A few days ago the Poorhouse's mobile phone broke. The phone is relatively new, a nice fancyish contract phone just 4-5 months old or so. The breakage seemed strange. Whilst certainly no stranger to doing rather silly things to phones, this seemed to be a spontaneous destruction one. First it wouldn't turn on at all. Later it would, but a strange permanent leafy-pattern was etched upon the screen meaning there was no way of seeing your way around navigating the phone.

Readers: please take the time to consider how likely it was that this particular fault was covered by the extended warranty.

Well, of course not! Mobile phone insurance, warranties and the like must be one of the most profitable scams ever. There are about two groups of phone owners in the world - those who haven't ever got anything useful from their high-premium insurance and expensive warranties, and those who have had to lie to their insurers to get something done. Somehow the small print always, always wins. Maybe your phone is covered for falling into water, but of course the water had a fish in and it's not covered for animal attack. Maybe your phone fell off a wall? Fine, but of course the wall was 1 millimetre higher than your phone is covered for. Maybe it's covered for theft from car? Except of course if the car happens to be red; and of course yours is. Please feel free to add your fascinating mobile phone replacement story below.

The Poorhouse made the mistake of reporting the fault to the shop without examining the warranty in detail. No go. Apparently it is a "pressure fault" and that means it isn't covered. Oh, there are all sorts of solutions to the problem thank you Mr Helpful Shop Man, but all of them seem to cost equal-or-more to £200. Even a bit of argument didn't get anywhere other than the oh-so-kind offer to let me send the phone at my own expense to the place where they will look at it, say no, and charge me an extra £15 for the trouble. Ahem, no.

So...enter project phone fix. As far as could be told, the fault was only with the screen. A quick run-around the slightly less ermmm...official brand representatives of phone shops and services found people who would fix it for around £75. Still too much! If it was the nineties, and possibly even now, you could buy 750 Chomp bars for that.

Ebay it is then! Turns out a new K750i screen costs about £20 from eBay. Imagine the pride and joy in fixing a phone for just 10% of the annoying-man-issued-cost. All Christmases have come at once. So, as it is just so darn fascinating, below is a photo story of how to accomplish such a feat. Sort of.

The faulty phone:

Turn it off, take the cover off and remove the battery.

Unscrew the 4 screws on the left of the illustration above. The bottom two will require a Torx T6 screwdriver - get them for pennies from eBay or many, many other places on the Internet or off. The other screws can be done with a normal-but-small screwdriver - they are cross-headed in nature, but the Poorhouse found it easier to remove them with a small generic flat bladed screwdriver.

When undone, separate the front and back cover of the phone. This was a bit tricky, but carefully inserting a blade into the edge of the phone and prising away from the bottom worked. Be careful not to snap the cover. That wouldn't look pretty.

The keypad buttons just slide away easily.

Slightly less easy, but only slightly, is removing the white keypad underlay. Holding it like the illustration above, flip the cover to the top. Fiddle around with it a bit and it should come off. It kind of needs unplugging from its connection near the top left of the picture, but likely will just unplug itself with a small jiggle around.

The broken screen can now be removed. Unscrew the Torx screws on the left hand side of the illustration (the top of the phone). Unplug the black connector that fixes the green part to the main body of the phone, then slide the green part up over the joystick until it becomes free.

Put the new screen on in place of the old; remember to fasten the black connector and screw the Torx screws back in firmly.

Put everything else back together; just do the reverse of taking it apart.

Stand back. Turn it on.

Yay, the whole screen lights up white, not a leaf pattern in sight.

Erm, oh dear, the whole screen is still lit up minutes later. Something isn't right. So we replaced the screen with style and dexterity, but something else must be amiss. Hmm.

Take it apart, try again, repeat to fade, same result. Sob for your loss.

But readers, I hear you say, "I thought you fixed your phone for 10% of the cost that the big bad man wanted to charge you?". Yes I did. The final, top secret, last step is as follows.

Do this: ring up the warranty people and describe your new problem (phone screen is white) in as vague - but firm - terms as possible. Be sure to act innocent and not say "Actually it might be because I tried some DIY phone action with eBay components even though I can barely tie my shoelaces on a good day". Trying to fix your phone is always against any sort of warranty terms. You may find ringing up late at night when the call centre guy is a bit dopey and careless helps. Come away from the phone call with details of where to send it to fix it. Make sure you have replaced every last component in exactly the way it was originally.

Send in the phone in. Wait a bit. Watch it come back fixed as good as new. Smile.