Bad vibrations

Original vibration motor next to my Galaxy S3

Well, my vibrator stopped working. I dropped my Galaxy S3 the other day, and ever since, the vibration stopped working properly. And it would make weird noises. Sometimes it wouldn't even vibrate. If I shook my phone I could hear actual rattling in there.

So, like any hacker/cheapskate, I looked around online and found a $4 (free shipping) replacement on eBay. A few days later, it arrived in my mailbox.

Let me go backwards in time a little bit: I've never actually repaired a cell phone before. Because of this, I looked for some videos to see what I was getting myself into. To my surprise I wasn't overly intimidated, so I went forward.

It was a success! I actually shot the whole thing on video, but it's not edited at the moment. I will post it here when/if I ever get around to editing it for everyone (it definitely needs it).

To close this post, here's a closeup of the original motor:

Original vibrator motor