Check eBay for parts! From a simple search I can see that a replacement back for the iPhone 4s costs about $4 including shipping. Nowhere near the $120 iCracked charges according to this article.
The Cost of Cracking
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Re: The Cost of Cracking
#12So how much money can someone make buying cracked phones, fixing them, and reselling? I guess it only takes one person doing this to normalize the price of a cracked phone.
I'm not sure, but I love that the ratio of the price to fix a cracked screen vs the value created by doing that is roughly the same across all model of iPhones. Put differently, it makes sense that you can always make a little money by fixing up iPhones. You'd expect people to value that more than just the cost of doing it (no uncertainty, not having to look around, etc).
The opposite is also true : There's a pretty fixed mark-up for 'cracked' Apple TV 2s. I imagine people are buying used ATV2s, rooting and reselling...
Re: The Cost of Cracking
#13Apple only charges $29 to repair a cracked iPhone 4S back glass.
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Re: The Cost of Cracking
#14[deleted]
Re: The Cost of Cracking
#15Just mentioning that the Apple Store is always good first place to go to. I got mine replaced for free when I cracked my iPhone 4.
I went with my friend to the Apple store last year with her cracked iPhone 4 and watched in awe as they transferred her data to a new one and gave it to her on the spot, free of charge. I got the same treatment a few years ago when the power switch on my Touch stopped working.
Interesting thing is they didn't ask to see a warranty either time, they must have them in their system for each machine.
Re: The Cost of Cracking
#16Damn. So this is not about software cracking.
I'd love to know how many (if any) people saw the title and thought cracked screen and how many people voted the story knowing it was about cracked screens...
Re: The Cost of Cracking
#17So how much money can someone make buying cracked phones, fixing them, and reselling? I guess it only takes one person doing this to normalize the price of a cracked phone.
There are already places fixing phones more cheaply than the iCracked prices listed in the article:
http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/mob/2854654904.html
Not sure about quality, though.
Re: The Cost of Cracking
#18Interesting. Maybe you could do a rational economic calculation based on value lost per destructive event, frequency of events, and odds that such event will happen before a non-protected event (loss, theft, crushing which exceeds the resilience of a case). Compare that with the cost of a case and the value lost by using a case (ugliness, size). Although I took my magpul case off my iphone 4 today (to use a tascam im…
Are you planning to smash enough phones yourself to reach statistical significance?
Re: The Cost of Cracking
#19Just mentioning that the Apple Store is always good first place to go to. I got mine replaced for free when I cracked my iPhone 4.
The Genius Bar employees have very wide latitude to waive charges. If you're polite/friendly with them, and if you are obviously competent and able to make their job easier (show up on time or slightly before, don't complain if you have to wait, have all the debugging steps done, be able to assist with simple debugging steps, HAVE THE MACHINE FULLY BACKED UP BEFORE ARRIVING, etc.), they're more likely to waive charge…
How do you help debug a cracked screen?
If they have admin access who cares if they do not have to login as your account? Does filevault use a separate password?
Re: The Cost of Cracking
#20off-topic, but couldn't find a contact form on the website.
Priceonomics need to improve their search results. If you navigate through categories the results are well organized... but if you try to use search it does not organize the data properly.
I can drill down through your results to find the Honda Civic prices per year: http://priceonomics.com/cars/honda/civic/
But I can't search for those results. http://priceonomics.com/search?s=honda+civic+2006
There's the same problem with phones. Navigating the listing to phones I can find the iPhone 2G: http://priceonomics.com/phones/apple/
But if I search for the iPhone 2G: http://priceonomics.com/search?s=iphone+2g