At iParts4u we are always looking to help our customers with their repair experience, so with that in mind, we have written up this post to assist our customers on how to best identify their iPhone LCD screen manufacturer and deal with swapping over serial data to your new screen.
You might ask – why is this important?
Below you will find in full detail why it is important to know this information on certain grade replacement screens.
There are 3 types of LCD screen manufacturers that Apple use for their mobile devices – Sharp, Toshiba and LG. The Sharp and Toshiba LCD screens are cross-compatible and you can use either of these screens on each handset, however, when you have an iPhone with an LG screen then you would only be able to use an LG screen replacement for these LG coded devices. Again, you might be wondering why. Well, if you fit a Toshiba or Sharp LCD to an iPhone that had an LG screen previously then the chances are you will either have no touch function or intermittent touch issues, so you must identify the display manufacturer of your iPhone before ordering a premium replacement.
How can you identify the manufacturer of your iPhone screen?
This can be done easily by downloading a free iPhone diagnostic tool called 3Utools.
Once you have downloaded and installed this software, plug any iPhone into your computer and open 3Utools.
Once it detects the iPhone, you will be asked to trust the computer on your device. You do this by entering the passcode on the phone, then selecting “Trust This Computer”.
After this 3Utools will display information like the below on your computer.
Click on the view verification report, you will then see the below information:
The important information here is the screen serial number as this number will identify your iPhone screen manufacture. The first 3 digits of the serial number could either be a mixture of numbers and letters or just letters and this will indicate the manufacturer. Please see below a list of the first 3 digits to see which manufacturer they represent:
Sharp LCD codes
- DKH
- COV
- C11
Toshiba LCD codes
- FVQ
- F7C
- C11
LG LCD Codes
- DTP
- C3F
Once you have identified the screen you can then order the correct screen to match the manufacturer of your original screen. This is important as this will help guarantee details such as the colour consistency of your new screen compared to your original screen. This will also help ensure there are no compatibility issues between the new screen and your device, to help avoid touch issues commonly found after premium screen replacements with mismatched serial numbers.
Can I copy iPhone screen serial data?
The next thing to do is consider whether you want to take the serial data from your original screen to the new screen prior to fitment – this will help keep your device to an original specification and make sure there is no serial data mismatch should Apple bring out an update which stops existing third party repairs. However, if your iPhone LCD screen serial number matches the serial data that is on the iPhone mainboard then Apple will not be able to identify a replacement screen that has been fitted by a third party. iParts4u premium LCD screens have an EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) chip which will store this screen serial data. You will need to use a special tool called an EEPROM reader and writers such as the JC-V1 Programmer or other EEPROM tools – all you need to do is plug your existing screen into this device, read the data, then connect the new screen and write the data; once done the screen will be ready to fit. Once fitted you will be able to check using the 3Utools verification report that the new screen serial number will match the original and the test result will be normal.
This information is here to assist customers in doing their own professional iPhone screen repair or other fixes. This process is only needed if you are buying a premium grade screen part. If you are looking to buy either a budget, high quality or iP9 screen you will not be able to transfer serial data; this is because these LCD assemblies do not have an EEPROM chip capable of holding serial data.
This information should only be used for information purposes. By following this guide we will not be held liable should you damage your device or screen in the process. We hope that you find this guide useful.
