[ifixit] We Are Retroactively Dropping the iPhone’s Repairability Score::We need to have a serious chat about iPhone repairability. We judged the phones of yesteryear by how easy they were to take apart—screws, glues, how hard it was…
I’m not doubting this is true given the source, but there are phone repair shops all over my town that repair cracked iPhone screens all the time. How do they make that business work if they have to register something like a screen replacement?
- It’s not talking about screens
- Those people are licensed and using parts directly from Apple, which Apple allows
Read the damned post.
They can pony up the exorbitant fee to get access to the Apple repair kit that lets you work on Apple devices.
Then they register the screen replacement with their privileged access.
It was possible with older phones to just swap out the screen but starting with 10 (iirc) it is no longer possible to do without the tools.
I work as a repair tech for Batteries Plus, on the X and above what usually happens is a notification in the settings app about being unable to verify whatever part is an OEM part and that the service log for the device has been updated. If it’s the battery that is being changed and it’s not paired, it will lock you out of viewing Battery Health information, and if the repair shop doesn’t copy over some data from the original screen then the replacement screen can cause the loss of True Tone. Haven’t experienced a phone completely brick itself because of third party repairs but Apple certainly forces a loss of functionality simply because they want all repairs funneled through them.
