The High Costs Of Repairing An Apple I-Device

BY Diane Marini

The High Costs Of Repairing An Apple I-Device – Nov 12, 2018 – California, USA (Techreleased) – The new Series 4 edition of the Apple Watch has a bigger, more colorful screen and one really cool new feature.

If you fall to the ground and don’t get back up within 60 seconds, it will call 911 and get help on your behalf, automatically.

But what will it do about the cracked screen of the watch itself? Or more specifically, the screen that fell to the ground this week as I was adjusting the band and got destroyed?

But uBreakIFix won’t touch the current edition of the Apple Watch. Neither does rival iCracked, or even Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

The reason, Apple tells me, is that the Watch is designed in a more complicated fashion. It’s not like the technicians can just remove one screen and replace it with another. They would need to take the entire watch apart to fix it. As Justin Wetherill, a uBreak co-founder said, “The part alone on the Series 4 Watch costs me $180, and that’s before adding in labor.”

These prices aren’t that much higher than what Apple charges to fix iPhones – until you look at it on a percentage basis. Apple charges a hefty $329 to replace a cracked screen of the flagship 6.5-inch iPhone XS Max (or $29 if you spring $199 for AppleCare,) versus $279 for the smaller 5.8-inch XS, $199 for the 6.1-inch XR and just $149 for last year’s 4.7-inch iPhone 8.

In other words, you know you will crack your iPhone screen at some point. Not buying AppleCare for protection of what’s often a $1,000 investment is foolish.

“My general counsel bought the new Apple Watch and cracked it within 24 hours,” Wetherill says. “And we couldn’t fix it. He brushed it against a staircase, and it was gone.”

Most people, knowing how fragile phones are, usually buy a case to protect their device at a cost of anywhere from $25 to $100.

For the Watch, Apple doesn’t sell cases. But many third-party vendors do. In fact, a simple search for Apple Watch Series 4 cases on Amazon showed a cottage industry devoted to rather inexpensive looking $10 to $25 bumper protectors for the Watch. This wouldn’t have saved me, as the screen fell straight to the ground, but who knows – maybe I’m wrong.

But clearly, Apple doesn’t want to make devices with unbreakable screens, or it would. Consider this:

In diving into the world of smartwatches and cracked screens this week, I think back to the old tag line Timex used once upon a time for its watch: “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

The Apple Watch won’t keep on ticking. It needs to be charged, and it certainly won’t take a licking. But hey, did a Timex ever call 911 when anyone fell down?