Home > News

Finally, Apple Will Allow Third-Party Screen Repair

By Laura Tucker
Apple Third Party Screen Repair Featured 2

There are many rules that Apple has for its devices and gadgets, and one of the most frustrating is that you can’t get your iPhone screen repaired by anyone other than Apple. That’s about to change, as Apple will now start allowing third-party screen repair and battery replacement.

Apple’s “Longevity by Design”

All smartphone owners know the frustration of dropping a phone, picking it up gingerly, then seeing a hairline crack that you know is only going to grow. Sure, you can go down to a local repair shop and get it fixed quickly, but Apple didn’t allow you to do that within warranty – until now.

Apple has released documentation showing that the goal is no longer to block any third-party involvement into the repair service. The goal is now “longevity” of the device and reaching that goal in the safest way possible.

Apple Third Party Repair Mobile Shop
Image source: Unsplash

“The ability to repair a device and access repair services are important considerations when designing long-lasting products,” states the Longevity by Design documentation. “However, optimizing for repairability alone may not yield the best outcome for our customers or the environment.”

The design of Apple devices is paramount to the company, with the ability to repair factoring in, as well as the impact on the environment; the safety, security, and privacy of customers, and transparency in repair.

The company points to the iPhone 15 lineup as the “most repairable ever.” Apple redesigned the structure of the iPhone to allow the back glass to be repaired more easily. In fact, 10 other key modules can be repaired, including the battery, cameras, and the screen. Apple states that allowing the back glass to be repaired lowered the cost of the repair by more than 60 percent. Efforts are underway to improve the repairability of Mac laptops, iPads, and Apple Watches as well.

Tip: did your phone get wet? Apple says not to put it in rice.

Access to Repair Services

There is a concerted effort by Apple to “solve the issue as quickly as possible” when it comes to repairs. The company has doubled its service and repair network over the past five years and launched ”Self Service Repair” two years ago.

Apple added in the documentation that they are “committed to continuing to support customers who choose to use third-party repair services, parts, and repair tools so that their repair is completed to the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) standards and with the highest post-repair reliability possible.”

Apple Third Party Repair Cracked Screen
Image source: Unsplash

“Apple warranties are not impacted by repair outside of Apple’s authorized network or through the use of third-party parts or third-party tools, unless the product is damaged during the course of the repair. We will not actively disable a third-party part designed to be manufactured to the same specifications of our products, unless it impacts customer security and privacy, which is currently limited to biometric parts.

This means, if you opt for a third-party screen repair, your warranty will not be voided, as long as the repair service upholds Apple’s quality of the parts.

The lack of quality is seen in third-party batteries. Apple reported that the majority of batteries tested failed to meet the safety requirements of the OEM batteries, and noted the safety risks.

Apple Third Party Repair Battery Replacement
Image source: Unsplash

Thirty-three brands of third-party batteries from throughout the world were tested. UL found that 88 percent of them “caught fire or exploded in at least one of the tests that OEM batteries are required to pass.” 100 percent of the batteries sourced from North America failed at least one test.

This is why Apple feels it must notify users when a third-party battery was installed. They want users to know of the safety risks, though Apple “does not disable the use of third-party batteries.” To Apple, transparency is king.

All of the information contained in the documentation is important for Apple’s customers to know. The company has received its share of flak regarding its policies for third-party screen repair and battery replacement. The company is opening that policy, but it still must stick to its policies of longevity and safety. Learn how to have your iPhone notify you that the Battery is at 80% to extend its lifespan.

Image credit: Unsplash

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

Read next

When the SS Great Eastern laid the first working transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866, a message that had taken ten days by steamship suddenly crossed the ocean in minutes, and the financial markets of London and New York were forced, within a single trading week, to invent the modern concept of synchronised global price.
From below of blue starry sky over radio telescope and trees with leaves
The Big Ear telescope was scanning at 1420.4056 megahertz on the night of 15 August 1977, the exact frequency at which hydrogen atoms vibrate across the universe, because Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison had argued years earlier that any species trying to be found would broadcast on that channel — and then, for 72 seconds, something did.
In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.
When Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky pointed a rotating antenna at the sky in 1932 looking for sources of transatlantic radio static, he kept picking up a faint hiss that peaked every 23 hours and 56 minutes, and he eventually realized he had become the first human to hear the center of the Milky Way.
A contemplative scene with two scientists in a vintage laboratory setting.
When Harvard astronomer Cecilia Payne submitted her 1925 doctoral thesis arguing that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen, the field’s senior figure Henry Norris Russell talked her into adding a line calling the result ‘almost certainly not real,’ and then published the same conclusion himself four years later to widespread acclaim.
When seismic waves from the Chicxulub impact reached what is now North Dakota roughly ten minutes after the asteroid struck, they appear to have triggered a ten-metre standing wave in an inland river that flung fish onto the bank and buried them under glass beads still falling from the sky.