Dan East

My son and daughter both got new DS Lites for Christmas. We purchased Nerf Armor for them both, knowing that they would be heavily used and dropped often. Well, around two months ago, my son dropped his DS, while it was open, onto solid concrete. One quick glance at it was all it took to get that sinking feeling in my stomach – the top LCD panel was toast. A crack ran diagonally from one corner to the other, and only a sliver of screen at the bottom actually rendered pixels. The Nerf Armor didn’t save it, but the fact that the screen was open when it was dropped was probably the main reason it was damaged.

So I began searching for replacement LCD panels. Having done quite a bit of electronic repairs in the past, I decided I would try swapping out the panels myself. I found some at various online retailers for $40-$50, but most were out of stock, and all were priced too high. By the time I would pay shipping and buy the special screwdriver required to open a NDS Lite, I would have had $70 in parts just to attempt a repair on a $129 product. So my son made due with only the bottom screen for a few weeks (hopefully that served as a good lesson in being extra careful with expensive electronic devices). I eventually started looking for LCD panels again, and found one for sale on eBay for $4.98. Yes, you read right. $4.98 USD, with $10 shipping from Hong Kong. I read through the user’s feedback, and it was good, however I learned the shipping would take around two weeks, and that buyers received no communication from the seller at all. So a couple clicks of the mouse, and less than 10 days later the new LCD panel arrived (didn’t receive one single email from the seller as expected).

I had done enough research to know that the DS Lite, along with the Wii, uses special security screws designed to keep the average person from opening up their hardware. The screwdriver that fits is a “tri-wing”, which is like a Phillips head screwdriver, except it has three wings instead of four. So I ordered and received the screwdriver for $8 (including shipping) before the LCD panel arrived.

On the day the panel arrived I did some googling for DS Lite repair info. I found and watched a couple videos, and it became clear that I was mistaken in believing that I would only have to disassemble to top half of the DS. The ribbon cable linking the LCD panel to the main board of the DS is made into the LCD panel, thus the bottom half of the DS must be disassembled so the ribbon cable can be routed through the hinge, and connected to the main board. It was also clear that some soldering was involved. This wasn’t a problem for me – I have a solder station with digital temperature control, and have done quite a bit of soldering on various projects in the past. However, it was something I overlooked during my preparation, and probably would have dissuaded me from attempting the repair if I didn’t already have that capability.

I’m not going to get into the details of the DS Lite repair. There are plenty of tutorials and videos on the net covering that. I will say that, as someone who has significant experience in repairing similar types of devices, it was a pretty tough job. There are a few small ribbon cables to deal with. There are tiny springs and metal posts that hold the shoulder buttons in place, that are tough to position properly and extremely easy to lose. Several types of screws of varying length are used, and it can be tough too keep track of exactly where they go when reassembling. This certainly would not be a good repair to attempt for a first-timer. The ribbon cable for the top panel has to twist and pass through one of the hinges, which at first glance appears to completely impossible to manage. I actually damaged the touch-screen ribbon cable during the repair. The bottom screen has two ribbon cables – a skinny 4-conductor cable for the touch screen, and a wider data cable. The two ribbon cables route around opposite sides of the mainboard, and they sort of hold the LCD panel in place when the unit is disassembled. I wasn’t careful enough moving the bottom half around, and the smaller ribbon cable was bent sideways within the connector, and part of it tore off. I extracted the tiny fragment with an Exacto knife, and was able to cut off a couple millimeters of the cable so that the edge was nice and straight. Otherwise I would have had to purchase an additional touch panel.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, the replacement LCD was cheap – $4.98 plus shipping. When I first fired the unit up I was quite excited because – quite frankly – it simply worked. After playing homebrew Lemmings for a while something began to grab my attention. The black areas of the top display had something like a diagonal sheen to it. As I tilted the display the sheen would move. I also noticed that the vertical viewing angle wasn’t so good – as I slightly tilted the DS so I was looking at the top panel from above, colors would quickly shift. Like reds would become greens.

So I fired up my daughter’s DS and did a side-by-side comparison.

• The first thing I noticed is the new LCD has four distinct backlights along the bottom edge. On the OEM screen the backlighting is perfectly even. Now this only stands out if I look along the display, in an almost parallel line of sight. When holding it normally I don’t notice any uneven backlighting.
• The biggest difference is the vertical viewing angle. The OEM display has a much better tolerance for viewing from less than 90° angles. The colors would quickly shift on the new display, while they changed more slowly on the OEM display as I tilted the DS.  The horizontal viewing angle (from left to right) is good.
• There is a diagonal sheen visible in black colors that moves up and down as the screen is slightly tilted.

However, to an 8 year old, none of these issues would be apparent. My son never missed a beat with the new screen, and has not mentioned any difference in quality whatsoever.

So, the repair cost me $15 for the display and $8 for the screwdriver, for a total of $23 to replace the top panel. The next time around I won’t have to buy the screwdriver, so it will only cost $15 total. Of course there won’t be a next time though. Yeah, right.