Inside the iPhone Repair Ecosystem

Right to repair: policy & activism
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Inside the iPhone Repair Ecosystem: Where Do Replacement Parts Come From and Can You Trust Them?

There’s a thriving market for unofficial, aftermarket iPhone parts, and in China, there are entire massive factories that are dedicated to producing these components for repair shops unable to get ahold of parts that have been produced by Apple.

The entire Apple device repair ecosystem is fascinating, complex, and oftentimes confusing to consumers given the disconnect between Apple, Apple Authorized Service Providers, third-party factories, and independent repair shops, so we thought we’d delve into the complicated world of Apple repairs. […]

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Inside the iPhone Repair Ecosystem: Where Do Replacement Parts Come From and Can You Trust Them?
My answer is it depends. It is an interesting topic, I love to see the high quality affordable 3rd party parts as an option as not everybody wants to pay £££ to older devices.

It seems that this article promote the genuine Authorized parts only (Authoritarian scare marketing tactics?) This is a free market, I sincerely do hope that the dodgy low quality parts will be kicked out eventually.

There is a proper review on 3rd party products.

For instance, ReplaceBase offers 3 different iPhone 6s LCD, the choice is good. I believe that ReplaceBase keep the minimum standard of the quality for any of their products with warranty.

https://www.replacebase.co.uk/iphone-6s-parts/lcd-touch-assembly/

OEM £48 , non OEM £33, non OEM Value £24.

The users have a decision. if iPhone 6s can use more than 3 years before OS support ends, they may want to pay the genuine OEM, or iPhone 6s OS support would remains only 1 year or so, they would buy non OEM Value £24 screen replacement, which actually would prevent from dumping the smartphone. So affordable quality 3rd party parts is the essential part of the Repair economy.

When I need to replace a LCD screen of my OnePlus One, I decided to investigate 3rd party LCDs. In the end I have bought 3 different 3rd party LCDs from Aliexpress . Yes I bought 3 times for my own research lol

The prices are not different a lot, between 23 USD to 29 USD, but the quality is so different!! It is fun to me, as this is the spare phone, and no pressure to me to fix asap. I also can interact with the resellers. I have got a lot of inside story as well.

I posted my review at Aliexpress with examples as well :slight_smile:

Doggy low quality screen example - yes unusable. (Please don’t jump to make a conclusion all 3rd parties are evil. I have seen this kind of silly story when you buy 1USD generic no brand crap charger for £££ iPhone, say all Chinese 3rd party Chargers are crap. - THIS IS WRONG. but I stop here now)

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Good quality screen example.

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We also need good quality 3rd party Battery manufactures as well.

I posted a report on my battery replacement from ReplaceBase at XDA. Yes, the screen and battery (AND CUSTOM ROM!) are the essential parts of mobile phone life.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=77375483&postcount=819

Sorry as this is not iPhone issue, but essentially all smartphone repair markets are same.