Huffington Post recently reported that Apple is actively trying to discourage clients from repairing broken devices, encouraging them to buy new ones instead.

Repairing a broken screen can cost almost as much as a new device, and so many iPhone and iPad owners choose to discard damaged devices and just buy a new one.

However, such repairs need not cost so much, and the disparity between the actual cost and eventual price of such repairs has given rise to a third-party industry.

In South Africa, iFix is one of the companies that repairs broken devices more cheaply than going through official channels, and buys discarded devices and refurbishes them.

“Unless a phone has been driven over by a car and it’s in a 1000 pieces, we can theoretically repair it,” said the CEO of iFix, Alex Fourie.

“However, it is not always financially viable to repair every phone so we will repair to resell the phones that are viable to do so and recycle the rest.”

Screen repairs are one of the main repairs-to-resells iFix does, Fourie said.

“We have relationships with several tech recycling companies from the USA that buy traded-in phones in bulk from the carriers, such as AT&T and Sprint, and large corporates, such as CITI bank and AIG,” said Fourie.

He explained that they are able to perform repairs more cheaply than Apple because it prices repairs in such a way that it is hardly viable to do them, and better to just buy a new device.

“Apple makes money by people buying new devices,” Fourie said. “It is in their interest to ensure you always have the latest device.”

This strategy works in first world countries, he said, but does not work in places like SA.

He said that repairs themselves don’t necessarily have to be expensive and the aftermarket repair industry is an enormous industry internationally.

Easiest phones to repair

Fourie said that they don’t just work on Apple devices, but service Samsung, Huawei, and LG phones as well.

“Newer model phones are harder to repair as everything is very small and board-level repairs require complex machinery,” Fourie said.

“The US company iFixit has a great Repairability score that one can view online – HTC scores very low on repairability and Samsung, Google, LG, and Apple all do pretty well.”

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