Changes

When Apple released the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, they made quite a few changes to the internal design of the home button. This doesn’t affect users under normal circumstances, but there are a few things you need to know if it gets damaged or needs repair.

To cut a long story short, it appears that the changes have been made solely to make repair of iPhones by independent companies (including ourselves) more difficult. (Click here if you want to skip the details). These changes include:-

  • The home button is now attached on the front of the screen instead of the back. This increases the risk of it getting ripped off the board during repair.
  • The ribbon cable has been stuck to the rear of the screen. Again, this increases the likelihood of it getting ripped during repair, so increased care has to be taken.
  • The chip (IC) on the home button flex no longer has underfill glue on it, so if the cable is bent too much, the IC will lift away from the flex and the home button will stop working (even if the flex itself isn’t torn).
  • If the iPhone notices the home button is either damaged or has been unofficially replaced- even with a genuine one from another iPhone- it stops working completely and assistive touch is turned on. The same problem on older models only caused the Touch ID facility to stop working- all other uses of the home button were fine.

An Attempt to Eliminate Independent Repair Options?

Along with many in the independent Apple repair industry, we believe that Apple has made these changes mainly- or solely- to shut out third-party repair businesses and to make Apple and a small number of official partners your only option.

In particular, disabling Touch ID when the home button was replaced on older models was understandable as this is a direct security issue. Whereas completely disabling the home button (including all non-security-related uses) under the same circumstances has no such clear justification.

This doesn’t affect Apple themselves, since they have access to a proprietary machine known as “Horizon”. This makes repair and refurbishment of iPhones easier, allowing them to employ less experienced technicians, but it also allows them to replace the home button. As we discussed previously, Horizon is- despite news stories suggesting otherwise- still restricted to Apple and a very small number of corporate “big box store” partners.

It might be argued that this will at least force independent technicians to take even more care and upgrade their skills(!) However, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t Apple’s reason for doing so.

Your Repair Options

Regrettably, because of these changes even a highly competent technician will eventually run into problems with non-repairable home buttons sooner or later. In such cases, there’s no easy fix, because Apple still doesn’t provide access to the required “Horizon” machine for independent businesses.

You may be considering having Apple- or an authorised dealer- repair your phone, but- aside from the fact their charges are generally far higher than ours, you may find that they won’t repair it even if you want them to. Generally, almost anything more than simple damage to your phone will lead to them calling it “unrepairable”. When this happens, your only choice is usually an out-of-warranty exchange, typically for a refurbished model. This is expensive- typically a significant percentage of the cost of a new phone.

This practice is viewed with scepticism by many, as it’s believed those “unrepairable” exchange phones can then be refurbished- or at least used for parts- at very little cost, then sold on to other customers at a very healthy profit.

On top of this, we’ve also seen the insides of many exchange phones- on several occasions, there have been signs of remarkably shoddy workmanship, far below what most people would consider reasonable from an officially-refurbished device.

(Note also that the “authorised dealers” we mentioned above generally only carry out a limited set of repairs themselves. For more complex- or in some cases all- repairs, they just send them off to Apple on your behalf, making them little more than middlemen).

 

 

What We’re Doing to Get Around The Issue

Previously, it was possible to replace the home button if the customer didn’t mind the loss of Touch ID. This is no longer an option with the iPhone 7 series, so- since retaining and repairing the existing button is now far more important- we’ve invested in a new tool to help us with this. (This can be seen in the images above, at the left, along with other pictures of home buttons in various states of repair).

Much as we’d like this to be a magic solution to the problem, unfortunately it’s not. We’re good- and we generally have a high success rate- but we hope it can be understood that even we can’t make a 100% guarantee that a faulty iPhone 7 home button can be repaired.

However, we should make clear that while we wrote this article because we believe it’s important to be honest and upfront with our customers about any potential issues, the vast majority of iPhone 7 repairs we carry out are problem-free and successful.