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Recent iOS Update Kills Functionality On iPhone 8s Repaired With Aftermarket Screens (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Apple released iOS 11.3 at the end of March, and the update is killing touch functionality in iPhone 8s repaired with some aftermarket screens that worked prior to the update. That means people who broke their phone and had the audacity to get it repaired by anyone other than Apple is having a hard time using their phone. "This has caused my company over 2,000 reshipments," Aakshay Kripalani, CEO of Injured Gadgets, a Georgia-based retailer and repair shop, told me in a Facebook message. "Customers are annoyed and it seems like Apple is doing this to prevent customers from doing 3rd party repair." According to Michael Oberdick -- owner and operator of iOutlet, an Ohio-based pre-owned iPhone store and repair shop, every iPhone screen is powered by a small microchip, and that chip is what the repair community believes to be causing the issue. For the past six months, shops have been able to replace busted iPhone 8 screens with no problem, but something in the update killed touch functionality. According to several people I spoke to, third-party screen suppliers have already worked out the issue, but fixing the busted phones means re-opening up the phone and upgrading the chip. It remains to be seen whether Apple will issue a new software update that will suddenly fix these screens, but that is part of the problem: Many phones repaired by third parties are ticking timebombs; it's impossible for anyone to know if or when Apple will do something that breaks devices fixed with aftermarket parts. And every time a software update breaks repaired phones, Apple can say that third-party repair isn't safe, and the third-party repair world has to scramble for workarounds and fixes.
Well, now we know that the touch chip is a vector for unauthorized access.
When you reverse engineer stuff you pay the price when things change. If it's only one vendor having the problem then you bought your stuff from the wrong vendor.
Possible explanation #1: they intentionally killed the functionality of third party chips.
Possible explanation #2: some third party chips were not actually up to spec in some subtle way, which wasn't an issue before.
Both seem fairly plausible. I didn't see anything in TFA that gave a solid reason to believe one or other.
Back when Apple introduced the first iMac they also introduced the "G3 Blue & White Tower". Some months later, when everyone knew a new machine from Apple with a G4 processor was planned, some aftermarket outfits began selling a G4 upgrade kit. You could buy & install the upgrade kit and have a G4 Mac without the wait and without having to buy a new machine from Apple.
Apple released a firmware update (remember the "programmer's button"?) disguised as something I can't remember. That update broke all of these G4 upgrade kits.
This is simply the way Apple does business.
The same AppleCare+ that costs $149 per iPhone 8 (or $199 for the iPhone X) at the point of sale?
Is that the AppleCare+ you're talking about?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Right to repair, which should be the law. You can't get OEM parts because Apple won't sell them.
If you buy an iPhone then Apple is going to do everything in its power to ensure that all repairs (that are under warranty) will be done by authorized Apple repair shops. Why are people surprised when they push an update that invalidates third party repair? You're buying a product that bases its profit on the fact that it'll break just after warranty (or several months, whichever comes first) and you'll have to shell out for a new one. Apple doesn't give a shit whether or not they piss off a few people, they know that what the consumer is buying is their image. The only way they'll release a patch to allow third party screens is if they piss off enough people to affect their bottom line. Same thing happened with the fingerprint sensor.
Of course, Apple will say that they're protecting their "customers" by preventing those inferior third party parts from making their "product" unstable as a coverup, but that's just business right?
tl;dr: If you shell out the cash for the image product, why cheap out on repairs? Go whole hog with your bucks for the full user experience and feel the burn.