Insurance giant Allstate has purchased third-party smartphone repair company iCracked, giving the Right to Repair movement much-needed lobbying muscle.
Already, the insurance company has assigned a lobbyist to proposed legislation underway in New Hampshire, one of 15 states considering Right to Repair bills opposed by tech companies, including Apple.
“Stronger glass on a molecular level,” blah, blah, blah. Drop your Apple iPhone 6s and the screen can still crack.
David Rahimi, host of the PhoneBuff channel on YouTube, flew to Australia to get his hands on an iPhone 6s and 6s Plus before the rest of the world to put both phones through a drop test. Like the take away from any drop demonstration, the video showed the importance of purchasing a durable, protective case.
Too many of us are familiar with the resonant thud as our iPhone takes a faceplant onto the ground, letting us know without even looking that it’s been busted. It’s a huge inconvenience and expensive to get fixed properly, not to mention the psychological ache at having something we rely on taken out of commission. All of those issues are soothed with iCracked’s iPhone 6 DIY Screen Repair Kit, available now for $114.99, a meaty 36% off of the normal price.
AJ Forsythe couldn’t stop dropping his iPhone and cracking the screen. He also couldn’t afford to be Apple’s best repair customer.
Clumsy but industrious, Forsythe bought parts on Alibaba and found he could fix his own phone cheaply and quickly. Soon, he was running a repair service out of his dorm room at California Polytechnic State University, replacing cracked touchscreens for $75.
Five years later, Forsythe runs a network of 1,700 technicians in the United States with another 400 in 11 countries under the name iCracked.
If you drop your iPhone and you don’t have it covered by AppleCare or another insurance plan, it’s almost always cheaper to have it repaired by a third-party than it is to have Apple do it. Unless you have an iPhone 5.
Apple’s tight control over iPhone 5 components means that they’re so hard to get hold of, repair costs remain high — even with third-party services. Some have even been unable to offer iPhone 5 repairs because they cannot obtain the parts.
