I used this YouTube vid below. To my surprise, it’s not like iPods of the past, where the face “holds” everything and the back is just a shell. In the case of this device, the face holds about half the guts, and the back shell holds another 50%.
I had started down the wrong path by seperating the silver bezel from the black shell. It was a bit of a battle and didn’t feel right, even though I was successful at breaking the seal around the entire bezel.
At that point I turned to the Google for the real scoop. I was entirely wrong about where the break was to be. To my surprise the video showed the break happening between the glass and the metal bezel. I would have never thought of that.
The suction cup worked perfectly. My girlfriend’s 3G is now working again. It was 100% dead. No idea what I did, but like many electronics surgeries, just opening it and noodling around solved it. I suspect it was a tiny connector that had come off its mate.
