Live data from Hacker News

Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

macrumors.com

71–80 of 150 posts

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#71
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you expect your iPhone 16 battery press tool to still be useful in 2 phone generations ? How many times do you see yourself replacing the iPhone 16's battery ? Lots of my bike tools I have will take over a decade to get my money back on my stuff alone. But I get to do something I mostly enjoy. I can also help out friends/acquaintances when they need it. The same goes for this.

Hey do you have any recommendations on a small kit to bring for long bike trips?

Blackburn switch tool with chain press, tire levers, patch kit, spare tube. For anything not fixable with those, you visit a shop.

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#72
post #15
post #2

> Compared to prior iPhone models, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are easier to repair. Apple is using an electric battery removal process, and the steps for accessing a battery to replace it are outlined in a separate support document https://support.apple.com/en-us/120642 >. Per Apple's instructions, a 9-volt battery and 9-volt battery clips can be applied to the iPhone 16 battery to remove the adhesive that hold…

Removing a battery attached with previous type of adhesive is torture - the elastic tab frequently tears off, and I ended up a few times having to bend the old battery a lot, to get it out (very unsafe, it starts heating). So, to me, this is a huge progress. Plus, don’t you normally have 9v battery and some connectors for it already?

The upcoming EU regulation regarding removable batteries is hopefully going to fix this.

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#73

The cost of the tools required for device repair and the cost of genuine components make self repair almost as expensive as getting a repair from an Apple retail location or an Apple Authorized Service Provider Malicious compliance accomplished. Apple's instructions for all of the battery repairs include expensive equipment like an iPhone battery press to put a replacement battery back in place. It's like they just c…

If you think something like German automotive engineering or iPhone production can be substitute by a “simpler and more convenientional process”, you probably don’t understand how it works. These things have evolved and have been optimized to within parts of a percentage; almost everything is there for a good, time tested reason. (Except for ultra-novel stuff that has been around for a year or two - there they may pay with process inefficiencies for novelty)

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#74

The cost of the tools required for device repair and the cost of genuine components make self repair almost as expensive as getting a repair from an Apple retail location or an Apple Authorized Service Provider Malicious compliance accomplished. Apple's instructions for all of the battery repairs include expensive equipment like an iPhone battery press to put a replacement battery back in place. It's like they just c…

I was gonna say, iPhones are way more reliable than German cars, it’s not a fair comparison! Then I thought about their respective depreciation curves…

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#75
post #63

The cost of the tools required for device repair and the cost of genuine components make self repair almost as expensive as getting a repair from an Apple retail location or an Apple Authorized Service Provider Malicious compliance accomplished. Apple's instructions for all of the battery repairs include expensive equipment like an iPhone battery press to put a replacement battery back in place. It's like they just c…

[flagged]

Apple tends to get tribalistic, victim blaming, passive aggressive hand-waving from a very vocal part of their customers.

You see, it's hard to fault the product you paid thousand(s) of dollars because, to some, this implies in also faulting their own decision making process, which is painful.

The walled garden, predatory behaviour from Apple takes this to a new height. Because once you're invested enough in Apple gadgets that mostly only integrate and depend on other Apple products, you might have to fault your decision of spending $10k+, which is just too painful to most.

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do.

But that's most likely 1% of the market. They can have their own phones. The rest of us just want water resistance for accidental contact with water and easily replaceable batteries.

We have our own phone, it's the iPhone. I paid the money for it because I wanted the full package. You can buy your own kind of phone that's not the full package. Many different vendors are making that.

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#77
post #72
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing a battery attached with previous type of adhesive is torture - the elastic tab frequently tears off, and I ended up a few times having to bend the old battery a lot, to get it out (very unsafe, it starts heating). So, to me, this is a huge progress. Plus, don’t you normally have 9v battery and some connectors for it already?

The upcoming EU regulation regarding removable batteries is hopefully going to fix this.

Note that the EU regulation isn't asking for 2000s Nokia style removable batteries. It's just about making sure batteries are replacable by users.

These new iPhone batteries seem to be not far off being compliant, if they're not already:

> A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it.

> Commercially available tools are considered to be tools available on the market to all end-users without the need for them to provide evidence of any proprietary rights and that can be used with no restriction, except health and safety-related restrictions.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TC1-COD-2020-0...

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2023-0237...

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#78
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it helps on a lot of issues. Starting with safety (it reduces damage on drops).

A small amount of adhesive might be justifiable, but the amount used is excessive and seems there primarily to increase ‘repair friction’, in a rather dangerous way - actively increasing the chance of a battery fire when replacement attempts are made.

Apple has to do a lot of these repairs themselves in their stores by retail workers, often under warranty, so they are incentivised to make the repairs easier and cheaper. The more risk of a retail worker screwing up a repair means higher cost of them fixing it by replacing the whole phone.

They're also incentivised to make devices smaller, more waterproof, and increase battery capacity to size ratio. These all push for 'just glue it together'.

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#79

The cost of the tools required for device repair and the cost of genuine components make self repair almost as expensive as getting a repair from an Apple retail location or an Apple Authorized Service Provider Malicious compliance accomplished. Apple's instructions for all of the battery repairs include expensive equipment like an iPhone battery press to put a replacement battery back in place. It's like they just c…

> It's like they just copy-pasted their production line processes, but clearly that's not necessary. If they copy-pasted their production line processes the parts would cost less than $40 total.

Their production line process is optimised for producing millions of devices.

Re: Apple Shares Full iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Repair Manuals

#80

All it took to easily replace the battery on my IPAQ PocketPC was another battery.

This is also true of early smartphones. They were made to have easily replaceable batteries, and I assume you could buy those batteries too.

But that turned out to be irrelevant because of the replacement schedule. It seems clear that the frequency with which people replace their phones is what drove the decisions to make maintaining them difficult. If nobody ever needs to maintain the phone, why would you put any effort into helping them hypothetically do so?

The analog of Moore's Law for smartphones is already dying and there was a lot of news coverage a while ago of how people seem to be keeping their phones. That may drive the development of phones that can last longer than two years.

Post reply on HN