12 ms·

iPhone 13 teardown and repair assessment [video]

85 points by techrat 5y ago

zxcvbn4038 5y ago
This is news? Everything Apple makes is a repair nightmare, that is their gimmick. You have to buy Applecare and you have to buy parts from them. That is the only way they can “innovate” — or so they have always claimed.
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  > that is their gimmick It's not. > That is the only way they can “innovate” — or so they have always claimed. They haven't.
- Arnt 5y ago
  Uhm, I think they claim that it is the best way for them to innovate, not the only way… and if people who disagree twist their words, that doesn't make their stance less plausible.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Can you actually buy parts from them? Everyone I've heard from pretty much tells the same story that Apple only provides a handful of parts and even then only to people who basically hand over the keys to their business to Apple.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ksidn 5y ago
Every time an iphone is released we have to see this? I don't want to repair my phone. It's got a two year warranty, and after two years if it breaks I'll buy another.
- kirb 5y ago
  Your own habits aren’t everyone’s habits. Not everyone is on a two-year upgrade cycle, especially when the iPhones are worth near or above $1000 now. Many people who own a smartphone only have it at all thanks to the affordable prices of refurbished (i.e. repaired) units on the second-hand market. It’s silly to say repair is unimportant when you consider how many tons of waste this creates - and how little is actually recovered through the recycling processes Apple and other retailers push hard to make you not feel bad about upgrading. It’s eventually someone’s problem to deal with how unrepairable your disused phone is, ultimately depleting the raw resources we all rely on, so yes, you should care.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    iPhone SE are sold starting at $400, 11 at $500, 12 at $600. I used the original SE, which I also got well under $1,000, for 4 years before getting the new SE. And the original SE still works. There has not been a need to update every two years for many years. And there is far more waste from lower quality products that last fewer years.
  - ksidn 5y ago
    People are voting with their wallets. They are voting they don't care.
    - kirb 5y ago
      Not caring at time of purchase doesn’t mean they don’t grumble and curse the brand later on after an experience where the phone breaks and the options are limited to a costly manufacturer repair. I consider myself an iPhone person, my current phone is an iPhone 12 Pro Max so I paid a pretty penny to Apple for it, it’s also insured, but it still doesn’t mean I won’t condemn Apple for making dubious decisions that hurt repair options. Not all that different from getting your car repaired at a mechanic rather than the dealer.
      - vladvasiliu 5y ago
        Right, but then, if you go and buy another iPhone, does it really matter that you "condemn Apple"? From their point of view, you're a happy customer, since you're coming back! Now even if Apple hears people cursing them and grumbling on forums, the fact that they keep on buying their product means that it's not enough of an issue for them to stop buying it.
- 0x000000001 5y ago
  My phone is an appliance and I'm perfectly fine with that. I dread owning another computer I have the responsibility of maintaining. We are drowning in "computers" these days.
  - antiterra 5y ago
    Every appliance in my home is significantly easier to repair/service than my iPhone 12.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Toasters and dishwashers can be fixed. Your phone is a service.
    - 0x000000001 5y ago
      Household appliance is not the same thing. A Juniper firewall is an appliance. A NetApp SAN is an appliance. An Ooma VOIP phone system is an appliance. A Kindle is an appliance. A Nest thermostat is an appliance. These things are not general purpose computers. They are custom fabbed hardware with vendor supported software and are not user repairable. They do one job and they do it well. At the end of their service life you replace them. My iPhone is an appliance and I prefer it that way.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Any chance you'd consider the out there idea that some people: 1. don't want to fill up landfills with 90%-functional devices that they're too lazy to have repaired 2. can't afford to spend more than a month's salary on a brand new but functionally identical device every two years 3. might have data that's important to them on the device that they want recovered. Just because you wish to be a careless consumer doesn't mean that that's what everyone is and that we shouldn't put pressure on Apple to allow those that don't to use their devices as they wish.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    Yes. Society should follow your desires or else…. Sometimes I wonder where all those millennial Mussolinis came from.
oolonthegreat 5y ago
so freaking weird, even if you change only the cable between the display and the motherboard the phone knows and stops working properly. how do they even do that ? I assumed the cable doesn't have any logic or chips in it.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  signal properties crafted in the cable ? (impedance..)
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  I think the cable probably does have logic in it.
- avian 5y ago
  There is no separate "cable" between the display and the motherboard. The "cable" is integral to the display. It's an extension of the flexible PCB on which other electronics is mounted as well. The video is kind of vague about it, but when they are talking about "replacing the cable" they mean replacing the whole thing. The display obviously includes lots of logic that, among other things, stores display's serial number. Same with the sensors mounted on the display.
pdimitar 5y ago
Meh, people will not get tired of this it seems. What did the eternal repeating of this ever net you? A tentative promise that they will support the right to repair movement, one they are not obligated to fulfill, and of course it’s always in the future. That’s the best you could hope for with such naive activism. Anecdotal evidence: out of 20+ people with iPhones I know, only one ever had to send it for repairs. In our backwater Eastern Europe this still took only two days: he got a brand new one without having to pay a penny. I get it, devices we buy must be repairable. Lately I bought a laptop and I’m looking forward to upgrading its RAM and SSD by myself. And I’ll enjoy decommissioning my old gaming PC in a year or so by disassembling it and selling it in parts. I too want repair ability in my tech, and I enjoy practicing it. But apparently Apple will not budge. It’s astonishing how people are under the illusion that talking is going to sway one of the biggest company entities on the planet. And it makes for pretty boring news. “You heard it here first folks, the planet is still spinning today“.
- nyx-aiur 5y ago
  If you have a blog with other hot takes I would love to read them at the loo.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Was this sent to Apple? No, it was posted to a public forum. This isn't about begging Apple to change, it's about informing people that Apple should change. The more people care about this, the more pressure it puts on both Apple and legislators to make this happen. We've seen it happen with car parts years ago. Of course Apple doesn't care about what people say. They care about how much money people give them and how much politicians take away. And neither of those will change without talking about it first.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    Yeah, that's the legend I keep hearing about my entire life and still haven't seen it happen even once. People being "informed" does not nullify the fact there's literally almost zero choice nowadays. Not like Samsung or many others are easy to repair either...
StringyBob 5y ago
So - if I followed that correctly the parts you can’t change are the front-camera assembly that includes faceID sensor, and the screen that includes the touch panel (that you use to enter passwords and PINs). I would assume Apple’s justification is that this is to meet security requirements, particularly given a phone is now commonly used for contactless payments.
- uuddlrlr 5y ago
  iPhones since the iPhone X have the same repair requirement, however the screen and FaceID are separate so you can continue to use the original. There's nothing special about the touch panels, the FaceID component is a TPM of sorts.
- gbraad 5y ago
  And the battery as it will report not genuine.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The actual authentication & crypto is happening inside the main SOC. The Face ID sensor is (or should be) just a dumb camera - there's no reason for it to be part of the chain of trust.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    Of course there is. That’s how you avoid replay attacks.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Can't you "replay" that data physically by creating a face mask matching the captured data and then presenting it to a legitimate sensor? IMO the security of the system is that the 3D face data is reasonably secret (you probably can't reconstruct it from a single picture, you'd need pictures from all angles) and the SOC only allows a few attempts before falling back to passcode. If you have the face data, you don't need to tamper with the hardware, and if you don't have that data then tampering with the sensor won't get you anywhere.
djanogo 5y ago
I have to defend Apple for these verification checks. I bought replacement display online and replaced it myself, after I was all done found the display was fake based on bad colors. It was old iPhone which didn't have fake component detection, I traded in that phone and now somebody else has iPhone with poor display. iPhones get used for longer period of time by multiple users and they carry high resale value, if they let devices with fake components they will eventually tank resale value as people will not trust used iPhone. I support right to repair, but ONLY with genuine parts with warranty. I want Apple to provide cheaper display replacement just like they do with batteries. As long as Amazon, EBay, and small repair shops keep selling fake iPhone displays and batteries there is no way out of this problem.
- dvdkon 5y ago
  I've also had a similar experience and definitely support giving users the ability to tell genuine parts from knockoffs. Howewer this has to be done to empower users, to help get us closer to a perfect market by giving buyers accurate information. Right now, it's just an extension of Apple's "it's our iPhone" mindset.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  It also presumably further discourages theft since it negatively impacts the ability to “part out” stolen devices to work around activation locks. Basically once the owner remotely locks the stolen device, it becomes almost worthless until it’s back in the owner’s possession.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    This looks to me like a tradeoff we collectively haven’t agreed upon for any other device. To take the perennial car analogy, car theft is a widespread enough phenomenon, but we haven’t settled on breaking central functionalities each time a repair is done outside network. To push a bit further, steeply lowering phone price would also critically deter theft, why not go that option if it’s that important ?
    - 5y ago
account-5 5y ago
Yet more reasons why I won't give apple any of my money. I can only see one benefit of this to the consumer. If you maybe happen to be a target of some spy agency who manage to get your phone and need to drop some component into it to spy on you, that isnt going to be easy now. /s Genuinely no need for this other than making apple more money.
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  Would you rather give your money to Google, the company that is what it is today through turning their users' information into products to sell to the highest bidder? Apple gives a shit about your privacy. Why is that upsetting to you?
  - account-5 5y ago
    I give my money to whatever company who provides devices I'm in control of. As it stands that is Google, like it or not. I take care of my own privacy, no for profit company cares about your privacy, you're kidding yourself if you think they are.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    You can be both against Apple's anti-repair practices and against Google.
  - celsoazevedo 5y ago
    > Apple gives a shit about your privacy. Do they really give a shit about your privacy though? They mess with 3rd parties (eg: Facebook), but Apple itself seems to be happy to collect data about you and your devices, not use end-to-end encryption for many of their services, scan content on your device, etc. Maybe they're better than Google, but I wouldn't say that they give a shit about my privacy.
  - tjpnz 5y ago
    Let's get real here. Apple (like Google) doesn't give a shit about your privacy - their only concern is profit.
- 5y ago
mojuba 5y ago
I have another hypothesis also that this is done for security reasons. Imagine yo are at a risk of high-profile spying. You lose your phone and then it reappears somehow - you should no longer trust your phone if these security features weren't in place. Maybe, just maybe, it's one of the reasons Apple does this.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >I have another hypothesis also that this is done for security reasons. It always boggled my mind how much mental gymnastics, the supposedly tech-savy HN userbase is willing to do, to defend their favorite computer brand's anti-repair and anti-consumer practices as "security". Let me break down your argument: Firstly, if you're at risk of high profile spying, you should know better than to use any Apple/Google/Microsoft products as all those megacorps are in bed with the US three letter alphabet agencies. Secondly, if you're a high profile target for spying, but dumb enough to use an iPhone as your daily driver, then the alphabet boys or nation states worldwide are more likely to use some of the dozens of iOS RCE exploits they developed themselves or bought from some shady Israeli security company or off the black market to get to you rather than go through all the trouble of hoping you don't notice when they steal your phone and replace your screen. Thirdly, say nation state actors do manage to steal your phone and swap the screen really quickly before you notice, but how will they make sure it has the same level of wear and tear (cracks, scratches) that you won't recognize it to be different? There's just so many plot holes in this type of scenario that security cannot be justified as an argument here. Plus, if Apple really cared about security, then their bug bounty program wouldn't be such a horrible mess full of unacknowledged vulnerabilities that researchers need to take public.
  - mojuba 5y ago
    I see your point, except the world doesn't end in the US and the country's three-letter agencies. There are countries outside of the US that might have their own goals and ways of achieving them (see the Pegasus scandal for example).
- tjoff 5y ago
  There isn't a practical scenario where using a device you suspect have been in the hands of an adversary isn't grounds for termination. Game over. It is not a relevant argument in this context.
jacquesm 5y ago
Paying a few hundred $ for a phone that lasts for just a couple of years never made sense in the first place. The amount of e-waste generated is insane, 'right to repair' and 'responsible use of capital and resources' go hand in hand. Phones could easily last a decade.
- huuuz 5y ago
  An iphone can perfectly last six years.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Not without repairs.
    - huuuz 5y ago
      You can have it repaired using fake parts or parts salvaged from broken iPhones. If it breaks, that is. If the phone doesn't break during the two year warranty period, I've found that it's unlikely to break later on. (you have to treat it well, of course...)
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        'fake' parts aren't 'fake' they are just made by someone else than the OEM. Salvaged parts do not count because for every phone you can fix there is one that you can't. The only proper way is to mandate that phone manufacturers supply original parts to those that need them, but because they'd rather sell you a new phone they don't. One important reason why you want that original part and not a salvaged or non-OEM one for the battery is safety, this is a device that you carry on your person and the batteries carry a lot of punch. But the car industry has shown the way here, I can buy OEM brake discs and pads for my vehicle, I can also buy them from brand name non-OEM suppliers aka the 'aftermarket'. A similar solution would work well for phones, as would some minor design changes to facilitate repair rather than the opposite: design changes that make it harder to repair a device.
csomar 5y ago
I'm a bit torn about this. I think a good compromise is for Apple to offer selling "genuine parts" to anyone who practically wants it; and maybe, allow changing parts once the main owner release control. Apple's devices are quite expensive. iCloud locking have made them worth less in the black-market, but the components are still worth something. This will make Apple's devices worth next to nothing in the black market and as a consequence less of a risk of being a target of petty theft.
- NotPractical 5y ago
  You should not be torn. Apple is blatantly acting against your interests as a user, and you should be adamantly against this. You always need to place some level of trust in anyone you're allowing to repair your device -- even if they're using genuine Apple parts, they might not know how to properly work with them, for example. But this is why we have reviews. (By the way, they would be more likely to know how to do proper repairs if Apple freely published the top-secret internal repair documentation they already have, so they could just use that instead of random third-party guides, but that's another topic.) As a user, you should always have the choice of who to trust with your device's repair, just like you have a choice between mechanics working on your car. As a reminder, if you don't trust third party repair shops, right to repair laws don't force anyone to make use of them. You're free to be overcharged by Apple if you want. But it's important to have a choice. Also, theft is not a problem that you can solve with software. People will always steal iPhones because there will always be at least some value to the components inside. I guarantee you that iCloud locking was not even a factor in the decision Apple made to implement this bullshit into iOS: if (camera.serialNumber != mainboard.camera.serialNumber) { freakTheFuckOutForNoReason() } The only factor in this decision was most likely Apple's relentless, unending quest to acquire as many US dollars as possible, despite already having ~200 billion of them reserved [1]. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-how-much-apple-has-on-hand.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-ho...
- orangepanda 5y ago
  > I think a good compromise is for Apple to offer selling "genuine parts" to anyone who practically wants it; and maybe, allow changing parts once the main owner release control. They sell hundreds of millions of devices each year. A problem I haven’t seen discussed much — could Apple’s suppliers actually deliver enough parts for new phones and spare parts? Tesla supposedly has the same problem with spare parts being unavailable, as everything goes into new products.
fastball 5y ago
Pretty disingenuous for this guy not to mention the potential benefits of such measures, namely: iPhones become pretty much worthless on the black market, discouraging theft. I'm more worried about someone stealing my phone (where the cost is the whole value of the device) than I am about breaking the phone (usually my fault) where the cost when repaired by Apple is fairly reasonable.
- starbugs 5y ago
  Couldn't you just steal the complete phone, reset it, then resell it?
  - deergomoo 5y ago
    Unless the owner disabled Activation Lock you can’t reset it/reactivate it without the owner’s iCloud password.
- sschueller 5y ago
  Why then does apple not offer to take these phones (without compensation) and refurb them to be resold, by Apple. This way there is no incentives for thieves as Apple will not give them a dime however these phones are not part of the huge trash pile that is being generated.
  - nicce 5y ago
    Not every trade is handled by Apple. A tiny minority outside of the US. And I dislike the idea that they can remotely make my phone unusable, like Samsung can.
  - shartacct 5y ago
    They do, people trade in phones for credit towards an iphone all the time. Doing it without the meagre compensation they give now would be deeply unethical, Tesla tried something like that recently when a story emerged that someone was quoted for full out of warranty battery replacement for a broken cooling hose fitting on their cars battery and they refused to give any core charge even though the battery itself was still fully functional (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-OkfCcRAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-OkfCcRAo).
unobatbayar 5y ago
Am I the only one who is happy that Apple is taking away the right to repair? From my experience, almost all third party iPhone repair shops are filled with untrustworthy people who disregards their ethics for such a little money.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  How about places where there are no first party iPhone repair shops? There are aplenty of those.
  - shartacct 5y ago
    You mean apple stores? They're everywhere that matter. That said, I still won't buy an iphone until they at least get rid of lightning. It's extreme ridiculous that apple would keep a proprietary connector after migrating the rest of their product stack over to usbc. I have a pixel 3 currently and will certainly never buy another android phone again, the biggest issues I've had don't exist on iphones at all, namely apps being randomly killed or crashing on open due to running out of RAM and the battery degrading quickly (lost ~10% in 1 1/2 years of light use, not using the phone in any extremely cold or hot conditions and only trickle charging).
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      The closest Appstore to me is ~2500km and over the border. Dozens of Millions of people here don't matter, apparently.
      - shartacct 5y ago
        Well.. yeah? That's what happens when you allow organized crime to attack foreign businesses with impunity, encourage your citizens to murder gay and trans people, and destabilize every neighboring country by instigating false flagged 'civil' wars in them. Of course, there are also important factors like the average worker being dirt poor. Who is buying an iphone on a 300-400USD/mo equivalent salary? It would take years and years of saving to afford one, or a choice to put yourself into hard to repay debt for a status symbol? I would imagine the average person there buys the cheapest phones possible and not the highest end name brand phones every few years like working and middle class westerners do.

85 points by techrat 5y ago

This is news? Everything Apple makes is a repair nightmare, that is their gimmick. You have to buy Applecare and you have to buy parts from them. That is the only way they can “innovate” — or so they have always claimed.

FDSGSG 5y ago
> that is their gimmick It's not. > That is the only way they can “innovate” — or so they have always claimed. They haven't.
Arnt 5y ago
Uhm, I think they claim that it is the best way for them to innovate, not the only way… and if people who disagree twist their words, that doesn't make their stance less plausible.
franga2000 5y ago
Can you actually buy parts from them? Everyone I've heard from pretty much tells the same story that Apple only provides a handful of parts and even then only to people who basically hand over the keys to their business to Apple.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ksidn 5y ago

Every time an iphone is released we have to see this? I don't want to repair my phone. It's got a two year warranty, and after two years if it breaks I'll buy another.

kirb 5y ago
Your own habits aren’t everyone’s habits. Not everyone is on a two-year upgrade cycle, especially when the iPhones are worth near or above $1000 now. Many people who own a smartphone only have it at all thanks to the affordable prices of refurbished (i.e. repaired) units on the second-hand market. It’s silly to say repair is unimportant when you consider how many tons of waste this creates - and how little is actually recovered through the recycling processes Apple and other retailers push hard to make you not feel bad about upgrading. It’s eventually someone’s problem to deal with how unrepairable your disused phone is, ultimately depleting the raw resources we all rely on, so yes, you should care.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  iPhone SE are sold starting at $400, 11 at $500, 12 at $600. I used the original SE, which I also got well under $1,000, for 4 years before getting the new SE. And the original SE still works. There has not been a need to update every two years for many years. And there is far more waste from lower quality products that last fewer years.
- ksidn 5y ago
  People are voting with their wallets. They are voting they don't care.
  - kirb 5y ago
    Not caring at time of purchase doesn’t mean they don’t grumble and curse the brand later on after an experience where the phone breaks and the options are limited to a costly manufacturer repair. I consider myself an iPhone person, my current phone is an iPhone 12 Pro Max so I paid a pretty penny to Apple for it, it’s also insured, but it still doesn’t mean I won’t condemn Apple for making dubious decisions that hurt repair options. Not all that different from getting your car repaired at a mechanic rather than the dealer.
    - vladvasiliu 5y ago
      Right, but then, if you go and buy another iPhone, does it really matter that you "condemn Apple"? From their point of view, you're a happy customer, since you're coming back! Now even if Apple hears people cursing them and grumbling on forums, the fact that they keep on buying their product means that it's not enough of an issue for them to stop buying it.
0x000000001 5y ago
My phone is an appliance and I'm perfectly fine with that. I dread owning another computer I have the responsibility of maintaining. We are drowning in "computers" these days.
- antiterra 5y ago
  Every appliance in my home is significantly easier to repair/service than my iPhone 12.
- bitwize 5y ago
  Toasters and dishwashers can be fixed. Your phone is a service.
  - 0x000000001 5y ago
    Household appliance is not the same thing. A Juniper firewall is an appliance. A NetApp SAN is an appliance. An Ooma VOIP phone system is an appliance. A Kindle is an appliance. A Nest thermostat is an appliance. These things are not general purpose computers. They are custom fabbed hardware with vendor supported software and are not user repairable. They do one job and they do it well. At the end of their service life you replace them. My iPhone is an appliance and I prefer it that way.
franga2000 5y ago
Any chance you'd consider the out there idea that some people: 1. don't want to fill up landfills with 90%-functional devices that they're too lazy to have repaired 2. can't afford to spend more than a month's salary on a brand new but functionally identical device every two years 3. might have data that's important to them on the device that they want recovered. Just because you wish to be a careless consumer doesn't mean that that's what everyone is and that we shouldn't put pressure on Apple to allow those that don't to use their devices as they wish.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Yes. Society should follow your desires or else…. Sometimes I wonder where all those millennial Mussolinis came from.

oolonthegreat 5y ago

so freaking weird, even if you change only the cable between the display and the motherboard the phone knows and stops working properly. how do they even do that ? I assumed the cable doesn't have any logic or chips in it.

agumonkey 5y ago
signal properties crafted in the cable ? (impedance..)
LeoPanthera 5y ago
I think the cable probably does have logic in it.
avian 5y ago
There is no separate "cable" between the display and the motherboard. The "cable" is integral to the display. It's an extension of the flexible PCB on which other electronics is mounted as well. The video is kind of vague about it, but when they are talking about "replacing the cable" they mean replacing the whole thing. The display obviously includes lots of logic that, among other things, stores display's serial number. Same with the sensors mounted on the display.

pdimitar 5y ago

Meh, people will not get tired of this it seems. What did the eternal repeating of this ever net you? A tentative promise that they will support the right to repair movement, one they are not obligated to fulfill, and of course it’s always in the future. That’s the best you could hope for with such naive activism. Anecdotal evidence: out of 20+ people with iPhones I know, only one ever had to send it for repairs. In our backwater Eastern Europe this still took only two days: he got a brand new one without having to pay a penny. I get it, devices we buy must be repairable. Lately I bought a laptop and I’m looking forward to upgrading its RAM and SSD by myself. And I’ll enjoy decommissioning my old gaming PC in a year or so by disassembling it and selling it in parts. I too want repair ability in my tech, and I enjoy practicing it. But apparently Apple will not budge. It’s astonishing how people are under the illusion that talking is going to sway one of the biggest company entities on the planet. And it makes for pretty boring news. “You heard it here first folks, the planet is still spinning today“.

nyx-aiur 5y ago
If you have a blog with other hot takes I would love to read them at the loo.
franga2000 5y ago
Was this sent to Apple? No, it was posted to a public forum. This isn't about begging Apple to change, it's about informing people that Apple should change. The more people care about this, the more pressure it puts on both Apple and legislators to make this happen. We've seen it happen with car parts years ago. Of course Apple doesn't care about what people say. They care about how much money people give them and how much politicians take away. And neither of those will change without talking about it first.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  Yeah, that's the legend I keep hearing about my entire life and still haven't seen it happen even once. People being "informed" does not nullify the fact there's literally almost zero choice nowadays. Not like Samsung or many others are easy to repair either...

StringyBob 5y ago

So - if I followed that correctly the parts you can’t change are the front-camera assembly that includes faceID sensor, and the screen that includes the touch panel (that you use to enter passwords and PINs). I would assume Apple’s justification is that this is to meet security requirements, particularly given a phone is now commonly used for contactless payments.

uuddlrlr 5y ago
iPhones since the iPhone X have the same repair requirement, however the screen and FaceID are separate so you can continue to use the original. There's nothing special about the touch panels, the FaceID component is a TPM of sorts.
gbraad 5y ago
And the battery as it will report not genuine.
Nextgrid 5y ago
The actual authentication & crypto is happening inside the main SOC. The Face ID sensor is (or should be) just a dumb camera - there's no reason for it to be part of the chain of trust.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Of course there is. That’s how you avoid replay attacks.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Can't you "replay" that data physically by creating a face mask matching the captured data and then presenting it to a legitimate sensor? IMO the security of the system is that the 3D face data is reasonably secret (you probably can't reconstruct it from a single picture, you'd need pictures from all angles) and the SOC only allows a few attempts before falling back to passcode. If you have the face data, you don't need to tamper with the hardware, and if you don't have that data then tampering with the sensor won't get you anywhere.

djanogo 5y ago

I have to defend Apple for these verification checks. I bought replacement display online and replaced it myself, after I was all done found the display was fake based on bad colors. It was old iPhone which didn't have fake component detection, I traded in that phone and now somebody else has iPhone with poor display. iPhones get used for longer period of time by multiple users and they carry high resale value, if they let devices with fake components they will eventually tank resale value as people will not trust used iPhone. I support right to repair, but ONLY with genuine parts with warranty. I want Apple to provide cheaper display replacement just like they do with batteries. As long as Amazon, EBay, and small repair shops keep selling fake iPhone displays and batteries there is no way out of this problem.

dvdkon 5y ago
I've also had a similar experience and definitely support giving users the ability to tell genuine parts from knockoffs. Howewer this has to be done to empower users, to help get us closer to a perfect market by giving buyers accurate information. Right now, it's just an extension of Apple's "it's our iPhone" mindset.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
It also presumably further discourages theft since it negatively impacts the ability to “part out” stolen devices to work around activation locks. Basically once the owner remotely locks the stolen device, it becomes almost worthless until it’s back in the owner’s possession.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  This looks to me like a tradeoff we collectively haven’t agreed upon for any other device. To take the perennial car analogy, car theft is a widespread enough phenomenon, but we haven’t settled on breaking central functionalities each time a repair is done outside network. To push a bit further, steeply lowering phone price would also critically deter theft, why not go that option if it’s that important ?
  - 5y ago

account-5 5y ago

Yet more reasons why I won't give apple any of my money. I can only see one benefit of this to the consumer. If you maybe happen to be a target of some spy agency who manage to get your phone and need to drop some component into it to spy on you, that isnt going to be easy now. /s Genuinely no need for this other than making apple more money.

jiggawatts 5y ago
Would you rather give your money to Google, the company that is what it is today through turning their users' information into products to sell to the highest bidder? Apple gives a shit about your privacy. Why is that upsetting to you?
- account-5 5y ago
  I give my money to whatever company who provides devices I'm in control of. As it stands that is Google, like it or not. I take care of my own privacy, no for profit company cares about your privacy, you're kidding yourself if you think they are.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  You can be both against Apple's anti-repair practices and against Google.
- celsoazevedo 5y ago
  > Apple gives a shit about your privacy. Do they really give a shit about your privacy though? They mess with 3rd parties (eg: Facebook), but Apple itself seems to be happy to collect data about you and your devices, not use end-to-end encryption for many of their services, scan content on your device, etc. Maybe they're better than Google, but I wouldn't say that they give a shit about my privacy.
- tjpnz 5y ago
  Let's get real here. Apple (like Google) doesn't give a shit about your privacy - their only concern is profit.
5y ago

mojuba 5y ago

I have another hypothesis also that this is done for security reasons. Imagine yo are at a risk of high-profile spying. You lose your phone and then it reappears somehow - you should no longer trust your phone if these security features weren't in place. Maybe, just maybe, it's one of the reasons Apple does this.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>I have another hypothesis also that this is done for security reasons. It always boggled my mind how much mental gymnastics, the supposedly tech-savy HN userbase is willing to do, to defend their favorite computer brand's anti-repair and anti-consumer practices as "security". Let me break down your argument: Firstly, if you're at risk of high profile spying, you should know better than to use any Apple/Google/Microsoft products as all those megacorps are in bed with the US three letter alphabet agencies. Secondly, if you're a high profile target for spying, but dumb enough to use an iPhone as your daily driver, then the alphabet boys or nation states worldwide are more likely to use some of the dozens of iOS RCE exploits they developed themselves or bought from some shady Israeli security company or off the black market to get to you rather than go through all the trouble of hoping you don't notice when they steal your phone and replace your screen. Thirdly, say nation state actors do manage to steal your phone and swap the screen really quickly before you notice, but how will they make sure it has the same level of wear and tear (cracks, scratches) that you won't recognize it to be different? There's just so many plot holes in this type of scenario that security cannot be justified as an argument here. Plus, if Apple really cared about security, then their bug bounty program wouldn't be such a horrible mess full of unacknowledged vulnerabilities that researchers need to take public.
- mojuba 5y ago
  I see your point, except the world doesn't end in the US and the country's three-letter agencies. There are countries outside of the US that might have their own goals and ways of achieving them (see the Pegasus scandal for example).
tjoff 5y ago
There isn't a practical scenario where using a device you suspect have been in the hands of an adversary isn't grounds for termination. Game over. It is not a relevant argument in this context.

jacquesm 5y ago

Paying a few hundred $ for a phone that lasts for just a couple of years never made sense in the first place. The amount of e-waste generated is insane, 'right to repair' and 'responsible use of capital and resources' go hand in hand. Phones could easily last a decade.

huuuz 5y ago
An iphone can perfectly last six years.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Not without repairs.
  - huuuz 5y ago
    You can have it repaired using fake parts or parts salvaged from broken iPhones. If it breaks, that is. If the phone doesn't break during the two year warranty period, I've found that it's unlikely to break later on. (you have to treat it well, of course...)
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      'fake' parts aren't 'fake' they are just made by someone else than the OEM. Salvaged parts do not count because for every phone you can fix there is one that you can't. The only proper way is to mandate that phone manufacturers supply original parts to those that need them, but because they'd rather sell you a new phone they don't. One important reason why you want that original part and not a salvaged or non-OEM one for the battery is safety, this is a device that you carry on your person and the batteries carry a lot of punch. But the car industry has shown the way here, I can buy OEM brake discs and pads for my vehicle, I can also buy them from brand name non-OEM suppliers aka the 'aftermarket'. A similar solution would work well for phones, as would some minor design changes to facilitate repair rather than the opposite: design changes that make it harder to repair a device.

csomar 5y ago

I'm a bit torn about this. I think a good compromise is for Apple to offer selling "genuine parts" to anyone who practically wants it; and maybe, allow changing parts once the main owner release control. Apple's devices are quite expensive. iCloud locking have made them worth less in the black-market, but the components are still worth something. This will make Apple's devices worth next to nothing in the black market and as a consequence less of a risk of being a target of petty theft.

NotPractical 5y ago
You should not be torn. Apple is blatantly acting against your interests as a user, and you should be adamantly against this. You always need to place some level of trust in anyone you're allowing to repair your device -- even if they're using genuine Apple parts, they might not know how to properly work with them, for example. But this is why we have reviews. (By the way, they would be more likely to know how to do proper repairs if Apple freely published the top-secret internal repair documentation they already have, so they could just use that instead of random third-party guides, but that's another topic.) As a user, you should always have the choice of who to trust with your device's repair, just like you have a choice between mechanics working on your car. As a reminder, if you don't trust third party repair shops, right to repair laws don't force anyone to make use of them. You're free to be overcharged by Apple if you want. But it's important to have a choice. Also, theft is not a problem that you can solve with software. People will always steal iPhones because there will always be at least some value to the components inside. I guarantee you that iCloud locking was not even a factor in the decision Apple made to implement this bullshit into iOS: if (camera.serialNumber != mainboard.camera.serialNumber) { freakTheFuckOutForNoReason() } The only factor in this decision was most likely Apple's relentless, unending quest to acquire as many US dollars as possible, despite already having ~200 billion of them reserved [1]. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-how-much-apple-has-on-hand.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-ho...
orangepanda 5y ago
> I think a good compromise is for Apple to offer selling "genuine parts" to anyone who practically wants it; and maybe, allow changing parts once the main owner release control. They sell hundreds of millions of devices each year. A problem I haven’t seen discussed much — could Apple’s suppliers actually deliver enough parts for new phones and spare parts? Tesla supposedly has the same problem with spare parts being unavailable, as everything goes into new products.

fastball 5y ago

Pretty disingenuous for this guy not to mention the potential benefits of such measures, namely: iPhones become pretty much worthless on the black market, discouraging theft. I'm more worried about someone stealing my phone (where the cost is the whole value of the device) than I am about breaking the phone (usually my fault) where the cost when repaired by Apple is fairly reasonable.

starbugs 5y ago
Couldn't you just steal the complete phone, reset it, then resell it?
- deergomoo 5y ago
  Unless the owner disabled Activation Lock you can’t reset it/reactivate it without the owner’s iCloud password.
sschueller 5y ago
Why then does apple not offer to take these phones (without compensation) and refurb them to be resold, by Apple. This way there is no incentives for thieves as Apple will not give them a dime however these phones are not part of the huge trash pile that is being generated.
- nicce 5y ago
  Not every trade is handled by Apple. A tiny minority outside of the US. And I dislike the idea that they can remotely make my phone unusable, like Samsung can.
- shartacct 5y ago
  They do, people trade in phones for credit towards an iphone all the time. Doing it without the meagre compensation they give now would be deeply unethical, Tesla tried something like that recently when a story emerged that someone was quoted for full out of warranty battery replacement for a broken cooling hose fitting on their cars battery and they refused to give any core charge even though the battery itself was still fully functional (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-OkfCcRAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-OkfCcRAo).

unobatbayar 5y ago

Am I the only one who is happy that Apple is taking away the right to repair? From my experience, almost all third party iPhone repair shops are filled with untrustworthy people who disregards their ethics for such a little money.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
How about places where there are no first party iPhone repair shops? There are aplenty of those.
- shartacct 5y ago
  You mean apple stores? They're everywhere that matter. That said, I still won't buy an iphone until they at least get rid of lightning. It's extreme ridiculous that apple would keep a proprietary connector after migrating the rest of their product stack over to usbc. I have a pixel 3 currently and will certainly never buy another android phone again, the biggest issues I've had don't exist on iphones at all, namely apps being randomly killed or crashing on open due to running out of RAM and the battery degrading quickly (lost ~10% in 1 1/2 years of light use, not using the phone in any extremely cold or hot conditions and only trickle charging).
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    The closest Appstore to me is ~2500km and over the border. Dozens of Millions of people here don't matter, apparently.
    - shartacct 5y ago
      Well.. yeah? That's what happens when you allow organized crime to attack foreign businesses with impunity, encourage your citizens to murder gay and trans people, and destabilize every neighboring country by instigating false flagged 'civil' wars in them. Of course, there are also important factors like the average worker being dirt poor. Who is buying an iphone on a 300-400USD/mo equivalent salary? It would take years and years of saving to afford one, or a choice to put yourself into hard to repay debt for a status symbol? I would imagine the average person there buys the cheapest phones possible and not the highest end name brand phones every few years like working and middle class westerners do.