Replace damaged parts with usable old parts…maybe
If your iPhone is broken, the latest news from Apple may cheer you up, but not necessarily. Apple has agreed to allow used but still functioning parts to be used to replace at least some of the parts on damaged phones. As you might expect, there are a lot of caveats to this. First, while they initially gave a vague statement that this would only work on certain models, their Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering reportedly said that this would only work on iPhone 15 or newer devices.
If you do own one of these phones, you should now be able to replace the screen and battery, but not other components like the biometric sensor. If you ignore their restrictions, you will receive a pop-up message warning you that the part on your phone is not genuine and therefore your phone’s functionality will be limited until you replace it with an authorized part. This is certainly good news for a company that has only recently allowed third-party repairs, but it does hint at how unwilling Apple is to comply with right-to-repair legislation.
The number of models and parts suitable for repair should slowly increase, so don’t give up hope on your injured fruit phone just yet.