Apple has had a long, rocky relationship with right-to-repair laws but released a tool with iOS18 that should make iPhones easier to repair. The Verge’s Owen Grove sets off to find out what makes repairing an iPhone so difficult and how Apple’s new Repair Assistant affects independent iPhone repair.
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00:00So we're fighting against actual adhesive that's keeping me out of this.
00:03Right. And also don't cut yourself on that thing.
00:05I know, right?
00:06So I got a brand new one.
00:08Let's see. Right as you said it.
00:11Blood, sweat, and tears.
00:13Some damage we have to blur.
00:15Repairing most modern cell phones might sound pretty difficult,
00:18and iPhones in particular are famously a huge pain.
00:23I've never repaired a phone before, and just at a glance it looks intimidating.
00:27There's a pile of tiny specific screws to keep track of.
00:31The screen is glued on, so you have to heat it up and then very carefully
00:35rip it off to get inside the phone.
00:37And inside there, there are these delicate little ribbon cables you'll tear if you're not careful.
00:42But be careful.
00:44This better not tear that.
00:46Okay.
00:46I've always thought that all of that is what makes fixing an iPhone so tough.
00:51All the tiny, tricky, tedious parts.
00:55But these days, the hardware isn't actually the big problem.
00:59It's the software.
01:01What? Face ID unavailable.
01:04And, you know, it doesn't say what it means.
01:07For years now, Apple has limited the kinds of repairs that consumers
01:10and independent repair shops can perform.
01:13If you try to fix a broken screen or battery, your phone will know about it.
01:17And afterwards, your phone might not work as expected.
01:21Even if you did the repair perfectly.
01:23To Apple, this is a security feature.
01:25It's called parts pairing.
01:27But to repair activists, this is just a big old barrier saying keep out.
01:32It's prevented them from making legitimate repairs with legitimate parts.
01:36Apple's software controls have gotten tighter and tighter over the years.
01:40And pushback has been growing, too.
01:42The cost is expensive.
01:43It's hard to get parts.
01:45And it's even impossible to repair certain things.
01:47I don't really understand why we wouldn't let everybody have a crack at fixing my phone when it breaks.
01:52Do I own this phone?
01:54I mean, am I renting it from the company?
01:55Like, why?
01:56Why do I have some obligation back to you?
01:59It's been a mess.
02:01But finally, finally, this year, Apple seemed to give in.
02:05With the release of iOS 18,
02:07Apple introduced this new feature that could make DIY repair more straightforward.
02:12Have you gotten more blood?
02:13I think it's just drying.
02:15I'm here at an independent repair shop to understand how cell phone repair got so weird.
02:21Why does Apple make repairs so difficult?
02:23Is iOS 18 really a game changer for DIY repair?
02:28And did Apple finally fix fixing the iPhone?
02:33The iPhone has always had a rocky relationship with repairability.
02:37The battery in the very first iPhone was soldered to the logic board.
02:41So if you wanted to replace it, you'd have to do some soldering yourself.
02:45Fast forward to the iPhones 10 through 13, where if you wanted to replace the back glass,
02:50as you can see in this video repair guide from Riwa Technologies,
02:53you need to zap the glue away with a literal laser
02:57and then pick out all the shards of glass manually.
02:59This looks like an absolute pain in the ass.
03:02And I don't envy anyone who has to do it.
03:04But year over year, some iPhone repairs have gotten easier.
03:08Every generation that you look at has been increasing in modularity.
03:11Components are being separated from larger components.
03:14Sharan Mukhtari is a teardown technician at the website iFixit.
03:18They publish repair guides and they grade devices based on their repairability.
03:22iFixit gave that very first iPhone a 2 out of 10 for repairability.
03:26But as phones have gotten more modular,
03:29the scores have hovered around a more respectable 6 or 7.
03:33Speaker is not working.
03:35No problem.
03:35Just undo a couple of screws or, you know,
03:38replace that component, get a good component, place it in the device.
03:41Same with the ports, the cameras.
03:43All of these items have become incredibly modular.
03:45All of this increases repairability.
03:47There have been some newer wins, too.
03:49You can open more recent iPhones from the front or back of the device,
03:53so you don't need to dig down through every part just to get to the thing that's broken.
03:58But as the hardware has trended in a somewhat repair-friendly direction,
04:02the software has done the opposite.
04:05Where the iPhones have failed thus far is parts pairing.
04:09Parts pairing is a way that manufacturers like Apple can keep track of not just the
04:13phones that they sell, but the individual parts inside those phones.
04:17Each paired part has a serial number that's tied to the phone's logic board,
04:22so the phone knows when an individual part's been replaced.
04:25That wouldn't be a problem on its own, but Apple went a step further.
04:29For years, if you tried to do a repair outside of going to Apple's authorized channels,
04:34your phone might block you from using certain features.
04:37If you put in a fresh battery, you would lose the battery health feature.
04:41If you swapped in a new display, you'd lose True Tone.
04:45If you replaced this bundle of sensors, Face ID wouldn't work for you.
04:50You'd also get stuck with these annoying error messages that wouldn't go away.
04:54It didn't matter if these were genuine Apple parts.
04:57If Apple didn't perform or sanction the repair, it just wouldn't work fully.
05:02To avoid those issues, you had to do repairs Apple's way.
05:05Through a Genius Bar, or a mail-in repair,
05:08or an authorized Apple repair shop, or the official self-repair program.
05:13All of those options meant buying a brand new Apple-made part directly from Apple
05:18at whatever price Apple felt like charging.
05:21Apple says that parts pairing is, quote,
05:23critical to preserving the privacy, security, and safety of the iPhone.
05:28But Sharam isn't buying it.
05:30We give them that, and we look at things like the battery health not being reported
05:36if you use a third-party battery.
05:39Well, what does that have to do with security?
05:42This all sort of pushes consumers towards Apple for parts and repairs,
05:46which again, are often much more expensive than other DIY options.
05:51This $20 sensor might fail somewhere inside your phone's screen,
05:54but to avoid parts pairing problems, you might have to instead shell out
05:59about $300 or more for Apple to give you a whole new screen,
06:02because Apple doesn't just sell this part on its own.
06:06What's worse is year over year,
06:08the number of paired parts in iPhones has steadily been increasing.
06:11It's made things a lot harder for independent repair shops,
06:14and it's given Apple products a pretty bad reputation.
06:18So physically, iPhone's incredibly repairable.
06:22Practically speaking, because of those artificial software blocks that are put in place,
06:25they have become an unrepairable mess.
06:31But that all may be changing.
06:33iOS 18 shipped with a new tool called the Repair Assistant,
06:37which, on paper, puts an end to these parts pairing problems.
06:41All of a sudden, you should now be able to take any genuine Apple part,
06:46new or used, and pop it into your phone.
06:49You'll boot your phone up, iOS 18 will check the serial number on the new part,
06:53sync everything up with your logic board, and you're good to go.
06:56But letting anyone use just genuine Apple parts alone is a huge win for repairability.
07:02There's just a ton of these parts floating around out there in used phones.
07:07Is Apple doing this out of the goodness of their hearts?
07:13People fighting for the right to repair have directed a lot of their criticism
07:18at parts pairing for years, and at Apple in particular.
07:22There are now laws on the books in multiple states that prohibit companies
07:26from using parts pairing to inhibit repairs or replacement parts.
07:30They actually use the words parts pairing in some of these laws.
07:34And you know a situation is getting out of hand
07:37when lawmakers are learning about something this specific.
07:40So this is still a big deal, if it works as it says it does.
07:45To find out, I reached out to Jessa Jones at a repair shop called iPad Rehab in New York.
07:51Jessa teaches microsoldering classes and is a huge proponent of right to repair.
07:55I figured she could help me put iOS 18's new features to the test.
07:59I also figured since I'm in New York and she's in New York,
08:03I can just drive over real quick and it's six hours away.
08:10Six hours later, we arrived at iPad Rehab.
08:12I'm Jessa from iPad Rehab Microsoldering.
08:15Jessa had the perfect phone for us to experiment with.
08:18So what are we looking at to fix these phones?
08:23So here's what we have.
08:25We have Violet's phone.
08:27That's the one that you're going to be fixing.
08:29This is an iPhone 12 Pro Max.
08:32A customer we're calling Violet sent it in for data recovery.
08:35The screen won't turn on, but it still vibrates and gets notifications.
08:39So we'll try swapping in a new screen.
08:41This is the perfect test of the old and new software.
08:45Before iOS 18, doing a screen replacement outside of Apple's official channels
08:50would break Face ID and True Tone.
08:53With the new repair assistant, those features should work.
08:57As long as the new screen was made by Apple.
08:59To test this out, we tried swapping in a different Apple-made screen
09:03under iOS 17 before the change.
09:08Oh my gosh, Violet's phone!
09:13Hey, hey, you're practically Apple certified.
09:19And it says Face ID issue detected.
09:22As expected, once we swapped screens, we lost Face ID.
09:27This means that right now, this phone is saying,
09:30oh, I don't see my flood illuminator, which is part of Face ID.
09:36It's over there. I don't see it. It's not plugged in.
09:38There's not actually a problem with Face ID.
09:41The problem is that the paired serial number it's looking for is over here.
09:45It also came with some condescending messages.
09:49We've got another message.
09:50This can happen if the display is not a genuine Apple part or was installed incorrectly.
09:55Hey, hey!
09:56Probably was installed incorrectly.
09:58Probably by, you know, some dude has never even opened an iPhone.
10:01I was supervised.
10:03Okay, so now what we're all here for, the big update to iOS 18.
10:08Okay, let's go ahead and plug this into a computer
10:12and we're going to update and go to iOS 18.
10:14All right, 18.0, download and update.
10:17And just to see what happens, we tried installing this non-Apple screen.
10:22The new display was detected.
10:26It does have a new display.
10:27We're going to have to connect to Wi-Fi.
10:29Restart and finish repair.
10:30Restart and finish repair.
10:33Unable to configure.
10:35It was not fooled.
10:36Remember, we're on iOS 18.0 and Apple is only playing nice with original Apple parts.
10:42So let's finally get to the real test.
10:45A genuine Apple screen installed on iOS 18.
10:49So I'm going to give this over to you and I'm going to see,
10:52try to pair this screen, this OEM Apple screen,
10:57and see what happens if you try to pair it.
11:00The moment of truth.
11:02All right, do it.
11:02Restart and finish repair.
11:04Sure, cool.
11:04Hit it up.
11:05Let's see what we get.
11:07Hooray, unable to configure.
11:09Unable to configure.
11:10And again, this is legit.
11:12I don't, like, we don't know.
11:15All right, well, this should have worked.
11:17The screen in our test was definitely made by Apple,
11:20but Jessa thought maybe at some point she'd replaced the sensor assembly attached to the display.
11:26Jessa found in her own tests that the display and sensor assembly are sold as a set.
11:32This creates a really specific, unique problem.
11:35If you replace the sensor assembly at any point,
11:38the repair assistant won't complete the repair.
11:41But these are just guesses.
11:43This workflow is super new and annoyingly,
11:46the software won't tell you why the repair failed.
11:49That's the only message it'll give us.
11:50It won't tell us.
11:52You see, actually, this part was from a different phone.
11:54And this, yeah, it's not going to let us know that.
11:56We're just stuck in guessing what it might want to change.
12:00And we only can figure this stuff out experimentally.
12:03Look, we left ready to tell you that this thing didn't work at all.
12:06But then I woke up the next morning and I received an email from Jessa saying that
12:11eventually, with no changes, the repair assistant worked.
12:14She just checked again and suddenly the part paired.
12:18Cool.
12:19This would have been weird enough on its own.
12:20But since we've been working on this video,
12:23iOS 18.1 and then iOS 18.2 came out.
12:27And it made some changes to the challenges that we previously had with repair assistant.
12:32We followed up with Jessa about these changes.
12:34And we also wanted to know a little bit more about what happened after we left the lab.
12:38So when you last left, Violet's screen and the flood illuminator that was together with that
12:44screen was not able to pair.
12:46So the next morning I came back to that phone.
12:49I didn't do anything different.
12:51And I booted it up and I was able to click finish repair.
12:55And guess what?
12:56It went through.
12:57So Violet's screen did ultimately pair.
13:01Since then, Jessa has been able to experiment with the next software iteration, 18.1.
13:06Some challenges are still the same,
13:08but one of the most notable changes are with aftermarket batteries.
13:13Something that's new is if you put in an aftermarket battery.
13:19So in the past, aftermarket batteries, when you plug them in,
13:24you would lose a function, which is your ability to see your battery health.
13:29Now with 18.1 and 18.2, if I take an aftermarket battery, instead of saying service,
13:37now an aftermarket battery behaves like it did in the good old iPhone five days.
13:42You can still see your relative battery health,
13:46which will tell you when it's time to go get a new battery.
13:49And it also looks like aftermarket screens are preserving true tone as well with iOS 18.1.
13:55So that's where we're at right now.
13:57iOS 18 and its further iterations step in the right direction,
14:02but it's going to take a lot more experimenting from Jessa and iFixit and everyone else
14:08to see whether this really is the end of parts pairing woes,
14:11or more like a fine, I'll do it levels of compliance from Apple.
14:17These are indications that Apple is loosening up its repair philosophy,
14:21but I asked Jessa if she was happy with these changes.
14:24I'm not going to say that I'm happy until you can take something as basic
14:29as a rear camera assembly and move it from a device that is an Apple branded device
14:35and have that exactly the same and flawless.
14:39I think it's very frustrating to hear that there are parts in the 16
14:44that are welded to the housing.
14:47That seems pretty intentional when it's never been that way before.
14:50And those parts are paired.
14:52So you win some, you lose some.
14:54That's what it feels like.
14:56Apple's use of parts pairing created a problem for independent repair.
15:00Apple made the Repair Assistant, which mostly solves that problem
15:04that they created in the first place.
15:06I ran into a lot of quirks and what-if repair scenarios throughout all of this.
15:10I reached out to Apple for comment about some of the findings from Jessa's tests,
15:13as well as some of the questions that I had.
15:16I didn't get a response back by the publisher of this video,
15:18but I will update it if I do.
15:21So does Repair Assistant or iOS 18 fix iPhone repair?
15:25In some ways, yeah, but in so many other ways, no.
15:29There are a lot more challenges for independent iPhone repair
15:31that we couldn't get to here.
15:33It's a work in progress and Repair Assistant still has a lot of that
15:36signature Apple control over the whole process feel to it.
15:40It seems like they are correcting things that the public becomes aware of.
15:46Whenever there's a public pressure, then you start to see things get better.
15:51Apple tends to be one of those like a mom that wants to cut your steak for you
15:57when you're 40 years old.
15:59Let me do it.
16:00Let me fix your phone the way I think it should be fixed.
16:03They are very, very controlling
16:06and they keep inventing reasons why it's for your benefit.
16:10So while I'm much less intimidated to actually approach repairing an iPhone now,
16:14at so many points, it really didn't feel like I was allowed to.
16:18The hardest part of this was finding out what parts pairing would let me do
16:22and if the Repair Assistant was even going to work.
16:25It still feels like there was a lot that was out of my control.
16:28Independent repair shops allow consumers to have a lot more freedom
16:32to choose how they handle the longevity of their devices.
16:35Right to Repair is about defending consumers and those options
16:39and it's made a lot of progress that I think is worth paying attention to.
16:43Thanks so much for watching.
16:44A huge shout out to Sharam at iFixit for all of his help
16:47and thank you Jessa Jones at iPad Rehab for teaching me how to repair an iPhone
16:52and everything about parts pairing there is to know.
16:54If you guys enjoy this sort of thing, definitely check out their channels
16:58and, you know, bye.