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Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

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Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#111

Post by srvmshr »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #53
srvmshr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places like Ghaffar Market exist in most Asian cities. In fact, Delhi has another at Nehru Place

My point is, if people like these can repair your phone in 1/50 the cost of a "genuine apple repair" or even a "trusted third party repair" guy, why do you care about "genuine" because the lines are blurry at that point. Sure you can spend $200 to repair your $1000 iphone screen from apple but you know if you take to the ghaffar market, they will charge you what, $30 if that. Sure there will be quality issues but wha…

Getting arm twisted to buy is a bad thing of course. The core concern is not the availability of talent to do this but the supply chain of genuine parts, and authentication of successful repair thereafter. iFixit already provides several kits and could theoretically provide iPhone kits too - but if you are eventually forced to pay Apple a premium to validate that repair, then the repair pipeline goes waste.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#112

Post by Majromax »

lupire wrote: post #98
cheshire_cat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Agreed - I'm not sure why we assume that a modern smartphone is designed to be completely taken apart and reassembled with a standard toolkit. The point is that they chose to do it that way because it makes them more money, not because their technology is too advanced to let the user easily change their battery. If companies designed their product in a way that you can exchange parts that often break (batteries) an…

It's $100 for 3 more years of battery. If you can't handle that, buy a slightly cheaper phone or a refurb. The alternative id far worse -- phones that get thrown away after a year or two because they don't get OS updates or they just break.

> It's $100 for 3 more years of battery. If you can't handle that, buy a slightly cheaper phone or a refurb.

But tell me, where does it say on the iPhone box that the phone battery only lasts three years, give or take? How is a customer supposed to know what they need to 'handle'?

The battery is effectively a wear-item, where a very finite lifespan is an acceptable trade-off for better initial performance. However, designing the phone this way also makes the service an intended part of phone ownership, not merely a response to damage or accident.

Apple (alongside the other manufacturers, by this point) is double-dipping by designing a phone that effectively requires service and by being the only reasonable provider for that service.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#114

Post by Macha »

Aeolun wrote: post #65
srvmshr wrote: post #13

If made to fulfill the word of the law without actually having to follow it in spirit, this would be my modus operandi too. By designing $1200 deposit, $49 rental & two Pelican suitcases of tools and manuals, while keeping the battery replacement price same at $69 (what you'd normally pay in total at Store), they have entirely disincentivized self-repair without actually breaking any law. Masterstroke /s

I think the EU is generally better at designing it’s regulations to avoid exactly this problem. Probably something to the extend of “tools to repair must be found in any general DIY store”.

At the same time, it means Americans often complain about EU regulations as being too vague as overly specific ones are too prone to workarounds. See much of the discussion about GDPR where it's clear many of the complainers just want to task their lawyers to find the right magic loophole clause to put in their ToS to avoid doing any of it, and get frustrated when the law is intended to avoid that exact behaviour

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#115

Post by PragmaticPulp »

blagie wrote: post #100
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #91

Does Apple require you to rent all of these specialty tools to replace the battery? Or is this author just getting all of the specialty tools to make a point? Obviously, people have been replacing iPhone batteries without 79 pounds of special tools for a long time. The fact that Apple provides the option to buy their special tools is great, but this author is digging deep for a reason to spin that as a bad thing whic…

You misread the article. Apple is renting out the tools for $49 and a $1200 deposit. Apple is doing this at a loss; the tools cost more than $49 to ship, let alone rent, and probably way more than $1200 to buy. That's weird. Apple is also charging $69 for a $5 battery -- their normal repair fee. That's unfair. Apple set up a bizarre, convoluted process, on which both Apple and the customer lose money.

No, my point was that you don’t need the official repair kit at all if you’re willing to improvise like we’ve been doing forever. The author of this article is being dramatic to try to make a point.

> Apple is also charging $69 for a $5 battery -- their normal repair fee. That's unfair.

Honestly I don’t see any problems with any of this. A $70 replacement battery option for my $1200 iPhone that I’m owning for 3-4 years seems entirely reasonable. Renting the professional level gear as an option if I want it. For $49 is an unbelievable gesture of goodwill. Are you really demanding that Apple sell batteries for $5?

At this point, I’m not convinced the HN crowd would be happy with any solution any company could offer, aside from making phones twice as big and using screws and offering $5 batteries for these $1200 phones just in case someone needs to replace the battery after 3 years.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#116

Post by lupire »

vvillena wrote: post #54
IgorPartola wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand phones are now thing and waterproof. Not saying that replaceable batteries are bad but it’s not like this was an entirely arbitrary decision.

The first Motorola Defy was a comparable device to its competitors when it was released, and its big feature, being water-resistant, didn't make any compromises apart from rubber caps on the ports (not necessary in modern phones) and a better back cover with a manual latch. Sealing phones isn't needed at all. It's a decision driven by the market makers.

The Defy weight over 8oz, a huge compromise. It's too heavy for the average personn to handle comfortably.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#117

Post by mcphage »

vlovich123 wrote: post #67
fartcannon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understood this kind of compliance. The hordes that buy their disposable garbage aren't going to care, they've shown repeatedly that they're insensitive to, sometimes even aggressive towards their own autonomy. So why do this? Just to _waste_ more? It's so petulant.

Probably to make sure that their iPhone repair business (and that of their authorized partners) doesn’t just collapse by getting massively undercut by unauthorized resellers that can use the official repair kit.

If you’re going to run a business replacing batteries, eating the $1,200 deposit loss and keeping the equipment seems a no-brainer.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#118

Post by lotsofpulp »

Majromax wrote: post #112
lupire wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's $100 for 3 more years of battery. If you can't handle that, buy a slightly cheaper phone or a refurb. The alternative id far worse -- phones that get thrown away after a year or two because they don't get OS updates or they just break.

> It's $100 for 3 more years of battery. If you can't handle that, buy a slightly cheaper phone or a refurb. But tell me, where does it say on the iPhone box that the phone battery only lasts three years, give or take? How is a customer supposed to know what they need to 'handle'? The battery is effectively a wear-item, where a very finite lifespan is an acceptable trade-off for better initial performance. However, d…

Lithium battery lifetimes vary greatly on operating conditions, and degrade at a non linear rate.

It should be common knowledge by now that lithium batteries start showing performance losses around 700 charge cycles, and definitely by 1,000 charge cycles.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#119

Post by honkdaddy »

wfhordie wrote: post #93

Apple can’t win here. If they had sent the sleek, easy to carry tools this author asked for, the author would complain about the pathetic tools they are providing. Really disappointed in The Verge on this article. Could have been a cool piece about the specific tech that Apple provides, but instead it’s framed so disingenuously that I come away not feeling particularly good about right to repair in general. It no lon…

I ran an iOS sales and repairs service for years, eventually stopping around the iPhone X era. I had decent third-party tools, but despite being careful, I'd still break peoples' devices on rare occasion and have to eat the cost.

The adhesive they use to bind the screen to the body has gotten consistently tougher over the years, to the point where there really isn't a reliable way for someone to do it correctly on their first try without specialized tech like this. You WILL underestimate the amount of heat required and either crack your screen or break your tool when trying to pry them apart. It's incredibly frustrating and delicate work if you're just using a heat gun and a screwdriver.

If they shipped him a "warming sock" and some kludgers like iFixit used to do, I'm sure a quarter of the people who attempt the repair would end up breaking their device and the whole program would be a failure.

Unless they ditch the adhesive and return to the iPhone 4/4S design of a back-cover which slides off easily, I actually think the 70lbs of equipment might be their best path forward.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#120

Post by Nextgrid »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #101
wfhordie wrote: post #93

Apple can’t win here. If they had sent the sleek, easy to carry tools this author asked for, the author would complain about the pathetic tools they are providing. Really disappointed in The Verge on this article. Could have been a cool piece about the specific tech that Apple provides, but instead it’s framed so disingenuously that I come away not feeling particularly good about right to repair in general. It no lon…

Furthermore, according to Apple technicians, these are the actual tools they have always used every day in Apple stores, but the author is framing it as though Apple went out of their way to make difficult tools for consumers - by giving them exactly what they were asking for, the actual tools. The author complains that after renting the tools and buying the battery, it’s more expensive than having Apple do it. So? I…

> by giving them exactly what they were asking for, the actual tools.

When it comes to Apple devices, the "tools" that DIY repairmen want are the schematics, software to provision new parts (ideally there wouldn't be a need for this to begin with) and proprietary parts that can't be bought elsewhere.

When it comes to opening the phones, there's nothing particularly complex about this and third-parties have figured it out already, all the way down to the proprietary screwdrivers.

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