Chosen Solution
I’m putting my iPad Air back together after having replaced the battery, following guide 25869. I’m at the point where very shortly I will be re-attaching the front display (the piece of clear glass, a.ka. “screen” or “digitizer”), then re-attaching the LCD, then putting the pre-cut adhesive onto the frame so I can press the front display back into place. The frame is quite clean - no black adhesive tape; I am down to bare metal on the edges where the new tape will go. The front display (the glass) is also clear of tape on its edges - however those edges still have a very thin, very spotty layer of black “gunk,” i.e. adhesive residue. The instructions say to “clean the remains of the adhesive” from the glass with isopropyl alcohol - but I am finding this simply doesn’t do the trick, given I am restricted to plastic scraping tools if I wish to avoid doing damage. An alternative would be to buy a new front display, but at $39.99 from iFixit that’s pretty steep for replacing a part that is not actually broken. My limited experience w/ iFixit repairs (I’ve worked on a couple of Macbooks & an iPod) tells me that as long as the gunk is merely a very thin layer, and is itself clinging quite tenaciously to the glass, that this ought to be good enough for the new adhesive to adhere. However, there is another aspect: would there be any chance that a minuscule increase in spacing between glass & LCD would interfere with touchscreen function? I guess I could go ahead & see; and if there were interference w/ the touchscreen, I could shrug, buy the new front display, & do a follow-up procedure to install it. At least it would be simpler than the full battery replacement procedure I just went through. For those of you w/ lots of experience fixing tablets etc., what do you think?
If you have a big blob of that “gunk” (or should I say adhesive) under your display, you may possibly have trouble with your display, damage nearby components, or make repairs harder. I recommend a thin layer of adhesive.
