Personally I trust my corner repair shop (mind, a specific repair shop in my town, not all of them) more than Apple to fix only what's broken and not swap the whole phone.
Not to mention I don't have to ship the phone to another town or something like that.
There are literally hundreds of repair shops that cropped up the last few years. Problem is you never know if the shop is actually good.
Apple guarantees quality- at an absurd price.
Lesson: treat your expensive electronics well. Or be like my brother with a permanent cracked screen on his iPhone.
Sure, but also keep in mind that Apple has literally no way of knowing what a third-party repair shop might do. Apple does not want to end up on the hook if a third party shop uses a fake exploding battery, the wrong adhesive (causing e.g. antenna issues, excess heat, or flaky phone), a fraudulent or fake part, etc. If that phone blows up/dies/erases everything afterwards, an irate customer or the media might well pin the blame on Apple.
I don't blame them for not wanting random third parties doing repairs.
Apple effectively disallowed repair even if a shop uses genuine parts from another identical phone. The only thing you can now be confident in is that nobody will be able to fix your phone.
You’re allowed to open up your phone today. Nobody is saying the police should knock down your door because you opened your phone. What’s at stake right now is if you open your phone, you void your warranty and Apple will not provide any more support for you. Which seems perfectly justified to me; iPhones are sufficiently complicated that end users will absolutely damage or destroy their phones by opening them up.
The distinction I’m drawing is between end users and third-party repair shops. Users need to have a way to get support, and Apple Stores aren’t available everywhere, or aren’t necessarily offering repairs as cheaply as a third-party shop could. Third-party repair shops should be able to repair iPhones without voiding warranty, as long as they use Apple-supplied parts and with access to Apple-supplied training materials. But end users shouldn’t.
I occasionally buy and repair used Apple phones and are more comfortable with them than other brands. Even though Apple may discourage it most phone repairers know them and can do repairs, probably more so than an old Huawei whatever it is. I was quite impressed when an iPhone 5 was reduced to a spread of components on the road in a Thai scooter accident and the shop had it back working same day.
> Apple encourages people to take their phones into Apple stores/authorized dealers to get the battery replaced.
Not in my experience. Bring your iphone to an apple shop and ask for the battery to be replaced. Apple will most likely refuse unless the battery is shown as severely damaged in the settings.
This is exactly it. Note that Apple has yet to go after or sue someone simply for repairing an Apple device. That's never been the case yet. They've only sued people who claim to use genuine parts that don't, people who have used stolen service manuals, or companies that claim to do authorized repairs but don't.
I've had an iphone for nearly 15 years, I've never had to take it to a service centre. Local shops are dotted around towns that would replace screens if I broke one, which I guess is the most common problem.
I daresay that's the norm. People don't care that they would theoretically have to take their phone to the apple store because they don't have to.
A car however does need servicing and generally fixing -- you can get a puncture 5 miles after leaving the lot if nothing else, so people are more aware.
There are tons of third party repair shops for iPhone. It's also easy to do at home, I replaced my battery not too long ago.
Apple definitely has that reputation, but I don't think its deserved in my experience. They user manuals for machines with replaceable parts often describe exactly how to do it. For other things that require a tiny bit of skill or where an unskilled person could easily mess things up, they put up a minor barrier like a different screw head, the tool for which will often ship with replacement parts.
That's great that whoever makes your device(assuming Apple) has stores where they can do repairs. Having a repairable device doesn't mean you have to repair it yourself, it just means you can.
> Let's assume that all iPhones that are "repaired" by an Apple Store are actually replaced by the Apple Store. This matches my experience - go in with broken phone, walk out with brand new identical phone.
That used to be very common if not the default (this was my experience too, would always just get a replacement), but these days I believe they actually do a lot of common repairs in stores in a relatively short period of time (screen / back / button / battery replacements), etc.
I don't fix phones but I've heard that Apple is taking increasing measures to stop independent repair shops. Knowing what part to replace and how to do it doesn't help you if the manufacturer won't sell the part to anyone but Apple.
The damning part is that even if the repair place uses an actual Apple battery with all the circuitry exactly the same the phone treats it as a complete unknown because it hasn't been approved by Apple and authenticated. If I open up two identical iPhones and swap the batteries I shouldn't have diminished functionality, the phone should still fully report everything it knows about the battery health.
Apple can say many things, that doesn't make them true. Of course they loose potential money on repairs if they can get customers to buy a new phone instead, that's how consumer electronics make Money.
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