Ignore Your IPhone’s Maintenance Warning When Replacing Third-Party Batteries
You don’t need to replace your iPhone’s battery at the Apple Store if you don’t want to – Apple’s $ 69 fix if your new iPhone is out of warranty . However, if you purchase a battery elsewhere, your iPhone will warn you that the new battery needs service to be replaced. Don’t worry about this. It’s just annoying Apple’s new iPhone battery test process.
According to a report from iFixit , Apple appears to have a battery authentication program for the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. If your battery is not “legitimate” – for example, an Apple technician has not marked the battery as genuine using their diagnostic software – you will receive an annoying message in the Battery section of the iOS Settings app that your battery needs service. even if it’s a brand new replacement.
Will your iPhone still work? Absolutely. However, you won’t be able to use your iPhone’s battery health report to find out how your battery is performing and when or if it really needs to be replaced again. Don’t try to spend money or half a day at the Apple Store to fix this “service issue” that doesn’t really exist. As Craig Lloyd of iFixit writes:
“… this is a huge problem for iPhone owners who may not be aware of this new hidden lock, and it will surely cause confusion: they will replace their own battery and notice the Service message, and then start fixing the problem. it’s not there. “
This entire verification issue was originally discovered by YouTube content creator Justin Ashford, aka TheArtofRepair . If you’re curious about the details, like how even a spare Apple battery from another iPhone won’t pass this test, check out its full explanation:
While there is no indication that Apple can go this route, it is worth considering what the company can do for iPhone owners with “illegal” batteries. Perhaps one day, in the name of device safety, Apple will degrade the performance of your iPhone if it cannot confirm that your battery is a genuine replacement. This may prevent your device from booting into iOS at all, or you may be blocked from future versions of iOS until you fix this “horrific” problem with your device.
Apple’s position on repair rights is fairly well known, including what it doesn’t say: iPhone repairs mean less iPhone sales, and self-repair or third-party repairs take money that could have belonged to Apple. However, if you’ve been following the company for a long time, get used to claims like Apple recently provided Axios :
“We want our customers to always be confident that their products will be repaired safely and correctly, and also with recyclability in mind. We are constantly expanding our network of certified technicians and most recently announced that any Best Buy store in the US is now an Authorized Service Provider. ”
To us, the concept of a “battery check” seems pretty silly. A battery is a battery. There shouldn’t be anything fancy about it that requires your iPhone to check where it came from – after all, it’s your phone, and you can freely use an Apple-provided or third-party battery however you want. This issue is not related to the actual state of the battery itself, because Apple even marks its own batteries as not genuine and in need of “service.” Battery Authentication is a “feature” and is not intended to improve the experience for iPhone users; it is designed to scare people up to the Apple Store.