Teardown shows Apple iPhone 14 Pro is not pro-repair

Apple's iPhone 14 can be repaired more easily than its predecessors, but its Pro model retains the architectural inaccessibility of older iPhones and resists replacement parts, even authentic Cupertino kit. In a video published to YouTube, repair advocate Hugh Jeffreys recently completed a teardown of two iPhone 14 Pros that …

[DS999]

Hard to make something pro repair and anti theft

Since needing to replace something other than the display is unlikely in the 2-3 years I own an iPhone before trading it in, I'd rather have it worth less for thieves even if that makes it cost more to repair. Others will have different opinions about this.

The problem is that if parts are easily swappable between phones then stolen phones can be broken up for black market parts, but that makes Apple the only source of replacement parts.

There might be a way around this, if the owner of a phone could mark it as "scrap" with Apple somehow (i.e. by logging in with their Apple ID) then Apple could allow the use of those parts. That way thieves couldn't part out a phone, but the owner could choose to do so. That seems a reasonable middle ground.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No. It isn't hard to make something pro repair and anti-theft.

Apple could blacklist parts from phones that have been reported as stolen (via IMEI number), they don't need to blacklist all parts from all new phones from the off. Any change of part, the phone could be re-activated, and if a part is shown to be on the list of stolen parts from stolen phones, it won't activate.

That seems fairer, at least then you could buy broken donor phones on eBay, to do a repair. i.e. broken but not stolen.

Apple's approach here is creating even more landfill crud, while purporting to be 'pro-repair'. Typical bloody Apple, aka. Greenwash, while directing the repair business, unfairly only through them, for all practical purposes.

The other option is to only show this information once when a full-reset of the phone takes place, i.e. the phone is used with a new AppleID. Once reset, you are never notified again, until the next new AppleID/new user. i.e. when configuring the phone ready to be sold on.

[PhoenixKebab]

Re: No. It isn't hard to make something pro repair and anti-theft.

Good idea. The only issue is how to "transfer" the scrap phone in Apple's system so that:

1) The previous owner cannot deactivate the parts after selling it to someone.

2) The new owner cannot do a chargeback/dispute after it is received and the old owner can no longer deactivate it.

[karlkarl]

Re: Hard to make something pro repair and anti theft

Ironically thieves manage to steal and sell your iPhone just fine. Always have, always will. It is only legitimate consumers that struggle like a bunch of consumer sad acts.

[MiguelC]

Re: Hard to make something pro repair and anti theft

Absolutely! My daughter got hers stolen at a club. She reported it to the operator to block the IMEI - they told her it'd be blacklisted on every operator in the country but that thieves (or. more probably, their fences) usually resell them abroad. Hers was activation locked with find my iphone turned on, but it never pinged again...

[David Hicklin]

Re: Hard to make something pro repair and anti theft

" stolen at a club"

We had that, got sold on to somebody who even rang us up to ask us to unblock the phone!

[Kane]

Re: Hard to make something pro repair and anti theft

"We had that, got sold on to somebody who even rang us up to ask us to unblock the phone!"

That's bloody cheeky!

[MiguelC]

Re: Hard to make something pro repair and anti theft

This in an old tale, but once a colleague arrived at the office absolutely fuming. He had left his phone in the cab he took to get to the office and, when he realized it, he used a payphone to call his own number and asked the cabbie to return the phone, to which the answer was "Sorry mate, this one's gone!"

[scrubber]

Buy New, Buy Often

Or just rent it. Own nothing and be happy.

[Mike 137]

Third party "displays causing artificial issues, disabled features, and warning messages"

This is an ancient problem. A while back I reboxed a Dell desktop of around 2010 vintage and found it objected to the front panel of the new case. It turned out that the otherwise standard pin header that connects the buttons and LEDs needs two additional undocumented links to recognise that the front panel is present. Made up a revised plug and everything works fine, so this is just another example of proprietary lock in.

[DrXym]

Re: Third party "displays causing artificial issues, disabled features, and warning messages"

I normally just buy industry standard kit. I upgraded my main machine recently by swapping out the board, memory & CPU for something new while saving the case, PSU and graphics card.

I did buy a Dell once for home use. I was blissfully unaware that they'd deliberately hobble the thing by using non-standard form factors & PSU. It wasn't like it was lacking for space either, being a midi but it wasn't ATX, mini ATX or ITX so when it died, that was the end of the whole lot.

[Andy The Hat]

Re: Third party "displays causing artificial issues, disabled features, and warning messages"

... great except when the Windows license is hardware locked and needs reactivation ... doh!

[DrXym]

Re: Third party "displays causing artificial issues, disabled features, and warning messages"

Computers can run things other than Windows. And even if you run Windows, some licenses are transferable if you've associated them with your account rather than the machine itself.

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: Third party "displays causing artificial issues, disabled features, and warning messages"

Ditto. Never bought or recommended Dell thereafter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Third party "displays causing artificial issues, disabled features, and warning messages"

Dell used to swap around a couple of pins on the standard power supply connector of their desktops. So if you plugged in a non-Dell power supply it would smoke the motherboard. After the first one blew up we learned to check the wire colours.

But the thing I really hate them for is the laptops that won't boot or charge without a genuine power supply. Because when the connector becomes old and worn, even the genuine Dell power supplies don't register as being genuine. So you end up having to throw away perfectly good laptops simply because of some totally unnecessary vendor lock in shit.

[DrXym]

Big surprise

Whenever Apple has been told something like use standard connectors, or chargers, or make phones repairable, or be able to replace / service batteries etc. they find a way to "comply" while still being a complete dick about it. If people can simply fix their iPhone then they're not buying a new iPhone and we can't have that now can we?

And of course when Apple gets away with it, the entire industry copies them. Legislators need to take this into consideration when drafting any legislation that concerns consumer electronics products.

[Zebo-the-Fat]

This kind of thing is why I don't own any Apple crap and never will

[Ball boy]

'Lock in' probably won't worry Apple too much

While you can reasonably argue that owning a smartphone is becoming essential in any developed country, owing an Apple device is very much a lifestyle choice: other manufacturers make perfectly serviceable phones. You only have to look at the queues that form when Apple release a new device to recognise that it's not just about the functionality.

Anyone falling into the 'it must be an iPhone' camp is clearly happy paying a premium for the privilege - and, for the same reason, they'd most likely shun any third-party repair shop. As such, I'm guessing Apple won't worry unduly about the wider repair market because they know their new phones will almost always come back to them if they need any work done to them.

Of course, once any device passes a cut-off point, the manufacturers won't give two hoots about its repairability and simply stop making components available to anyone, be they their own repair centres or third-party shops. That's been happening for years in the white goods/car/home tech markets.

I appreciate there will always be people who buy a few years old device (be it a car, phone or whatever) from a certain vendor because they see a perceived value in having a Bosch, Volvo, Apple, etc - but surely they go into this with their eyes open, knowing that spares and repairs could be difficult or expensive if their device does unfortunately fail them. I don't agree with this policy - it goes against my inner Womble - but it's the way it is.

[Kane]

Re: 'Lock in' probably won't worry Apple too much

"and, for the same reason, they'd most likely shun any third-party repair shop."

Louis Rossmann has entered the chat...

[Bloodbeastterror]

My response is...

...the same as always and a lot less reasoned than some earlier posts.

Why the hell do people continue to buy and put up with this overpriced and contemptuous garbage?

[Kane]

Re: My response is...

"Why the hell do people continue to buy and put up with this overpriced and contemptuous garbage?"

Oooh, shiny....

[ITS Retired]

Re: My response is...

That is pretty much all their is, that works the way they expect it to. Going to the cheap end and the features aren't there.

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds pretty Par for the course

Apple doesn't want you to be able to repair your own phone, they want you to bring it to the "Genius" bar and have them either fix it, or upsell you to buy a brand new model iPhone.

I am glad I started off with an Android smartphone as my first fully smart device. Previously I dealt with the horror that was Windows CE on a slider phone that required an extremely oversized aftermarket battery to be able to go a full day without needing to be recharged.

I tried later to use an iPhone that was given to me after the previous owner had upgraded to the current model. I HATED it. I didn't like not being able to install 3rd party app files from third party market apps, and I didn't like the fact that I couldn't install a third party app launcher or do other customizations that I could on my Android phone. Yes, I know that you can get around some of this by Jailbreaking the phone, but why should I have to do this just to customize my interface to suit my needs. I lasted about 4 days then gave it back to them with a thanks but no thanks, I prefer my Android phone.