You might be able to get apple to repair it at an exorbitant cost relative to the price of the part. Apple dies not provide spare parts to third party repair shops. If you can't repair an item for a reasonable cost regardless of how easy it is it's still not repairable.

Third-party shops use refurbished parts from dead phones, supplied by companies which specialize in this. Still, I believe it should be illegal to sell a device a not sell the parts required for its repair.

I’ve had iPhones in our family since the 4 and have never had difficulty finding whatever parts I needed (several batteries and 1 screen). Most malls have a kiosk where iPhones are repairable if you don’t want to DIY.

While I wish by-Apple repairs were cheaper, I also wish car repairs were cheaper at the dealer.

> BTW: iPhones regularly get software updates for around 5 years. How's that for extending the lifetime of devices? Android phones are lucky to get significant software updates for more than one year.

After Android devices stop getting updates, you can continue with alternative OS or you can use F-Droid basically forever. All your apps will have updates.

When Apple devices stop being supported, they turn into bricks.

When apple device stops being supported, it’s just not getting any more updates. It’s not going to get bricked, you can keep using the phone until foreseeable future.

Also, the general consumer does not care if you can flash a rom from xda. They care about the official updates.

> When apple device stops being supported, it’s just not getting any more updates

If effectively means it is absolutely unsafe to use anymore. Security bugs are found in browsers all the time.

>Also, the general consumer does not care if you can flash a rom from xda. They care about the official updates.

At least there is an option. Also this is exactly why I mentioned F-Droid, which is just an app.

iPhones still get many years of security updates after they stop supporting the last iOS version.

> If effectively means it is absolutely unsafe to use anymore. Security bugs are found in browsers all the time.

Aren't the base operating system and the browsers (installed through an app store of some kind) separate? Even if the phone's operating system is not receiving any more updates, there will still be updates to the browser for a while. For instance, a quick search tells me Firefox is still being updated for Android 4.1, an operating system which is long out of support.

On iOS the browser (Safari) is tied to the operating system version. Alternative browsers still use the same rendering engine as Safari, which means they can't patch bugs in the engine, they need to wait for Apple to do it in a new operating system version.

I am talking about Apple devices here (edited for clarity).

>If you need a component for an iPhone, you can get it easily.

Really? From where? You call Apple asking for spare parts, they'll tell you to pound sand.

Yes, stacked double decker PCB is just the innovation we needed in repair business! ...