Meet The Tech Who Found Apple’s Plan to Discourage Independent Repair
Scandal

Meet The Tech Who Found Apple’s Plan to Discourage Independent Repair

Since the launch of iOS 12, repair techs have noticed a disturbing trend. Any time a battery was replaced on an iPhone XS, XS Max or XR, battery health diagnostics would report that the installed battery was unable to be verified as an authentic Apple battery, and the battery health info would be disabled. This happened even when the installed battery was a genuine OEM Apple battery from another iPhone.

If you thought Apple had stopped attacking independent repair, we have some bad news for you: they now appear to be aggressively locking down even the most basic battery repairs by pairing your battery to your phone.

Justin Ashford from YouTube channel The Art of Repair recently discovered that iPhone batteries have a battery fuel gauge that can serialize the battery to a particular iPhone, making it impossible to swap out the battery while retaining the iPhone battery health diagnostics. We spoke with Justin to get his thoughts on the matter and what it might mean for iPhones and other Apple devices in the future.