Well you know it had to happen. Murphy's Law rears its ugly head and we've got our first smattering of reports about some limited build-quality issues inherent in 'some' Nexus 7 Tablets. Apparently a small number of early adopters have found that after a few days of use when they lean or press on one side of the front screen of their Nexus 7s that the other side lifts up. Now to be sure this is a relatively small number of tablets that apparently have this flaw and if it happens to you the most obvious remedy is to simply exercise your 15 day return window and
contact Google support so you can get your defective Nexus 7 replaced.
Now using this warranty period is certainly what I would recommend but some more entrepreneurial and hands-on owners have instead decided to figure out a fix on their own so that they wouldn't have to part with their beloved new tablets. Originally discovered by
XDA-Forums member jam10238, the fix involves gently removing the back of the tablet and tightening several loose screws that appear to be at the center of the problem. Apparently some of the fastening screws in the Nexus 7's suffering from this screen separation issue have only been tightened about 80%. A few turns of a screwdriver to tighten these followed by the re-attachment of the back cover seems to return the tablet back to new and fix the issue.
Several sites have issued step-by-step instruction on how to perform the fix and how to remove the back cover without marring the perfect finish of your new tablet including
Droid-Life. Now while there's no 'warranty tape' that was seen that would automatically void your warranty if opening the back, common sense tells us that if you scratch up the insides or otherwise break something you might have a hard time getting your tablet replaced under warranty. For this reason we do recommend that if you have one of the few Nexus 7's with this issue you call them up and get an RMA to get a new unit. But for those that like to take things into their own hands you can use the fix above.
Now just to put any rumors to the contrary it is very common, in fact almost universal that when a new piece of hardware like a tablet or laptop is first introduced to the market that some manufacturing snafoos inevitably come up with some of the early models. Asus, the manufacturer of the Nexus 7 has a generally stellar reputation regarding build quality and we wouldn't make any more of this than it is. Considering the hundreds of thousands of Nexus 7s that have been projected to have been sold during this introduction we've only seen a smattering of a few dozen instances of this screen lifting happening. In other words it's probably much smaller than 1% of tablets sold.
With that said let us know if any forum members have had this issue. We haven't seen it in ours and we've asked around to several associates and so far none of us have seen it ourselves. But if you do let us know, provide some pics and tell us if you plan on sending it back to Google for a replacement or fixing it yourself.
UPDATE: There are now several reports that the 'fix' above doesn't always work and the screen 'might' become loose again (but others apparently say it fixed theirs). Therefore, if you do have one of the few tablets with the screen lifting issue we still stand by our recommendation you should contact Google for a replacement tablet.
