It doesn't take into account the economy part.
For instance, Iphone 15 display price 350€, s23 108€.
They are mostly similar, s23 has 120hz OLED, iphone has 60hz OLED. The phone sell for similar price in Europe (800 vs 869€)
The difference is I can buy s23 display from third party manufacturer, apple you can't or you loose feature you paid for like true tone.
There are other hidden costs to repairs too. One is you’ve “broken the seal” and now your device isn’t “stock” anymore. The water seal might not work as well. The display connector might be slightly loose and tweak out. The screws might not be factory torqued down.
For a car it’s similar too… maybe after that accident the frame is now just slightly off kilter. Maybe there was that proverbial “extra mystery bolt” left over.
Then there is opportunity costs. Is repairing it really the best use of your time and money? What other things could you have done instead of repair? I dunno…
All I’m saying is, repeatability isn’t the end all be all. It’s yet another set of trade offs factored into product design like security, user experience, quality, cost, time to market, size and weight, durability, etc.
I think the score is fine. But there is a second score not mentioned that is “is it worth repairing”?
It blows my mind that I never made this connection before.
Phones and other electronics are not a lot different in that manufacturers don't really want you to fix them and any sop towards repairable phones is under duress from legislation or . Hell, good luck even finding a genuine battery, I can't even get one for a ThinkPad and they're supposed to be good for that.
To be honest I'm fairly cool on repairability for phones as they're so tightly engineered, it's genuinely hard to engineer and they cycle so fast the parts go out of production in weeks.
Even worse. Electric cars have a huge battery, that may have a compromised integrity after small bump. It is quite difficult to resell EV, if log shows airbags popped at any point!
This is being fixed as electronic components are being switched to 48v. 12v hasn't been enough for a while. Lots less wires and control modules with 48v.
This iFixIt article made it fairly clear that the new version of iOS allows you to pair and calibrate first or third party parts after making a repair at home.
> it worked impressively smoothly on our vanilla iPhone 16: one click to pair and calibrate all components at once, and no bugs to be found.
> with iOS 18, they would stop disabling True Tone and battery health for third-party parts.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/100266/the-end-of-parts-pairing-...
You're saving money, but taking a chance.
Also, checking eBay, it looks like an oem display (not from apple) for the iPhone 15 is only $150-170. From apple directly it’s $235. By comparison, I can’t find any way to actually buy an OEM display for Samsung phones. They just offer repair services.
Because at some point it ampers the repairability. If something is technically repairable but it cost more than buy a new one, can you really say it's repairable ?
> Also, checking eBay, it looks like an oem display (not from apple) for the iPhone 15 is only $150-170. From apple directly it’s $235. By comparison, I can’t find any way to actually buy an OEM display for Samsung phones. They just offer repair services.
I don't believe that apple is going to let you 'calibrate' a third party manufacturer display, so you lose feature that technically work.
Meanwhile on Samsung, or whatever other Android manufacturer, you put the new display and everything works as before.
So you can't use the price of iphone third party manufacturer to compare it, or else you got to add the price of the feature you loose, like true tone, faceid, and so on.
If the device can only be repaired by having extremely specialist tools, skills, etc. then it's still repairable, you just need to invest in those things which costs $$$. But it's hardly worth doing, because by the time you've done so the next iphone rolls around and the skills/tools lose most of their value.
If the device can easily be repaired but the replacement components cost so much it's hardly worth doing the end result is the same: Devices won't be repaired because it's not financially attractive. Which is exactly what Apple wants, they're only doing this because the EU is practically forcing them to.
This isn’t Apple being evil, it’s just basic cost of goods. It’s like complaining that a 10 yr old car is too expensive to repair cause the parts cost too much. Yeah… at some point they do, relative to the value of the car.
If that 10 year old car was designed with a non-standard shape battery, it would get a lower repairablity score. If additionally the OEM sued anyone who made batteries in that shape it would get an even lower repairability score. If on top of that the car was designed to turn on the check engine light if its battery was made by anyone other than the OEM then it would get an even lower score.
Almost every battery in a phone is a 'non-standard' shape, even including when you could pull the back cover off and swap batteries. Companies have been making custom batteries since the dawn of the cell phone, pretty much.
>> If additionally the OEM sued anyone who made batteries in that shape it would get an even lower repairability score.
I'm not aware of this. Source? Making knockoff components using Apple's logo and such is not the same thing.
>> If on top of that the car was designed to turn on the check engine light if its battery was made by anyone other than the OEM then it would get an even lower score.
Where, exactly, is this message on an iPhone? You mean the single pop-up window, and the notice in the settings menu (that you can easily ignore)? Yeah, not the same thing. It's unobstrusive, yet visible enough so a person who buys one knows if they have 3rd party parts in their phone.
The metaphor is not literal.
> Making knockoff components using Apple's logo and such is not the same thing
I think I was misremembering the lawsuit you are probably thinking of.
> Where, exactly, is this message on an iPhone
Again, the metaphor comparing iphones to cars is not literal.
Whoops! I guess you got me!
After all it really is actually super easy to buy new parts for Apple products either from Apple themselves or the thriving third-party market!
And on top of that, once your local repair shop has the parts, they are super easy to install.
Surely my damaged iphone mini 12 will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by the skilled technicians at the Genius Bar who have parts in stock and tools ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest iphone rather than the cost of parts and labor for the actual service. But certainly they wouldn't be able to get away with that due to, as we agreed earlier, the thriving market for third party parts and repair.
Surely my damaged 4 year old car will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by a skilled mechanic at the car dealership who have parts in stock and tools ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest model year car. But certainly they wouldn’t be able to get away with that, thanks to the thriving third party mechanics.
Oh, except… yeah, these are the exact same thing pretty much. The only difference is cars have many more components and individually they cost less, whereas phones only have a handful of components and each cost a considerable portion of the phone cost.
Your specific complaint about the iPhone 12 mini seems extremely unfounded, as well. Their repair cost (which is totally turnkey) is $89. Seems extremely reasonable for a turnkey repair from a first party vendor. Surely, maybe you can buy a “new” 12 mini for $200… but this is just like cars. At some point it’s “mechanically totaled” and the repair cost doesn’t make sense. And that point changes for a car too, depending on if you use a dealership service department or a third party mechanic.
Obviously the dealerships are typically more expensive but that is from marking up parts and labor not from trying to pressure you into buying a new car. If Ford had it the way Apple does brakes would be built in to the transmission, last for 60,000 miles, and be priced at $25,000 to repair.
My specific complaint about my 12 mini is that it needs a new frame, back glass, camera, and battery. $89 dollars is obviously unrealistic for those parts. And, like you say, phones have fewer parts that make up a larger portion of the total cost for the product. Unlike with a car, you can actually swap everything into a new frame pretty easily.
To continue stretching the car analogy, that's like saying you bring in a car to the dealership that only needs a new gas tank, new infotainment system, new bodywork and frame, and then you're outraged that they want to charge you $25k! Most of the car is damaged, you scrap it and some third party can salvage what's valuable and repair some other car.
The labor cost for replacing parts on a car isn't just another ballpark. It's another planet.
Obviously if you want to replace every part of the phone it is going to cost more altogether than a new phone. No reasonable person would argue that. And of course there are limits. The screen and mainboard are by far the most complex parts. The frame is trivial by comparison.
The problem is that there is effectively no real aftermarket for parts and repairs. Apple all but refuses to sell parts and makes using third party parts as onerous as possible.
They have been able to get away with it so far by riding the wave of quickly advancing mobile technology. But as next year's phone starts to look less and less different from last years phone, people are going to start to get serious about repairability and Apple is going to be forced to make some changes.
Then what’s your point? Labor costs on phones aren’t insignificant, and unless you want this done by people that make minimum wage (with minimum wage results, likely), it’s going to add substantially to the cost of a repair. Proportionally it will add a lot, too, since phones cost so little compared to cars.
> The problem is that there is effectively no real aftermarket for parts and repairs. Apple all but refuses to sell parts and makes using third party parts as onerous as possible.
Three points here:
1. Apple sells pretty much all of their own parts for phones up to 5 years old at this point. I don’t know how this is “refusing to sell parts”.
2. Many vendors (Samsung being notorious for this) don’t sell parts at all. Or if they do, it’s not many generations, and only specific models.
3. Third party parts for reasonable valuable (to the company making them) components do exist for most Apple devices. It might take a bit (a couple years) … but they definitely exist. Just check aliexpress some time. This is pretty much the same as cars; third party parts take awhile to come. Quality is variable, but that’s the case with any 3rd party part.
Keep in mind that apple is intentionally killing the third party market. You cannot make a third party screen for an iphone that behaves the same as a regular screen, the iphone firmware will detect this and prevent it.
It is my opinion that iFixit is starting to turn from being actually hacker friendly into something of a mouthpiece for too-little-too-late corporate-sponsored initiatives designed to curb right-to-repair efforts. The money coming into their business from corporate programs is evident, and it's evident they are strongly perusing that market. I'm not convinced it's going to be a win for consumers though.
I found the recent release of their soldering station at $300 to be particularly distasteful. If you want to spend that kind of money on soldering tools, go for Metcal. Otherwise a Pinecil and a USB-C power bank give you exactly the same quality and control for 1/4 the price.
The electro-release adhesive is cool as hell though; no denying that.
The price of the phones is similar - good point there, but it's entirely possible that Apple has other components that are cheaper (especially electronics)
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/youre-wrong-60hz-on-the...
Not worth it at all.
S23 is way too cheap. I was expecting it to be 150. On the other hand Apple is way too expensive. Even accounting for their "tax" I was expecting 250.
I’d also disagree that they’re the same screen as another user pointed out, the iPhone has a better screen. Even if Apple decided to charge more for parts, that’s their choice. True Tone can now be used with 3rd party screens, so go buy the cheaper knockoff screen if you so choose.
Apple has done more to make this phone repairable in the last 3yrs than I think any OEM has done since waterproofing started and phones became sealed. The electrically released metal covered battery is going to be a huge thing for self repair. You or I might find it easy to just yank a battery out, but someone somewhere will follow the instructions and then puncture it and sue the OEM for the battery fire, and this hugely reduces that liability.
No?
Why should we stop comparing Apple to its main competitors because they took a minor step in the right direction but still miss the mark by a wide margin? It's only fair to keep them on the hook for things where they do worse.
I don't want Apple to progress. Apple is not a kid to coddle. It's the most profitable company in the world. Being best in class in repearability is the bare minimum we should expect for them, not something we should hope for.
> The electrically released metal covered battery is going to be a huge thing for self repair.
They could just stop gluing battery entirely. It's not like it's an impossible engineering challenge. It's soon to be mandatory in the EU anyway.
As someone who has repaired numerous cell phones over the last decade, I firmly believe the new iPhone is now far easier to repair than the new Samsung Galaxy, and I challenge you to prove me wrong. It might now be the most repairable mass market phone. You’re welcome to whine on the internet if you think that that is “holding them accountable”, but at the same time appreciate the change.
> They could just stop gluing battery entirely. It's not like it's an impossible engineering challenge. It's soon to be mandatory in the EU anyway
Disagreements over that not being the place of a government aside, while I suppose they could screw it down like a laptop, this is my point, they made it better and you’re still complaining. If it isn’t good enough for you then don’t buy the product and buy something else. If the entire market wanted repairable phones (instead of a maybe 1% that I myself am a part of) then they would make phones that fit together like legos. This grandstanding that there is a moral requirement of companies to design products in the way you want is silly.
You are the one making grandiose claim.
Is it full of glue? Yes. Do they still tie spare parts origin to functionalities semi-arbitrarily? Yes. Are there spare parts far more expensive that they should be considering their actual costs? Also yes.
> Disagreements over that not being the place of a government aside, while I suppose they could screw it down like a laptop, this is my point, they made it better and you’re still complaining.
They could just do like the Fairphone or any other companies from the past decade and make it properly swapable.
Once again, I don't want them to make it better. I want them to make it properly repairable. I don't give a tosh that it's improving. They have unlimited budget if they want to.
> This grandstanding that there is a moral requirement of companies to design products in the way you want is silly.
It's not grandstanding. If you want to bury your head in the sand and pretend there is no issue with e-waste and obsolescence, that's your choice. Sadly we share the same planet so I will still do everything I can to force Apple to actually make good choices considering they don't seem to be able to do so unless they are forced to.
Parts serialization didn't make thievery of phones go down. How could it? It's thievery of opportunity. Do you really think an hypothetical thief which would be like "how damn the phone I just pickpocketed is an iPhone. Let me give it back I can't sell the parts" exist?
The only thing it does is allow Apple to keep parts price artificially high, business as usual for Apple.
Tamper-proof? Hardly.
pass. everything samsung is doing lately makes them a company that I will no longer buy from.
apple isn't perfect, no one is, but any company that puts ads on top of my content that i paid for with money on my own tv that i paid for with money is getting kicked out of my house hastily and permanently.