Thousands of iPhone 6 users...have been left holding almost worthless phones because Apple’s latest operating system permanently disables the handset if it detects that a repair has been carried out by a non-Apple technician.
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...the problem only comes to light when the latest version of Apple’s iPhone software, iOS 9, is installed. Indeed, the phone may have been working perfectly for weeks or months since a repair or being damaged.
After installation a growing number of people have watched in horror as their phone, which may well have cost them £500-plus, is rendered useless. Any photos or other data held on the handset is lost – and irretrievable.
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...Apple knows all about the problem but has done nothing to warn users that their phone will be “bricked” (ie, rendered as technologically useful as a brick) if they install the iOS upgrade.
...[One iPhone user said]:“The error hasn’t occurred because I broke my phone (it was working fine for 10 months). I lost all my data because of this error. I don’t want Apple to fix my screen or anything! I just want them to fix the ‘error 53’ so I can use my phone, but they won’t!”
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Apple charges £236 for a repair to the home button on an iPhone 6 in the UK, while an independent repairer would demand a fraction of that.
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“All along, Apple’s view is that it does not want third parties carrying out repairs to its products, and this looks like an obvious extension of that,” [Kyle Wiens, iFixit website] says.
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...an article by tech writer Reuben Esparza, published in November by iCracked, a phone repair service, states: “When pressed for more information about the error, few, if any Apple employees could offer an explanation. There was no part they would replace, no software fix, and no way to access the phone’s memory. The fix was a new iPhone.”
