Thieves return Android phone when they realize it's not an iPhone
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
If the device is icloud locked the most interesting component is bricked.
The screen is locked to that part too, so will never work right in another phone.
All you would get is a battery (with no good way to install it, and as a consumable component); a chassis and a lightening/USB port.
As a former criminal I wouldn't bother, its grand theft for something I cant sell for even $10
> As a former criminal I wouldn't bother, its grand theft for something I cant sell for even $10
As a former criminal, if you couldn't sell a stolen iPhone for $10 you have shit connections and should get out of the robbery business and do other crimes instead.
People keep claiming that iPhone parts are fungible in the context of repairs but I have been following iPhone repairs for a good chunk of the last decade and things are not looking great for aftermarket anything.
Watching StrangeParts on youtube conducting various iPhone mods has also given me the distinct impression that there really is not much value of anything in the second hand market here.
If there is no market value for parts then it follows that the black market (which already pays cents on the dollar) will not be paying anything at all.
EDIT: for more of what I mean: https://youtu.be/hmQHgWNAg24?t=353
"This phone won't accept salvaged parts".
You break your screen on your iPhone, a cheap repair is 150 or so, right? The screen probably cost the repairer about 50. The camera breaks, another 50. Lighting port breaks. The speaker breaks.
Realistically the average stolen iPhone will be bought by someone at 10-50 bucks depending on various things. Then sold on depending on if it got bricked or not. Not bricked it goes to other countries to be used as an iPhone with a resell value of a few hundred bucks. Bricked, it then goes to another country and broken down to parts and resold by companies who sell parts in bulk.
But both can't be true:
1) Apple is evil for locking components so they can't be swapped
2) Every 2-bit criminal knows A Guy who can re-use any part of a stolen iPhone without issuesA junkie sells it to someone who buys these. That person sells it on and so on. So eventually you end up with a company that buys a broken iphones in bulk to recycle the parts to resell. So not every 2-bit criminals knows a guy who can re-use the parts, they know a guy who'll buy the phone and they don't care after that. People who are stealing phones are stealing them for a reason, they can sell them for drug money.
But also, it's only newer phones that have this issue (I suspect jailbreaking will allow them so that is probably also getting done) so older iPhones are still up for grabs. But as you can see here https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fa... they do seem to still work but give off a message
Don't know if this is happening in the US, where this crime apparently took place.
Can you explain this part? Why would any owner cooperate with the criminals in this case?
This is another reason why unlocking the phone with your face is a bad idea. Apple could have setup two unlock codes: one for normal use and one that silently calls the police and starts recording. All without the robbers knowing.
I would expect a thief to make the best out of any stolen goods, not to return it, even more so after directly approaching the victims on the streets with guns in hands, which should already be a crime bad enough that stealing a phone should almost not matter.
Anyway the most important bit of information for me as an European is that nobody is terrified that in the US it is consider normal to be robbed by armed men like that.