Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I watched several youtube videos and read several sites before attempting a the repair of my badly cracked glass on my Galaxy S4. I used a hairdryer. I had a heat gun ready in case the hair dryer didnt work, but it did fine. I went nice and slow on heating up the glass. I am a guitar player and I did have lots of extra stiff picks around that I gathered in case I needed them after I started. I did use them! I kept forcing them in gaps that I created around the edges. I think I had like 7 picks in it at one point. I then spent the most time cleaning the adhesive off of the LCD/digitizer after the broken glass was removed! I spent at least an hour and a half on that. I've seen some videos that made it look like the adhesive wasn't on there that badly but mine was covered in it. I tried several chemicals. I tried the lighter duty goof-off. I wouldnt recommend that, it didnt really help and I was afraid it was damaging the glass. The best thing I had was actually a formulation of Windex that was one of the eco ones or made with "natural ingredients". I don't have it in front of my here so I dont remember the type, but it worked very well - but slowly... Lots of rubbing with paper towels and my fingers. I then tried what one video showed where you just put the new glass in place trying to reuse any existing adhesive on the sides. Well the glass wasn't really held in there well. Maybe I removed or messed up too much of the adhesive along the sides. But the worst thing that happened was the touch wasn't being picked up anymore! I tried using the phone anyways for the past week and it was terrible. I was in the process of researching the LOCA adhesives that some sites talk about to basically re-glue the glass back onto the screen. BUT - great news! I realized that the BIG roll of thin double-stick adhesive that this kit included could be put along the border. I saw another video showing how to put that on. I removed as much of the adhesive along the border carefully with a flat screwdriver (included in this kit) being careful not to slip and scratch the glass or hurt one of the circuits. It wasn't peffectly removed but I thought it was good enough. I put the strip adhesive in place, put the glass on, gave it some heat from a hair dryer and pressed firmly. My S4 is now ALMOST as good as new! The side of my case is still scratched up and tore up from where I dropped it to concrete, but at least its usable now and works! And I'm not out $500. With all of this said, I do have an electrical engineering degree and I always build my own computers. This is the first time I ever attempted anything like this on such a carefully built piece of electronics though. I was careful, slow, and methodical though. This kit was great to have everything I needed right there. I believe my additional use of guitar pics made me able to do the removal a little quicker because I was able to keep adding them in place as separators. If you try to do your own repair, good luck. Be careful. Never use excessive force. If you are doing something that doesnt seem right, stop, rewatch the videos on the internet, learn from what you are doing, and then proceed. Doing this repair successfully has given me the confidence to do it on any device in the future.