My Treo 650 may be old for a smart phone (a 3 year old product, that’s ancient for cell phones), but it still gives me easy text IM, Blackberry-style “push” email with regular IMAP email service, some Google apps like Google Maps, and decent (if slow) basic Web access.

A few months ago, I cracked the touchscreen surface (but not the LCD underneath, thank goodness). So it’s been gimped for a while, until I found a cheap touchscreen replacement on eBay this past week (previously I had seen them priced around $40-60, this one was $15).

So today, with the help of some Youtube videos, I performed delicate Treo surgery. The videos, however, only showed me how to remove the LCD, not how to take off the old touchscreen and put the LCD inside the new touchscreen. That was tricky, and the first couple of attempts led to a phone screen that worked but lacked a working backlight. After some more toiling and a little panic, I finally got it working.

So now I’m happy. I finally got my email, IM, and web browsing back on my Treo. Even for a 3 year old device, it’s still kick-ass.