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Comment by ssl-3 | Hacker News Reader

I am thinking about my older uncle and my niece in her 20s. They're smart-enough people, and they're quite aware that a modern phone can be very expensive to fix.

In particular, I'm thinking that I (a person of reasonable technical skill) would love to help them out by changing the designed-to-be-swapped screen on the phone they dropped instead of them paying someone else to conduct surgery on it.

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How many people do you know who want to change their own oil in their car? This is a frequent, required maintenance. Yet I can't think of a single car that advertises its ability to be maintained by somebody without special tools. The only people who change their own oil would have the skills to change an iPhone screen.

I have changed the battery on two iPhones on my own, and replaced one screen on my own. I've also once had one of those little shops do it, quickly and cheaply. I only did it on my own because I wanted to see how difficult it was. The savings in money and extra time was completely wasted other than for the entertainment value of changing it.

The slice of people who get entertainment value out of changing their screens, yet does not have the skills to do it on a current iPhone, must be quite small. Surely less than 10% of the population, for a "feature" that has easy alternatives of paying somebody $20-$30.

> How many people do you know who want to change their own oil in their car? This is a frequent, required maintenance. Yet I can't think of a single car that advertises its ability to be maintained by somebody without special tools.

Those are two very different topics. Sure, cars don't advertise their ability to be maintained without special tools. But I also know a lot of people who do in fact want to change the oil in their own car (because it's not hard, and much cheaper once you have the tools).

Of course they don't advertise it: Most cars are dead-nuts simple to change the oil on.

If changing the screen of a phone were as simple as changing the oil in a Honda is, then none of this conversation would have to happen.

Changing the windscreen|windshield might be a better comparison.

Yeah most people will get it done but if it's actually built to be repairable those little shops can do it better and cheaper.

Big bonus points for making spare parts available without all the BS strings attached that apple currently has.

The price of replacing the screen is mostly the part itself. It’s extremely easy for any random shopping center phone store to replace in like 5 minutes. But the part itself costs more than an old phone is even worth.

Every time a family member has had a cracked iPhone screen replaced it has never really worked properly again. It may be easy but it’s apparently not easy to do it well.

That's because most of the screens on the market are fake and significantly lower quality than the genuine ones.

Did they get it replaced by Apple, or some guy in a mall kiosk?

My mom got her battery replaced at an Apple Store and the process broke the phones ability to connect to the internet or the cellular network. They ended up replacing the phone.

I fail to see the issue. Apple broke the phone during a repair and replaced it I assume for free.

Something to last a couple of hours became a change of phone with a mandatory round trip to Apple. Apple themselves are sometimes not able to properly repair their own allegedly repairable phone.

I see a lot of issues here personally.

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