{"id":97888,"date":"2016-07-11T10:54:50","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T08:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=97888"},"modified":"2016-07-11T10:55:43","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T08:55:43","slug":"how-to-get-cheap-iphones-and-cheap-iphone-repairs-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/gadgets\/97888-how-to-get-cheap-iphones-and-cheap-iphone-repairs-in-south-africa","title":{"rendered":"How to get cheap iPhones and cheap iPhone repairs in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Huffington Post recently reported that Apple is actively trying to discourage clients from repairing broken devices<\/a><\/strong>, encouraging them to\u00a0buy new ones instead.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless a phone has been driven over by a car and it\u2019s in a 1000 pieces, we can theoretically repair it,\u201d said the CEO of iFix, Alex Fourie.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Screen repairs<\/strong> are one of the main repairs-to-resells iFix does, Fourie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Fourie.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cApple makes money by people buying new devices,\u201d Fourie said. \u201cIt is in their interest to ensure you always have the latest device.\u201d<\/p>\n

This strategy works in first world countries, he said, but does not work in places like SA.<\/p>\n

He said that repairs themselves don\u2019t necessarily have to be expensive and the aftermarket repair industry is an enormous industry internationally.<\/p>\n

Easiest phones to repair<\/h3>\n

Fourie said that they don\u2019t just work on Apple devices, but service Samsung<\/strong>, Huawei<\/strong>, and LG<\/strong> phones as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cNewer model phones are harder to repair as everything is very small and board-level repairs require complex machinery,\u201d Fourie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US company iFixit has a great Repairability score that one can view online<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 HTC scores very low on repairability and Samsung, Google, LG, and Apple all do pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

More smartphone news<\/h3>\n

The 5 coolest smartphones coming in 2016<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Pok\u00e9mon Go launches on Android and iOS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This is why Apple doesn\u2019t want you to repair your iPhone<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The 4 biggest announcements from Apple\u2019s WWDC conference<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This is the sickest cellphone and PC brand in South Africa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple might not really want to fix your phone, but there are third-party repair places in South Africa that will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":53112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8585],"tags":[959,20156,10915,19385],"class_list":["post-97888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadgets","tag-apple","tag-ifix","tag-ifixit","tag-repair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98100,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97888\/revisions\/98100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}