Daniel Compton

There is a common refrain on the Internet that Apple products are hard to repair and out of the reach of the ordinary person. While the first part of this statement may be true (along with most of today’s consumer electronics) I don’t believe that repair is out of reach of the everyman.

A while ago I purchased a number of iPhone 4’s from work when they upgraded their company phones to iPhone 5’s. Most of these phones had worn out home buttons which needed replacing. I bought a pack of replacement buttons from a wholesaler and found an excellent guide to follow. Before this I had done a small amount of work with electronics but nothing significant.

Fixing the iPhones was a real delight. There are many small pieces holding together an iPhone but after taking apart a number of them I would say that iPhones are still designed with repairability in mind. All the way through it was just screws and clips holding it together. I repaired an iPhone 4S a few months later and it was fascinating to see and feel the internal differences in how Apple had modified the 4S internal construction. It still followed the same theme as the 4 but when disassembling it I found the process to be smoother and some of the more tricky steps had been removed or simplified.

There is always a tradeoff in consumer electronics between size and repairability but even on something as thin as an iPhone, it is still possible to fix. Next time you hear someone touting that Apple products are hard to repair, take a look at a repair guide online and see for yourself. I think that anyone who has the patience to sit still and be careful can do these kinds of repairs. That and a few basic tools is all you need.