The Important Bits- What You Need to Know
- “Refurbished” or “Refurb” screens contain an LCD originally made for Apple that has been reconditioned to the same standards.
- “Copy” screens are compatible replacements designed and manufactured from scratch by independent companies.
- We always recommend refurb screens, as the price difference is minor and the quality is much higher.
- Quality of copy screens can often be inferior in several respects:-
- LCD display itself can have lower resolution (coarser appearance), poorer brightness, less vibrancy, lower refresh rate and more.
- Digitizer (touch) performance is often poor and a major cause of problems with copy screens.
- Different electrical spec (compared to the original) can cause performance and battery issues. Some may even damage the backlight circuit.
- Touch ID fingerprint reader– which is part of the screen assembly- might not work correctly.
- Copy screens are generally more fragile and easier to break.
- A poor-quality copy screen can make a £400- or even £1500!- iPhone look like a £40 one.
- Many other companies don’t make clear they’re fitting unofficial copy screens, fudge the issue or outright lie.
- Apple only supplies brand-new original screens to officially-approved dealers.
- Official repairs can be prohibitively expensive and often aren’t available at all for older models.
- Refurb screens using Apple LCDs are the highest-quality affordable alternative.
- Exercise scepticism if an independent store claims to fit brand-new, Apple original screens- unofficial sources are rare!
What’s the Difference?
Anyone who’s had their iPhone repaired by us will know that the replacement iPhone screens we fit are refurbished rather than the unofficial third-party copies many other stores use. The most common question we get asked is “What’s the difference and why should I care?”
Refurbished screens are those that contain an LCD manufactured on behalf of Apple, and have been refurbished to meet the original standards. Whereas copy screens are designed and manufactured entirely from scratch by independent companies, mostly based in China.
We only recommend- and sell- refurbished iPhone screens, not copies made by other companies. You might think this is because we make more money on them- however, that’s not the reason. (Quite the opposite; cheap copies are popular with some stores because they reduce costs and increase profit margins!). The reason we recommend refurbished screens is, quite bluntly, because they’re of far higher quality and the only type we would use ourselves.
Should I Care? See for Yourself…
We had a repair in a while back which provides a very clear example of the difference. The customer had their iPhone 6 repaired in another store and wasn’t happy with the quality of the screen so they came to us for advice.
As you can see from our photographs, there are obvious differences between the two screens:-
- The brightness is nowhere near similar
- The image on the copy is washed out and lacks punch
- The copy is visibly much coarser due to its lower resolution– when you look under the microscope, the difference is blatant.
- When we took it apart the frame was falling off(!)
This is probably one of the worst copy screens we have seen and now the customer has had to pay out twice to get the screen replaced. Had they been offered both screens initially and educated on the differences they would have paid the little bit extra for a refurbished screen.
The price difference between our repairs using refurbished screens and those from other stores using copies varies across devices but in general it’s around £10 to £15 – relatively small considering the huge difference in quality.
Chances are that part of the reason you paid good money for your iPhone was the quality of the display. Why throw that away just to save a tenner or so?
If that’s still not enough to put you off, did you know that some especially bad copies can even damage your iPhone?
In short- most copy screens are of poor quality, and a false economy if you care about your phone!
Copy (left) and refurbished (right) iPhone screen comparison
Copy screen (left) compared to refurbished screen (right).
Close-up of resolution and dot pitch on copy screen (left) versus refurbished (right)
The frame has actually come off this poor-quality copy screen.
The Crooked and the Clueless
The smartphone repair industry is full of unscrupulous companies who are only interested in taking your money and fitting the cheapest part they can buy. After all, anyone can open a mobile phone repair business without any training or qualification.
Very few companies make the difference between copy and refurbished screens clear to the customer. Often, it’s not in their interest to even acknowledge the issue exists because they only fit low-quality copies. (In many cases this is because they’ve cut their prices- and profit- so close to the bone they can’t afford anything else. In many others it’s because they make more profit using cheap screens).
Some companies you can hardly blame- they’re so clueless, they don’t even know the difference between an OEM, non-OEM and copy LCD themselves. Others are more intentionally misleading, and some are downright fraudulent.
In general, such shops are searching for the cheapest possible price on parts, and if their wholesaler offers a copy screen at one price point and an refurbished screen at two or three times more… well, of course they’re going to buy the one that gives them more profit. It’s like buying Heinz beans versus supermarket value beans.
What we don’t agree with is selling the “value” beans at Heinz prices without making the difference clear. If you took your car to a dealership to get serviced, expecting genuine parts, we’re sure you’d be unhappy if they used third party parts at the same price.
The Outright Fraudulent
We’ve heard of other companies, with no morals, fitting a copy screen and telling you it’s original. What a lot of them are also doing is taking your original screen, replacing it with a cheap copy and then selling your original screen to a recycling company for more than the copy screen cost them! Fitting copies in customer’s phones without their knowledge is a win-win situation for such repair shops- not so much for their customers.
Background and History
Apple don’t sell iPhone screens to anyone, period– not even to authorised service centres.
From 2010 to 2015 there were no copy screens available. Any replacement screen was either:-
- Salvaged from a brand new phone,
- Came out of the back of the factory that was producing screens for Apple (sometimes from the parts bin for screens that didn’t meet Apple’s standards), or
- In the majority of cases- from refurbishment of existing LCDs.
In 2015 the supply chain was tightened up by Apple and caused a shortage of iPhone screens in the market. This made the cost of iPhone screens increase dramatically and forced a lot of companies out of business. Factories in China responded by making copy screens which, initially, were not much cheaper than an refurbished screen but dropped in price quickly.
The Difference in Quality
Digitizer and Touch Problems
The most common issue that plagues copy screens is erratic touch, and this is down to the way copy screens are assembled differently. Apple’s own screens (as supplied with new phones) have the touch manufactured on the LCD, something that is retained when the LCD is refurbished. By contrast, most copies have the touch manufactured on the glass.
There are only a handful of Chinese factories producing the bare LCDs for copy screens. They then sell this on to other companies- of which there are thousands- who will assemble the digitizer (the touchscreen) and other parts to finish the screen. Due to this, although you are buying a specific factory’s LCD- for instance, Tianma- the quality varies dramatically depending on which digitizer is used and who assembled the screen.
You can easily end up with a screen containing an LCD from the top performing factory, but the touch/glass from the lowest performing.
There are many different qualities of digitizer available and you can only take your supplier’s word that they’re using good quality ones. However, even then, many suppliers and manufacturers based there will send decent-quality screens when you first buy from them, but over time may shift to using different- most likely cheaper- digitizers without informing you. (This is an example of so-called “quality fade”).
Although this affects all generations of iPhone, it’s a noticeably bigger problem with the 6S and 6S+ because Apple moved the touch ICs (the chips which control the touch) from the motherboard to the LCD. This means you’re not just getting a copy LCD but also copy touch ICs.
Lower-Quality LCD Displays
The picture quality of the LCD is the next issue with copy screens. Typical issues include:-
- Lower refresh rate
- Nowhere near as bright, or as vibrant
- Lower resolution, leading to a visibly “coarser” appearance”
It used to be said that a cheap LCD could make a £400 iPhone look like a £40 one. That still applies, but now that there are cheap copy screens for the iPhone X, XS and XS Max (which use LCD technology rather than the expensive OLEDs used in the they came with), even a £1500 iPhone can be made to look cheap and nasty!
Don’t you think your expensive iPhone deserves better?
Mismatched Parts Can Damage Performance- and the Phone Itself
Due to the quality of the parts used in copy screens they can cause the battery to drain quicker. The iPhone operating system is optimised to work with the Apple screen they phone came with, and the specification of the copy screen can be completely different.
We’ve also seen copy screens cause damage to the backlight circuit. We do a lot of board level repairs for most of the local mobile phone shops and they’re bringing us backlight repairs every day. We’ve repaired the circuit, fitted their copy screen to test the circuit and it has caused the circuit to break again.
Fingerprint Touch ID Issues
The next issue with copy screens is their ability to affect the touch ID (fingerprint reader). On the 6S, 6S+, 7 and 7+ the home button connects to the 3D touch which is part of the screen assembly. Often the home button flex on this aftermarket 3D touch doesn’t work correctly and causes the touch ID to stop working. This can be very frustrating if you use the fingerprint reader to unlock your phone or log into your bank.
Other Quality Issues
We’ve also seen a lot of copy screens lift away from the frame which holds them into the phone. Usually when this happens the flex cable gets ripped and the screen needs replaced. The phone doesn’t need to have been dropped for this to happen, it can happen through general wear and tear.
This brings us on to the biggest issue with copy screens. On an original or refurbished Apple screen when you drop it, often the glass breaks but you can continue to use the screen until you get it repaired. As the glass and digitizer are separate from the LCD on copy screens, when you drop the phone and break the glass the touch is lost- or worse, the LCD is broken because the glass is much thinner.
In addition, it’s common for the home button to sit lower than on an original screen.
Potential Problems
Lastly, although we don’t think this will happen because Apple has recently changed their repair policy to accept phones with 3rd party screens in them. There is the possibility Apple could stop the copy screen working with an iOS update. When you update your OS there are a number of security checks made during the update. It is not unusual for iTunes to stop mid-update with an error code leaving your phone in a non-working state.
