Apple has already been usually looking at iPhone repair work that isn’t under their control. Apple may be seeking to utterly defund the market with fresh upgrades to the iPhone 13.
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| On iOS 15.1, after replacing the display on an iPhone 13 Pro Max with another original iPhone 13 Pro Max display, a Face ID problem message appears. |
Fixers, both individual and team, are having a bad day. The most basic phone repairs, which could previously be completed with hand tools, now necessitates the use of a microscope. As a result, you won’t been able to repair your iPhone screen without missing significant performance. Which also has far-reaching effects for the professional repair business, since Apple is the most commonly serviced brand. Smaller companies may be forced to close, with owners forced to choose between spending thousands of dollars on new equipment or losing a key source of revenue.
This little microcontroller is used to connect the iPhone 13 to its screen, a process known as “serialisation” by repair technicians. Apple hasn’t made it easy for store owners or small retailers to connect a new screen. Licensed technicians with knowledge to Apple Services Toolkit 2 can install new screens by reporting the repair to Apple’s cloud servers and matching both phone and screen serial numbers. It allows Apple to accept or reject each individual fix.
A most advanced repair shops have devised a solution, but it isn’t a fast, clever hack—it involves manually shifting a fused chip from the original screen to a replacements. We’ll go through that method in more depth later, and it’s necessary to remember that this is entirely unusual. The replacement of a screen is quite frequent. Thousands of repair companies throughout the world help their communities by changing screens at low costs for clients. But Apple appears to be chopping its industry off at the feet in one swift blow.
Want to get into the technical aspects of things. We put it through its paces on iOS 15.1, the most recent official iPhone software upgrade. When you replace the screen of an iPhone 13 with the same exact screen from a brand new iPhone, you get the following error: “Unable to activate Face ID on this iPhone.”
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| Repairing the display’s central chip from an iPhone 13. |
Apple Watch Series 7 does not have a revolutionary new design with flat sides. Instead, it’s the type of release that teardowns are built for: packed with mysteries that only an Apple developer could fully explain.
Inside, we discovered some startling display technology that would have been a problem to mass-produce, creating a chain of events of delays. The watch had no definite delivery date when Apple eventually revealed it last month, which is a warning flag that usually indicates manufacturing issues. (If you’re curious in how a group of ex-Apple engineers spend their time these days, keep reading—this is the type of costly production mistake they’ve come together to fix.)
Coming to the Watch
The first order of business, as always, is to get inside, and the bigger Series 7 screens aided us in this effort. For the first time, our basic suction handle can keep a firm grasp on the screen, allowing you to carefully elevate it until there’s enough area beneath the bezel to slip a pick below. To weaken the glue, just heat the display; we broiled ours face-down on a heating mat at 80° C.
Then all we had to do was get a pick in, pry it open, and make sure we didn’t snag or strain anything within this brand-new device. And we got along pretty smoothly! (It’s wonderful to be able to appear knowledgeable as the original Apple Watch designers peer over your shoulder—no pressure.)
