To add to this, because I'm sure there are others out there like me who intend to use their Eris until it gets run over, dropped in lava, drawn, quartered, and defecated upon . . .
I ordered the same replacement housing and digitizer as mentioned above, and had 2 small problems:
- The housing I got had a nut in it that came loose, so that one of the corners wasn't able to reassemble properly.
- There was something different in the new housing that caused the proximity sensor to function incorrectly.
For #1, I just used some super glue to weld the nut into place. This appears to have worked OK, but I fear that the point is weakened now and I will need to be very gentle if I disassemble the phone again.
For #2, The problem was that the housing was allowing bleed through inside the case from the proximity flasher to the light sensor, which caused the sensor to determine that there was something close to it when in fact there wasn't. I placed a small (oh so small) piece of electrical tape into the housing between where the IR flasher and sensor are located, and the problem was resolved.
If presented with the option of purchasing a new digitizer alone, or a new digitizer and housing together, follow groovel76's suggestion; it's well worth the time and money to go with the latter. The hassle of cleaning the old adhesive off of the new housing, and the risks of getting new adhesive in places where you don't want it far outweigh the cost of just getting a housing with adhesive pre-applied. I tried to do just a digitizer first, and ended up with a small amount of super glue (DO NOT RECOMMEND) getting on the new screen and the edge of the housing, as well as a screen that didn't seat properly because I didn't get quite all of the old bits out of the old housing. This resulted in dust getting under the screen and another crack when I attempted to fix what I'd screwed up the first time.
Between the availability of parts and ROMs for this phone, I see it being in my family for a LONG time yet.