<story><title>Is This the End of the Repairable iPhone?</title><url>https://www.ifixit.com/News/45921/is-this-the-end-of-the-repairable-iphone</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maccard</author><text>I moved from apple to android a few years ago, hoping the grass would be greener. I hoped I was leaving behind a locked in ecosystem with hard to repair devices for a more open ecosystem where competition would improve quality.&lt;p&gt;Android is a fat mess, with flagship phones from premium manufacturers being incompatible with various OS features, and devices from different manufacturers being incompatible in ways that never happened in the iOS ecosystem.&lt;p&gt;If you want a full blown &amp;quot;Android&amp;quot; experience, you end up buying all google devices, and in my experience google support are as bad if not worse than Apple. I have a pixel 3 phone from Google that is still under manufacturers warranty. The power button seems to have gotten stuck, and maybe once or twice a day it gets stuck in a reboot loop, and in that process the phone gets _hot_ and ends up running the battery to 0. It&amp;#x27;s happened when I&amp;#x27;m driving too.&lt;p&gt;Google&amp;#x27;s advice has been a factory reset, or a replacement device for $300. They claim I must have dropped it, or otherwise mistreated it and as far as they&amp;#x27;re concerned that&amp;#x27;s that.&lt;p&gt;So here I am, 2 years later with a $700 android phone, contemplating an iPhone 12 because the situation is no different on the other side...</text></item><item><author>whytaka</author><text>Not too long ago, I went to the Apple store to get my MacBook Pro looked at for a faulty key and degraded trackpad. As I had a Genius diagnose the issue, the screen brightness of my iPhone 7 had dropped nearly completely.&lt;p&gt;While it was true that the glass of the screen had cracked due to a fall, the phone had operated just fine for many months since. The Genius told me it was likely a display issue while I told him it&amp;#x27;s much more likely a software issue. The Genius gave me the unfortunate advice of restarting the phone by holding down the power button and the lower volume button. The phone restarted, with the Apple logo in full brightness but would turn black when it came to logging in. Pity, since my password is too long to type it in without visual aide.&lt;p&gt;The Genius told me that to repair the display was $200+. I scoffed at the price and told him it&amp;#x27;s not the display, and it was unacceptable as I planned on buying the iPhone 12 next month. The manager came by and made it clear there&amp;#x27;s no room to budge on the price. I resigned and left the device with them.&lt;p&gt;When I was called in to pick up my phone, they told me that replacing the display did not work, so now my option was either to upgrade or to buy another iPhone 7 for $400+. I told them that&amp;#x27;s unacceptable and that it&amp;#x27;s clear it&amp;#x27;s not the hardware. I told them I am immersed in their ecosystem and I would easily spent another $2000 this year and to cut me a break. They told me, take it or leave it.&lt;p&gt;I took the phone back and started making my way home. Descending into the metro, I walked past an ill-lit part of the platform. I looked at my phone again and realized I could faintly make out the log in screen. I typed in my password, logged in, went to control center and raised the brightness back up. Perfect. Now, even if I lower the brightness to its lowest setting, it works as normal.&lt;p&gt;Not only is Apple&amp;#x27;s moves to cut out 3rd party repairs egregious, their own solutions and staff are rife with incompetence and their offer to you once you&amp;#x27;ve immersed yourself into their ecosystem is, &amp;quot;Money now or go away&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I am not buying the iPhone 12 and my next machine will run Linux.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yholio</author><text>The Android ecosystem is great for low cost devices. I have a 5 year old Samsung that still serves me great for what I need it: quick web searches, mapping and Waze, communication etc. The screen is cracked in 200 pieces, I literally stepped on it on multiple occasions, the power button has fallen off but I figured I don&amp;#x27;t really need it anyway except the rare cases where I leave it to discharge completely. Otherwise the phone is still going strong and has acceptable battery life.&lt;p&gt;Best 150$ I ever spent, I was going to replace it this year for sheer embarrassment of using such a piece of junk, and then the coronavirus happened and I don&amp;#x27;t need to physically meet any of my tech-judgmental peers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is This the End of the Repairable iPhone?</title><url>https://www.ifixit.com/News/45921/is-this-the-end-of-the-repairable-iphone</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maccard</author><text>I moved from apple to android a few years ago, hoping the grass would be greener. I hoped I was leaving behind a locked in ecosystem with hard to repair devices for a more open ecosystem where competition would improve quality.&lt;p&gt;Android is a fat mess, with flagship phones from premium manufacturers being incompatible with various OS features, and devices from different manufacturers being incompatible in ways that never happened in the iOS ecosystem.&lt;p&gt;If you want a full blown &amp;quot;Android&amp;quot; experience, you end up buying all google devices, and in my experience google support are as bad if not worse than Apple. I have a pixel 3 phone from Google that is still under manufacturers warranty. The power button seems to have gotten stuck, and maybe once or twice a day it gets stuck in a reboot loop, and in that process the phone gets _hot_ and ends up running the battery to 0. It&amp;#x27;s happened when I&amp;#x27;m driving too.&lt;p&gt;Google&amp;#x27;s advice has been a factory reset, or a replacement device for $300. They claim I must have dropped it, or otherwise mistreated it and as far as they&amp;#x27;re concerned that&amp;#x27;s that.&lt;p&gt;So here I am, 2 years later with a $700 android phone, contemplating an iPhone 12 because the situation is no different on the other side...</text></item><item><author>whytaka</author><text>Not too long ago, I went to the Apple store to get my MacBook Pro looked at for a faulty key and degraded trackpad. As I had a Genius diagnose the issue, the screen brightness of my iPhone 7 had dropped nearly completely.&lt;p&gt;While it was true that the glass of the screen had cracked due to a fall, the phone had operated just fine for many months since. The Genius told me it was likely a display issue while I told him it&amp;#x27;s much more likely a software issue. The Genius gave me the unfortunate advice of restarting the phone by holding down the power button and the lower volume button. The phone restarted, with the Apple logo in full brightness but would turn black when it came to logging in. Pity, since my password is too long to type it in without visual aide.&lt;p&gt;The Genius told me that to repair the display was $200+. I scoffed at the price and told him it&amp;#x27;s not the display, and it was unacceptable as I planned on buying the iPhone 12 next month. The manager came by and made it clear there&amp;#x27;s no room to budge on the price. I resigned and left the device with them.&lt;p&gt;When I was called in to pick up my phone, they told me that replacing the display did not work, so now my option was either to upgrade or to buy another iPhone 7 for $400+. I told them that&amp;#x27;s unacceptable and that it&amp;#x27;s clear it&amp;#x27;s not the hardware. I told them I am immersed in their ecosystem and I would easily spent another $2000 this year and to cut me a break. They told me, take it or leave it.&lt;p&gt;I took the phone back and started making my way home. Descending into the metro, I walked past an ill-lit part of the platform. I looked at my phone again and realized I could faintly make out the log in screen. I typed in my password, logged in, went to control center and raised the brightness back up. Perfect. Now, even if I lower the brightness to its lowest setting, it works as normal.&lt;p&gt;Not only is Apple&amp;#x27;s moves to cut out 3rd party repairs egregious, their own solutions and staff are rife with incompetence and their offer to you once you&amp;#x27;ve immersed yourself into their ecosystem is, &amp;quot;Money now or go away&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I am not buying the iPhone 12 and my next machine will run Linux.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davidy123</author><text>Not sure what is going on with your power button, but if it&amp;#x27;s outside warranty repair $300 for a replacement device is pretty good.&lt;p&gt;On my fifth Android handset, I have really not found the incompatibility you point out to be an issue. Sure, some companies, like Samsung, try to offer some exclusive features. Just avoid them.&lt;p&gt;I have to use an iPhone for work, there are a lot of critical annoyances, like how poorly cursor selection works, and then some apps don&amp;#x27;t support the space bar cursor. Everyday things like changing settings are so much nicer in Android.&lt;p&gt;My 3 year old Pixel 2 has been a fantastic daily handset, absolutely no complaints, before that my Note 2 was also excellent, though I was glad to get away from Samsung&amp;#x27;s attempts at exclusive features (the Pixel is &amp;quot;pure Android&amp;quot;, albeit with some self-contained on-device &amp;quot;AI&amp;quot; features that are actually useful).&lt;p&gt;Although there are a lot of cheap Android devices to choose from that can drag down the brand reputation, I would really push back against the suggestion Androids are exclusively &amp;quot;cheap&amp;quot; in the pejorative sense. Most are Just Fine at least. Apple is generally much more conservative in rolling out features, and offers less configuration options, so I guess it&amp;#x27;s a safer choice, but if Apple weren&amp;#x27;t such a status symbol I think most people would be more than happy with the lower cost (3a, 4a) Pixel line.</text></comment>