Third-party repairs will no longer disable some iPhone features

Apple is infamous for locking down its hardware and software, making it challenging for third parties to fully integrate their products into its devices. For the longest time, iPhone users opting for third-party screen repairs would lose the True Tone feature offered by iOS. Similarly, inserting a non-Apple battery would deactivate the relevant metrics in the Settings app. Fortunately, the tech overlord will loosen up and drop these restrictions later this year, potentially through iOS 18.

As highlighted by The Verge, Apple silently revealed that it will no longer disable certain iOS features following third-party repairs later this year. In a lengthy paper breaking down iPhone longevity, the firm stated that True Tone and battery health metrics will continue to work after users install non-Apple displays and batteries.

The company warned, however, that while it won’t block True Tone from working, the feature may not perform reliably or display accurate colors. That’s because Apple’s calibration processes were designed for its own hardware, and alternative components may not behave in a similar manner.

Comparably, Apple mentioned that secondhand batteries with manipulated metrics are sometimes sold as new. In this case, your iPhone’s battery metrics could mark the maximum capacity as 100% when, in reality, it’s not the case. So, while the company won’t block these metrics in a few months, it’ll alert users that it can’t verify them, and they may not reflect the battery’s actual state.

“Currently, battery health metrics such as maximum capacity and cycle count are not presented to consumers whose devices have third-party batteries. This is because the accuracy of these metrics cannot be verified by Apple. In fact, an Apple internal analysis has found that some third-party batteries sold as new are actually secondhand, with battery health metrics manipulated to appear as new.”

While Apple doesn’t state when exactly these changes will roll out, we can assume it’ll be in September. After all, that’s when Apple typically introduces significant changes to its systems. Whether this shift will apply to all models or only the latest iPhones remains unclear.