IFixit Teardown Gives IPhone 13 Pro Low Repairability Grades

IFixit is “not mad, just disappointed,” after its iPhone 13 Pro teardown showed the smartphone got low grades for repairability, said the right-to-repair advocacy company Monday. The “bad news” is about Apple’s “newest parts-pairing problem,” it said. “If you replace your screen, Apple kills your Face ID” facial-recognition authentication feature, “unless they control the repair,” said iFixit. “We swapped sensors and front-facing camera hardware across multiple brand-new units, restarting each one, but nothing worked. Fixing your own iPhone screen could trap you years in the past, in the passcode times.” IFixit says an Apple-licensed tech told it that the iPhone maker is treating the problem as a bug “to be fixed in a future iOS release.” If Apple “withholds a major feature from anybody who doesn’t take their busted screen straight to them,” that would mark a “very, very bad sign from a company that moves the tech market,” it said. Apple didn’t comment.