The program of iPhone self-repair from Apple is an attempt by the company to show its commitment to the right of users to repair devices themselves. However, in practice, it is only an imitation of such a right. As The Verge, which received a repair kit, writes, its manuals are technical, stupid and only make sense if you use special Apple tools, but they are not user-friendly and come in two cases the size of a suitcase.
According to journalist Sean Hollister, the service turned out to be even worse than it seems on paper. It has many problems, one of which is the price. The company is asking $69 for a new battery for the iPhone mini, which is the same price that the official service in the American Apple Store charges for the battery and its installation. But that’s not all, renting a seven-day Apple-certified toolkit will cost $49.
Apple also requires that the customer’s credit card have $1,200, which they will forfeit if the toolkit is not returned within seven days. In Hollister’s case, the battery arrived two days after the toolkit, so he only had five days to complete the repair, which is difficult to call user-friendly. Mainly due to a lot of ambiguous instructions, extremely complex parts, and tools that did not work the first time.
And the finale of the attempt to self-repair was that the iPhone did not recognize the battery as real. As it turns out, after installing new parts, the user still needs to contact a third-party company and provide it with remote control of the device to check the parts.
Loading comments …