(glass clattering)
(chuckles)
(intriguing music)
- Holy crap.
(intriguing music)
(metal clattering)
This is gonna be down from me.
- You're roasting me.
(clattering)
- As an infamous butter-fingers,
I have dropped my fair share of phones.
I present Exhibit A,
my iPhone 6, that regrettably
succumbed to that most cruel of mistresses, gravity.
Fortunately, Apple has the solution
for the low, low price of just $49.
They will ship the genius bar to you, allowing you
to do your very own iPhone repairs
from the comfort of your home.
That's right,
the kit in front of me includes everything I need
to replace a broken screen,
dead battery and more.
Thank you Apple,
from the bottom of my heart you are truly gracious
and benevolent.
As usual,
the story is a little bit more complicated than that,
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- When I was a wee lad
the solution to this problem was simple,
you dropped off your phone
at that mall kiosk that smelled vaguely of cheese
and a couple of hours later,
you'd pick it up with a brand new screen
that smelled vaguely of cheese.
These days, the process of having a phone repaired
has evolved as much as the phones themselves.
Starting with the iPhone 6,
this one coincidentally,
certain components like the home button
became electronically tethered to the logic board
and replacing them outside of Apple official channels
would result in error messages.
An anti-consumer practice that Apple justifies
by saying it is necessary for security,
it's not.
What it's actually about
is controlling access to parts and services
which preserves profit for Apple and its partners.
As long as those partners play by Apple's stringent rules.
However, with the launch of the self-service repair program
in April,
Apple, at least on the face of things
seems to be opening the floodgates wide
so any owner of an iPhone 12, 13 or 3rd gen SE
can use this service
and it's a good bet that the next iPhone
will get the same treatment.
But wait, did I say any owner?
Before you can even place an order for replacement parts,
Apple does have a way to weed out the folks
who might be a little less serious
or a little less capable, no offense.
The repair manuals for all of these devices
are freely available on their website,
kudos Apple by the way
and step one is to RTFM.
Inside these F'ing Ms,
each procedure is well documented and photographed,
kudos again, Apple,
but we also find the first major caveat
of the self-repair service.
Regardless of which iPhone you have,
there are only five user replaceable components.
The display, cameras, taptic engine, battery, and speaker.
Now in fairness, this will cover most whoopsies
but if you've got a phone with physical damage to the frame
but that otherwise functions perfectly
or if you've got charging problems
with the lightning connector,
you are going to have to look elsewhere.
Speaking of problems,
we've got a behind the scenes look at the tech problems
that we encounter here at the office.
It's up on floatplane.com
so go sign up to check it out.
From here,
the requirements for renting
or buying tools and replacement parts
are surprisingly simple.
First, you need to prove that you read the manual
at least far enough to get the little code from it.
Second, you must provide the serial number
of the device to be repaired
and third, you are going to need some money.
Given the choice we would recommend renting
rather than buying the equipment.
It's surprisingly affordable.
You pay only $49 to cover both tools
and shipping in both directions
and you've got one week from the date of their arrival
to perform your repair.
There's unfortunately no option for time extension though.
If you end up needing them for longer than those seven days
then Apple will charge you an unspecified fee
along with tax.
If you're late to give them back
or the full cost of the tools
if you don't return them at all.
If you do wish to buy rather than rent, watch out
because while some tools will have the same function
or dimensions,
they may be referred to by different part numbers
in different manuals,
making it a bit of a chore
to search for anything by part number
and make sure you're getting all the exact right
phone guillotines.
Another huge plus of renting
is that it's much more of an all in one solution.
You choose the kit that's appropriate for your phone
and it arrives with everything you need
in hard shell Pelican cases with wheels.
I like it.
For us though,
we knew that the tools would have to stick around the office
for longer than a week so we chose to pay for them in full
that's why they came in these boring cardboard boxes
though we did note while unboxing them
that Apple uses a high quality closed cell foam
that is cut to the exact dimensions of our tools
and everything arrived in perfect working order.
Speaking of unboxing,
you can do it in comfort with the ShortCircuit Hoodie
from lttstore.com.
Why don't we play with some of these?
- [David] Heck yeah.
- All right.
Full credit for quality,
they're using Wera bits
and these look like Wera torque drivers.
For removal, it doesn't matter which one we use.
I'm just gonna grab a random one.
One thing Apple doesn't include is a parts tray.
So if you wanna keep track of these tiny little screws
and these are actually on the bigger side
you're gonna want to get at the very least
a magnet off your fridge,
then we loosen the clamp,
slide it into the heated display pocket,
clamp that bad boy point into place.
Oh, now coming out.
Again, credit Apple,
I have paid more for less when it comes to the complexity
and quality of the tooling on things like camera equipment.
These are probably the contacts for, ah, yep,
there they are,
for heating up this whole assembly.
(lock clicking)
That lock.
I like it.
No offense to iFixit
but it kind of makes the eye opener
look like a caveman tool.
(chuckles)
You microwave it and put it down on the edges
that you're trying to soften the glue on.
This will freely spin
rather than allow you to over torque it onto your display.
See that, it stops going down.
Now we power up our heated display removal fixture.
You just rotate this knob and hit the switch at the back.
Oh, is it going now?
Right now, it's going through a cycle
where it needs to be at temperature for two minutes
after which time we are going to lower the suction cup on
and we should be able to pull the display off.
(beeping)
All right,
geez.
Now the knob goes down as far as it goes,
this buddy goes into place.
Can confirm it is a little toasty now,
buddy, you're gonna peel up.
Does it say how long it will take?
I can definitely see the display bowing up.
We wanna aim for the
I guess this is the bottom of the phone.
Bottom edge.
Pop that into place and it should be as simple as
turning the knob counter clockwise
and they want 30 seconds.
Oh yeah.
Oh, it's pulling with the display up five degrees,
we are clear to pull the suction cup off.
Ooh, come on
and pull the phone out of the heated display fixture.
You could, ooh, you could burn yourself on this.
All right.
Woo!
Having gone through that,
I gotta say having the proper tools
it's a good thing.
With that said, nobody's blaming companies like iFixit
for not having the proper tools
if Apple made them broadly available,
we'd all love to have the proper tools to do this work.
Even this little machine holder
is a potential lifesaver because it prevents you
from putting too much strain on these ribbon cables
which can cause them to shear.
I just broke a ribbon cable
but tools are only half of the equation.
You won't be repairing much of anything
without new parts to replace the old busted ones.
That's where things get a little bit less friendly.
Apple offers a bundle of parts
for each of the user serviceable components but be warned,
these bundles are not necessarily all encompassing
and you will need to double check with the manual
to ensure you're getting all of the small odds
and ends you need.
You can order an infinite number of consumables at once
like shins, adhesives and screws
but only one of each major component at a time.
Worryingly, there is no word
on how many of these you're allowed to purchase
in the lifetime of your device
or if there's
some kind of waiting period
between buying two of the same components.
Say you want to replace your battery once a year
for the lifetime of your device,
will Apple cut you off at some point? (siren wailing)
We don't know
but what we do know is that they could
and this is such a clear indication
of Apple's true attitude toward user repair.
That it's a privilege that they are granting you
rather than your right.
We'll just have to let the service mature then
and if there is such a limit,
I'm sure someone's gonna be clumsy enough to find it
and post about it on Reddit.
Bringing us then to our next stumbling block for Apple.
Time. (birds chirping)
In addition to the shipping time for your order
from the self-service repair shop,
you're going to need to factor in
one to three days of processing time
before anything will even be put in the mail.
So Apple is making this service an option
but if you need your phone back up and running quickly like,
oh, I don't know, most people,
it's unlikely to be an attractive one
compared to...
- I'm Linus from Linus Tech Tips. (siren wailing)
(beeping)
- And we need to talk about those fees
or at least we wanted to.
When we called in,
the Apple store flat out refused to offer any kind of quote
for work over the phone
insisting that we come in for a service estimate.
I do understand that not every diagnosis
can be done remotely
but this policy seems to exist
only to give store employees
an opportunity to present alternate solutions
like say for example, new devices,
especially if you consider that
they also have this page up on their website
which you can find if you dig hard enough.
So I guess we'll use numbers from here.
Let's take our iPhone 12 pro max here as an example.
We're looking at $330
to let Apple take care of an out of warranty
display replacement.
That's a lot less than the $700 plus
that we spent buying all these tools
but there are still some problems here.
Even if you choose to rent,
you're looking at right around $340
for that same procedure
using those same tools if you do it yourself.
And that is after Apple's generous credit
for returning your old parts.
For some context by the way,
the used battery and screen of this particular iPhone
were only worth about $58 combined.
Even the most unfair video games
offer a better buyback price than that on your used gear
and if we forget to send those parts back
that $340 figure jumps to $375.
How on earth does the math work on this, Apple?
I mean, I can understand that these are
genuine replacement parts
not to be confused with, say for example,
this OLED screen we got on eBay for about $200
but if your own technicians
who presumably are paid,
actually it's about $20 an hour,
can do this for $329 with non eBay screens
then something's gone terribly wrong
if it costs us more to do it ourselves.
As a first timer, Sarah's screen repair on her own phone
took about four hours
which means that even if she values her time
at only minimum wage, which she don't trust me I know,
it cost her nearly $440 to fix her phone herself
when Apple would've done the work for $110 less.
The only way then that this makes any sense
is if you live three to five hours away from an Apple store,
actually no, even then a whole ass iPhone SE 3rd gen
costs less than what Sarah paid to fix her own screen
and that's before any trade-in credits
or carrier subsidies on that new device.
It's almost like making this an awful value
for their customers was Apple's goal from the start.
But hold on you might be thinking,
maybe this becomes a better value
for a small time repair shop who buys the tools
like we did.
Well, as far as we can tell,
that's unlikely.
Aside from the parts pricing being insultingly high
they require a device serial number
in order to order replacements.
Remember? That'll prevent any casual repair hustler
from having inventory on hand
that's ready for potential customers
and if you have to wait for the replacement anyway then,
starting to see a pattern here,
you might as well just go straight to the Apple store.
It's what we expected but
I can't help but still be disappointed.
This could have been a huge step forward for right to repair
and Apple could have been at the forefront
but it's obvious now that we've dug deeper,
that the program was designed
to be as unappealing as possible.
Apple's exact reasons for making self-service repair suck
are as impenetrable as they always are.
- I don't know anything about what you're talking about.
- But some obvious guesses include;
increasing profit margins,
I mean if you can charge more for the individual parts
compared to if they bought the whole thing
I guess that's good for your shareholders,
pushing users to buy new devices
rather than continue using their old ones
or just maybe as simple as having something to point to
when government pressure increases
to support right to repair
so they can say, "Hey look we tried and no one did it
so clearly this doesn't matter that much."
Man, this sucks
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(upbeat music)
If you guys are looking for something else to watch,
the iPhone 13,
well it's a pretty great phone as long as it isn't broken.
So we've got our full review linked down below.