Of all the parts of a smartphone that are vulnerable to damage, the screen is perhaps the most risky of all. Recent iPhones have big, beautiful screens that are unfortunately vulnerable to damage when dropped. Smashed screens look bad, but can also render a smartphone totally unusable.
If you’ve dropped your phone onto a hard surface and the touchscreen has cracked or smashed, it may not work, it’ll be difficult to see properly, and it’ll also be worth next to nothing; most used mobile phone wholesalers won’t even consider selling phones with cracks to the screen.
So what do you do? Is it worth replacing the screen on your iPhone, or is it more sensible to buy a used mobile phone and send your existing one off for recycling?
Apple’s Track Record with Screen Repairs
Even as recently as April 2018, customers have reported problems with the light sensor on the iPhone 8 and iPhone X after having their screen repaired. In the most recent reports, the issue only occurs on some devices, seems to be related to third-party repairs.
Back in 2016, iPhone users had a similar problem with the iPhone 6 running iOS 9. If the software detected that the phone had been repaired by a non-Apple repair shop, the phone would be completely disabled.
This error, known as Error 53, has now been fixed. But it highlights the fact that Apple is aggressive when it comes to repairs it didn’t carry out in its own stores. It says that it generates the error to prevent bogus Touch ID sensors, but the error message has appeared after screen repairs too.
So repairing your iPhone screen can be a minefield. On the one hand, few people want to spend lots of money on repairs, so it makes sense that they’ll look for the cheapest local store to do it. But if Apple decides to shut off your phone because of the unofficial repair, you could end up with a bricked device anyway. Either that, or you may have to hold off on updating it to the newest version of iOS.
How to Deal with a Smashed iPhone Screen
If your phone is relatively new, we recommend that you fork out for an official Apple repair, and keep the receipts relating to the repair. That will cover you just in case anything happens after a future iOS update.
If your phone is quite old anyway, it’s probably sensible to look at the price of a used mobile phone instead.
A used iPhone doesn’t necessarily have to be scruffy. You can pick your phone from a list of carefully graded handsets, and benefit from new features, a better camera, and other improvements that your current phone can’t offer.
Buying Used Mobile Phones
Phoenix Cellular supplies used mobile phones wholesale to businesses across Europe. To get a copy of our stock list, please contact us via this page. You can also read more about how we test and grade the quality used phones that we sell.
