Paul Morris·

Apple Defends Move To Disable iPhone Battery Health Checks After 3rd-Party Repairs

Apple has defended a user-facing alert warning iPhone owners of its ability to identify a non-official battery as a genuine part.

The company has come in for some criticism for adding this user-facing alert into iOS but the company has stipulated that it’s a necessary measure designed to prolonged performance and device safety.

The existence of this alert was initially reported last week by iFixit. It was suggested that the alert was put in place by Apple to make a user aware that the operating system could not verify that the battery in the device was a genuine Apple part and that Health information pertaining to the battery would not be available via the sub-menus.

As you might expect, this report immediately generated negative feeling toward Apple as it looks initially that the company is trying to devalue the third-party repair market and is artificially limiting the available of Health data for no reason other than the owner hasn’t pumped money into Apple’s coffers for the replacement.

No-one really wins in that situation. Now, as part of an official statement on the topic, Apple has spoken out about the alert, once again citing the rhetoric that it’s all about the safety of the end consumer:

We take the safety of our customers very seriously and want to make sure any battery replacement is done properly. There are now over 1,800 Apple authorized service providers across the US, so our customers have even more convenient access to quality repairs. Last year, we introduced a new feature to notify customers if we were unable to verify that a new, genuine battery was installed by a certified technician following Apple repair processes.

This information is there to help protect our customers from damaged, poor quality, or used batteries that can lead to safety or performance issues. This notification does not impact the customer’s ability to use the phone after an unauthorized repair.

So, it appears from that statement that Apple is defending the decision – as you would expect – and will not be removing the user-facing alert anytime soon. If you replace the battery yourself or have an unofficial company do the replacement, then you can expect to receive the “Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery. Health information not available for this battery” message.

(Source: @reneritchie [Twitter])

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