from a 6S to 7 because I couldn’t use Apple’s data transfer tool without updating my phone (big no-no for me), but I did get everything sorted.

You said you don’t like spending large amounts of money.

Which is worth more to you, spending less money (getting a new phone for less) or avoiding change (fixing your old phone)?

[PianoPlayer88Key]

@dizmo:

 

I know ... I don't spend $1K on phones, but I see flagship phones that are priced like that so I'm sure people buy them.  Also the Pixel 2 / 3 series are older phones, and likely have their OS support already ended or about to be.  (My 3a will be ending around the middle of next year I think.)  If I get a new phone, I at least want security updates for quite a while, like several years, or at least as long as I choose to use the phone.

 

 

 

@FakeKGB:

 

Ahh... I wonder what you mean by "pain in the butt....not updating phone" vs "did get everything sorted" ... ?

And that's a tough one .... I was planning for my phone to last quite a bit longer.  It technically still works for most things but..... 

If I did replace it much sooner than originally planned, then the replacement would need to last an especially long time, as I don't plan to bump up my future upgrades.  My next upgrade from the Pixel 3a would have been around 2025 or later, then after that would have been, and still is, like 2030 or 2033 or so.

From Q3/4 2008 to Q2 2013, I had a T-Mobile G1.  That thing lasted at least 4 and a half years or so, and was a significantly worse phone, even taking technology of the day into account, than the Pixel 3a.  I was anticipating using the 3a until it got to be as "bad" due to its age as the G1 was in 2013. (The G1 eventually died, forcing me to replace it, which ended up being a Galaxy S Relay 4G.)

Also I was hoping that when the time came to replace the Pixel 3a (originally planned for like 2025), it would be better than the desktop PC I had at the time I got the Pixel 3a.  (i7-4790K, 32GB RAM, GTX 1060 3GB if I had it installed, 25-40 TB storage depending on what HDDs I had plugged in, etc.)  Then when I replaced THAT phone around 2030+, I would have wanted it to beat what I had been hoping to get in a desktop PC in 2022.

 

That ended up not happening cause of pandemic, innovation being too slow, products being delayed, prices too high, etc, but in 2017-2018 I was envisioning something like dual-socket CPUs with core counts exceeding that of a GPU the same price as the 4790K when I bought it, like a GTX 970 for example, 2 TB RAM, a fair bit of storage, a GPU that could play the latest games at 4K or 8K 120+ fps max settings, etc - like maybe enough to store every movie I've ever recorded in RAW uncompressed 4K/8K, and I have probably over 10+ TB of compressed 4K, 1080p, 480p, etc...
(In a nutshell, I was hoping a phone bought at a particular time would be better in pretty much every way than a decent desktop PC from about 10 years or so earlier.)

 

Also a couple side notes (in spoiler)...

Spoiler

Even though my Pixel 3a has more memory (3GB vs 2GB), probably better CPU (forget what the 3a has, vs Core 2 Duo T7250), higher resolution screen (wider 1080p, vs 1280x800), etc, than my dad's 13 year old laptop (he's since upgraded by now) ... there are still some things it does better than my phone, especially when it comes to multitasking which surprises me because of the laptop having less RAM and a lower resolution screen.

 

On the laptop I could probably watch 2 or 3 youtube videos simultaneously, or have multiple apps open on screen at once, but I can't do that on my phone.  (I tried recently with split screen, and when I would play one video on one side, the one on the other side would pause.)

 

 

 

 

I'm hoping that my next desktop PC, after my current 5950X (which is intended as a stop-gap actually, until I can actually get what I described that I WANTED to upgrade to, hoping around 2024-5 for that but it might slip to 2028 maybe), has a similar relative lifespan vs previous PCs, as a similar comparison to some phones I've had:

Phones:
My T-Mobile G1 lasted about 4 and a half years, from around Fall 2008 to around Spring 2013 or so.
It outlasted my first four phones before that, combined.  (Moto V188, V300, MPx220, A1200 in that order.)

 

past desktops (I'll mention, but not count stop-gaps or concurrents):
(stop-gap) : 2021 - Ryzen 9 5950X

(concurrent: 2016 - Core i7-6700K (laptop)
Desktop 4: 2015 - Core i7-4790K
(stop-gap): 2012  - Core 2 Duo T7250 (laptop)
Desktop 3:  2008 - Athlon 64 X2 4000+
Desktop 2:  2002 - Athlon 1.4 GHz 
DT1 / stopgap: 1999 - Pentium 166 MMX
alt. DT1: 1995 - 486 DX4-120

No, I'm not expecting to keep the original CPU, GPU, etc for that long of course, but I want to be able to have that long of an upgrade path without having to replace several things at once.  (So no having to change motherboard / CPU socket, for example.)
Other ways I've thought about my idea of longevity (including being able to upgrade one part at a time, not have to reinstall / reconfigure software, etc) include things like ...

lasting through several PSU upgrades (assuming I, for example, get "golden sample" Seasonic Prime PSUs, baby them, they eventually die of old age, and btw dying during warranty is considered "infant mortality" - in other industries I've seen other things that had shorter warranties but have outlasted my grandparents...),
or outlasting certain standards like USB type A, 4-pin Molex, SATA, or even QWERTY (or if you wanted to stretch it a bit more ... the standard 12-tone music keyboard - I hear there's an organ built in 1390 that exists in Europe, and I imagine that wasn't the first time that layout was used...) ... yes of course I won't be around that long but I am not the hugest fan of frequent change.  

 

 

[WhitetailAni]

7 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Ahh... I wonder what you mean by "pain in the butt....not updating phone" vs "did get everything sorted" ... ?

Normally setting up a new iPhone means placing them next to each other, scanning a specially created image, then waiting as the data transfers.

However, this means you have to update your phone to the newest iOS version, which I very much did not want to do. So I set it up as new, then had to struggle through app-individual cloud backup systems and tracking down all my music, etc. Even about a month later there’s still things where I go “dang, forgot to do that”, then never do it because I can’t when I remember.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

1 hour ago, FakeKGB said:

Normally setting up a new iPhone means placing them next to each other, scanning a specially created image, then waiting as the data transfers.

However, this means you have to update your phone to the newest iOS version, which I very much did not want to do. So I set it up as new, then had to struggle through app-individual cloud backup systems and tracking down all my music, etc. Even about a month later there’s still things where I go “dang, forgot to do that”, then never do it because I can’t when I remember.

Ahh, ugh, that's a hassle I really don't want to deal with. (Having to deal with multiple individual systems, apps, etc, dig up my music although in my case much of it was produced by church friends for church events and never available on the general market, and so on.)  I just want to be able to hit the ground running so to speak - from a software perspective it would be like I never changed devices.

 

 

Also often in my past upgrades, the Android (or other OS) I was using was several versions old, so updating to the latest on the old device wasn't possible.

 

• T-Mobile G1 to Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G - Android 1.6 to 4.0
• Moto G4 Play to Google Pixel 3a - Android 7 to 10. (Briefly had 9 for the first week or two or so.)
• (Dad's phone) Samsung Galaxy Core Prime to Google Pixel 4a - Android 5.1 to 10 (my mom's still using a SGCP, desperately wants a new phone but dad's concerned the massive change in user interface would frustrate her so much she wouldn't be able to use it hardly at all; he himself has quite a bit of trouble with his 4a and he's the more tech literate, worked as an engineer much of his life)
• (Dad's laptop) Dell D830 (C2D T7250) to Dell Inspiron (i7-8550U) - Windows XP to 10
• (My desktop) Athlon 64 X2 4000+ to i7-4790K - Windows XP basically to 10. (Briefly had 7 during 1H 2015 while waiting for 10's release. Also I shared dad's D830 for a few years while my AM2 motherboard was dead & I lacked $ to upgrade or replace it.)

 

 

My family and I tend to prefer to hang onto the same software, interface, etc, for a long time, not even liking minor changes frequently.  My brother, last I knew, was still using Windows 7 on his primary PC (i7-4770K) at home, my parents' kitchen has a stove and (currently not working properly) oven original to the 1962-built house (moved here Nov 1978), my mom's having to get used to her 2012 Toyota Camry SE (replaced a 2002 Honda Accord that was having fdabsnideio---I hate typing on phone keyboards, I mean "transmission" and suggestions (I disable autocorrect b/c too many problems with it & horror stories of inappropriate often sexual "corrections") wasn't even suggesting it with what I had typed which I left in unedited--issues among other things), and I'm sure there's other examples if I could think of them....

 

 

Also another thing I was hoping to have on my next phone is the same multitasking capabilities, user interface, arranging windows/apps, playing multiple sounds/videos simultaneously, run multiple VMs (I currently often run 5 concurrently on my laptop (example of 4 in screenshot in spoiler) but anticipate running upwards of 20 maybe more eventually), being able to actually touch type by feel without looking at a keyboard, etc, that my desktop (at least my older one with a 4790K & 32GB RAM, recently upgraded to 5950X + 128GB) and even laptop (6700K + 64GB) have.  Even my dad's older laptop with Core 2 Duo & 2GB RAM beats my Pixel 3a in those areas in spite of the 3a having better CPU & more RAM, except for VMs which I don't think either can do.

 

Spoiler

Just noticed the Windows uptime in task manager ... I hate frequent reboots as well, would love to have the multiple years or decade-plus, or "6 or 7 nines" of uptime I've heard some servers have.

 

[dizmo]

On 12/7/2021 at 9:44 PM, PianoPlayer88Key said:

@dizmo:

 

I know ... I don't spend $1K on phones, but I see flagship phones that are priced like that so I'm sure people buy them.  Also the Pixel 2 / 3 series are older phones, and likely have their OS support already ended or about to be.  (My 3a will be ending around the middle of next year I think.)  If I get a new phone, I at least want security updates for quite a while, like several years, or at least as long as I choose to use the phone.

Why? You're spending a very small amount over what you'd be spending to repair your current device, if not less. You can snipe an auction and pay considerably less for the phones I listed. It simply doesn't make sense to repair your phone for what it costs.