"G1 owners are figuring out what many of our Apple iPhone customers already know: A large touchscreen is nice, but it's also much more prone to breaking," said Matt McCormick, one of the owners of Jet City Devices. "It's just the physics of carrying around a fairly large piece of glass every where you go - it's likely to break eventually."
A simple search for "G1 Cracked Screen" in the XDA-Developers forum (a website dedicated to smart phones) reveals dozens of different threads started by people that have broken their T-Mobile G1 screens. It's a common problem.
The G1 screen consists of two parts: The touchscreen glass and an LCD. The touchscreen is the part you touch. The LCD is what displays the actual picture on the phone. How do you know which of these two pieces is broken on your phone?
If you can see a spider web like crack in the glass, your touchscreen is broken. If part or all of the picture is solid white, black, or unreadable, then you have a broken LCD. It is possible for one or both of these parts to be broken.
According to Mr. McCormick of Jet City Devices: "I always tell people if you can still read your emails and text messages, then the problem is just a broken touchscreen glass. This is by far the most common problem with the G1."
Jet City Devices charges $85 to do a T-Mobile G1 touchscreen glass repair and $90 for an LCD replacement. This repair is available in person in the Chicago and Seattle areas and takes about 15 minutes. Mail-in repairs are available for the rest of the country and all repairs are completed within 24 hours of receiving the phone.
Both of these repairs can be seen on their website at: http://www.jetcitydevices.com/
