since the launch of iOS 12 repair Tech's
have been noticing a disturbing trend
any time of batteries replaced on an
iPhone tennis tennis max or a 10 hour
battery health Diagnostics would report
that the installed battery was unable to
be verified as an authentic Apple
battery and the battery health info
would be disabled this happened even
when the installed battery was known to
be an authentic Apple part so if you
thought that Apple had stopped attacking
independent repair think again they now
appear to be aggressively locking down
even the most basic battery replacements
by pairing your battery to your phone we
spoke to Justin Ashford from the YouTube
channel the art of repair who was able
to dig in and find out what was causing
this and give us his own thoughts on
what it could mean we started to notice
this issue on the China side before
anybody in any other market really said
anything about it in fact I don't think
that was even anything brought up at all
with this prior to me saying anything
about it because let's just be real all
those phones that are affected the XR 10
are or whatever you want to call it all
the way up through the 10s max we're
still under AppleCare warranty so
battery issues really aren't a thing
right now unless you specifically need
it for a specific reason I personally
did testing on iOS 12 iOS 12 one twelve
point four and 13 beta and every single
one of these showed the issue now I did
not notice there's some older generation
iPhones with the newer iOS version but I
mean to be perfectly honest all it would
take is one little update and all of the
older iPhones would retroactively lis
have this enable after doing some
digging into the electronics of the
iPhone batteries Justin found the cause
of this issue a battery fuel gauge that
has a secure memory key which Apple has
activated essentially locking the
battery to the phone let's go ahead and
try and break this chip down a little
bit because there's a lot of confusion
about what the job of this chip actually
is the common misconception is that this
is some super crazy terminator kill
switch that is locking down and killing
batteries and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah
that is not the case it's a fuel gauge
when you look at a box when you first
buy something you see bullet points on
there that describe the features one of
the most ridiculous small features is
that it's got a lock on it that's just
one of the features of it it's not the
main function the main function is that
it is the intermediary fuel gauge
between the phone itself and the actual
battery what exactly is this fuel gauge
doing it is taking averages of charging
and discharging from the battery to
ascertain what the true capacity is
which is kind of the feature we're
getting locked out right now okay also
you can tell the cycle count how many
times has been charged how many times
has been discharged and just to get a
little more technical this chip is where
all of the actual like charging
parameters are held so when they're
programmed in the factory you can set
them accordingly so that they charge
properly and safely that's where your
over current protection comes from
that's where your over voltage
protection comes from that's where a lot
of the the safety and an iPhone battery
comes from is this little protection
circuit board down at the bottom it's
got this special little TI chip the big
issue here I think specifically if we're
just talking specifically about the
service issue is that it's gonna erode
the trust from the customer because when
a customer comes in and they get their
battery swapped and they're not able to
look at that super Apple touted feature
where they can check and see when it's
time to replace their battery they may
not someone's trust you I actually think
more importantly we need to address the
question about whether the battery works
at all yes it absolutely works you can
plug it in and the phone will work the
problem really starts to get into the
whole serialization and lock down of the
parts as a whole and how it's getting
progressively worse over
time both the touch ID and face ID use
secure enclaves on the actual
motherboard and secure information on
the peripheral itself to bind themselves
as one so you cannot use one without the
other without being programmed directly
by Apple hmm what else does that that we
know guess what is the battery we're
starting to see that on the battery what
is to stop them from implementing secure
Enclave keys into all of this stuff on
the next iPhone it's going to come out
in a month or two you know as
independent repair you know we're going
to keep pushing and we're gonna keep
fighting for our right to repair and
we're gonna keep looking for solutions
bypasses and workarounds to make things
work for our clients and you know that's
a fact but it's also a fact it's an
undeniable fact that Apple is trying to
lock us out and they really don't care
about us we'll continue to monitor this
issue and hopefully find a way to get
around this lock until then thanks to
Justin for joining us from China be sure
to check out the art of repair we've got
a link to his channel in the description
below
happy fixing