On Thursday, Apple announced that it has opened up its iPhone repair process to include used parts. Starting this fall, customers and independent repair shops will be able to repair the handset using compatible parts.
Components that do not require configuration (such as volume buttons) were already able to be harvested from used devices. Today’s news adds all the components — including the battery, display and camera — that Apple requires to be configured for full functionality. Face ID won’t be available when the feature first launches, but it’s being finalized.
At launch, the feature will be available exclusively for the iPhone 15 series to both provide and receive repair. This caveat is due, in part, to limited interoperability between models. In many cases, parts from older phones simply won’t fit. The broader restriction that prohibited the use of parts from used models is due to a process commonly known as “parsing parts”.
Apple has defended the process, saying that using genuine parts is an important aspect of maintaining user security and privacy. Historically, the company has not used the term “component coupling” to refer to its configuration process, but acknowledges that the phrase has been widely adopted externally. He also knows that the term has been loaded in many circles.
“‘Part pairing’ is thrown around a lot and has this negative connotation,” Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus, tells TechCrunch. “I think it’s led people to believe that we somehow prevent third-party components from working, which we don’t. As we see it, we need to know which component is on the device, for a few reasons. First, we need to verify that it’s a real Apple biometric device and that it hasn’t been spoofed or something. … Calibration is the other.”
Right-to-repair advocates have accused Apple of hiding behind component pairing as an excuse to stifle user repairability. In January, iFixit dubbed the process as “greater threat to repair.” The post describes a scenario where an iPhone user attempts to collect a battery from a friend’s old device, only to be greeted with a pop-up notification that reads, “Important battery message. Unable to verify this iPhone with a genuine Apple battery. “
It’s a real scenario and certainly one that has proven confusing for more than a few people. After all, a battery taken directly from another iPhone is clearly the real deal.
Today’s news is a step towards fixing the problem on newer iPhones, allowing the system to effectively verify that the battery being used is in fact genuine.
“Part pairing, no matter what you call it, is not a bad thing,” says Ternus. “We’re basically saying, if we know what module is in there, we can make sure that when you put our module in a new phone, you’re going to get the best quality you can. Why is this bad?”
The practice gained additional national notoriety when it was specifically targeted by Oregon’s recently passed right-to-repair bill. Apple, which has written an open letter in support of a similar bill in California, strongly criticized the bill’s component matching clause.
“Apple supports a consumer’s right to repair, and we have expressed our support for both state and federal law,” a company spokesperson noted in March. “We support the latest repair laws in California and New York because they increase consumer access to repair while maintaining critical consumer protections. However, we are concerned that a small portion of the language in Oregon Senate Bill 1596 could seriously impact the critical and industry-leading privacy, safety and security protections that iPhone users around the world rely on every day.”
While some aspects of today’s news will be seen as a step in the right direction among some repair advocates, it seems unlikely that it will make the iPhone fully compliant with the Oregon bill. Apple declined to offer further speculation on the matter.
Biometrics — including fingerprint and face scans — are still a sticking point for the company.
“You think about Touch ID and Face ID and the criticality of their security because of how much information is on our phones,” says Ternus. “Our whole life is on our phones. We have no way of validating the performance of third-party biometrics. This is one area where we do not allow the use of third-party modules for core security functions. But in all other aspects, we do.”
It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that today’s news comes within weeks of the Oregon bill passing — especially since those changes are set to roll out in the fall. The move also appears to echo Apple’s decision to focus more on user repairability with the iPhone 14, news that arrived amid a growing international call for right-to-repair laws.
Apple notes, however, that the processes behind this project were launched some time ago. Today’s announcement about device harvesting, for example, has been two years in the making.
For his part, Ternus suggests that his team is focused on increasing user access to repairs regardless of impending state and international legislation. “We want to make things more repairable, so we do it anyway,” he says. “To some extent, with my team, we shut out the world’s news, because we know what we’re doing is right and we focus on that.”
Overall, the executive preaches a kind of right tool for the right work philosophy for product design and self-repair.
“Fixing it individually isn’t always the best answer,” says Ternus. “One of the things I’m concerned about is that people are too focused as if that’s the goal of the fix. The reality is that repair is a means to an end. The goal is to create products that last even if you focus too much on them [making every part repairable]you end up creating some unintended consequences that are worse for the consumer and worse for the planet.”
Also announced this morning is an improvement to Activation Lock, which is designed to prevent thieves from scavenging stolen phones for parts. “If a device under repair detects that a supported part has been received by another device with Activation Lock or Lost Mode enabled,” the company notes, “calibration capabilities for that part will be limited.”
Ternus adds that, in addition to harvesting used iPhones for parts, Apple “fundamentally supports[s] people’s right to use third-party parts as well.” Part of that, though, is the ability to be transparent.
“We have hundreds of millions of iPhones in use that are second-hand or third-hand devices,” he explains. “It’s a great way for people to get into the iPhone experience at a lower price. We think it’s important for them to have transparency: has this device been repaired? What part was used? Something like that.”
When iOS 15.2 arrived in November 2021, it introduced a new feature called “iPhone parts and service history.” If your phone is new and has never been repaired, you just won’t see it. However, if one of these two qualifications applies to your device, the company displays a list of other parts and repairs in Settings.
Ternus cites a recent one UL Solutions study as evidence that third-party battery units in particular can present a risk to users.
“We don’t prevent the use of third-party batteries,” he says. “But we think it’s important to be able to notify the customer that this is or isn’t an authentic Apple battery, and hopefully that will motivate some of these third parties to improve quality.”
While the fall update will open up the harvest to a large number of parts, Apple has no plans to sell refurbished parts for user repairs.
