Get an unofficial iPhone 11 screen repair and Apple won’t let you forget it

A smashed phone screen can be expensive to fix, and one way to potentially lower costs is by using unofficial parts, but if you do that with the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro or iPhone 11 Pro Max, Apple will make it clear that it knows.

If the replacement screen is ‘nongenuine’, then according to a new Apple support document, your phone will display a message saying “unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple display.”

This will appear on your lock screen for the first four days after the replacement and in the Settings app for fifteen days. It can also permanently be found under Settings > General > About.

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It brings to mind the recent controversy Apple found itself in after locking users with nongenuine batteries out of accessing the Battery Health feature. However, this time around it seems you’ll only have to put up with an alert for a while – you won’t actually be locked off from any features.

An array of issues

Apple claims that using nongenuine parts for screen repairs could lead to a number of issues, including multi-touch, brightness and color issues. Most significantly it states that it can also lead to compatibility and performance issues which might arise after a software update – meaning even if the screen works fine initially, future iOS software might not work properly with it.

That’s why the company is so keen to push users towards genuine parts and repairs. How likely a nongenuine screen really is to have issues we can’t say, but we are inclined to say that it’s probably not worth the risk, even if official repairs might cost more.

Apple is at least making it easier to get official repairs though, as it recently launched a new repair program that made it easier for third-party businesses to access genuine Apple parts. So if you’re not going straight to Apple for repairs, it’s worth just checking that the place you use has genuine parts – along with an Apple-certified technician.