Overview

If you’re having the screen on your iPhone 11 series model (11, 11 Pro or 11 Pro Max) replaced, there’s something you ought to know.

When you have the screen replaced by a non-Apple technician, you’ll get the following warning:-

“Important Display Message: Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple display.”

The fundamental problem is that even if you were to go to an Apple store, buy two brand new iPhone 11s with (obviously) genuine screens and swap them around, you’d still get this warning. It appears whether the display is a copy or whether it’s an original (including refurbished originals).

(For those who don’t want to read the rest of this article, the short version is… this is just a warning from Apple. If you already know that your screen is original, it shouldn’t be a problem.)

We should be clear here that we have no problem with letting people know they might be using an unofficial screen- quite the opposite. We’re strongly in favour of third-party-refurbished^* Apple screens in preference to inferior unofficial “copies”. Being undercut by rival businesses that save money using these cheaper- and nastier- copy screens without making the difference clear to their customers (or outright lying about it!) is certainly an issue for us. We understand why Apple might want people to be aware of such things. The issue here is that the warning appears whether or not the screen is a copy or not.

It appears that the warning stays on the main screen for four days, and goes onto “Settings” permanently afterwards. This affects both the current iOS and older versions.

How It Works

The reason this warning is displyed is that the screen has a serial number (matched to the one on the mainboard) which stored on a non-readable secure enclave on the screen itself. As the phone hasn’t been calibrated with the new serial, it assumes the screen might not be original. While there are devices that can transfer certain information (e.g. the TrueTone serial) to the new screen, you can’t do this with the secure serial information on the enclave because the EEPROM it’s held on isn’t readable.

While it’s possible in theory to avoid the warning by desoldering and swap the EEPROM over, the amount of work (and risk) involved in that means it’s not likely to be an economically practical solution for most real world cases.

Conclusion

At present, it appears that this new notice is nothing more than a warning, and has no further consequences. Regardless, it’s still an issue for independent stores like us who fit refurbished (not copy!) screens in good faith, but still have to explain to our customers that there’s nothing to worry about.

^* “Refurbished original” screens are those originally made by Apple and refurbished by unaffiliated third-party businesses. These are a high-quality option for screen replacements from an independent repair store (such as ourselves) at a fraction of the price Apple or its affiliates would charge for one using a brand-new Apple display. (Brand-new original screens are only available for repairs through official channels such as those).