Will Apple Repair Your iPhone? Leaked Warranty Guide Reveals Company's Guidelines

Visiting an Apple service center when your device needs repair is usually a shaky experience, as many a times the company declines to repair devices and it is hard to determine when it will take such a call.

Now a leaked 22-page “Visual/mechanical inspection guide” sourced by Business Insider has revealed the company’s considerations while deciding whether or not to repair devices.

The guide covers iPhone 6, 6S and 7 and also the ‘plus’ series models for the same.

So what does the guide reveal?

According to the leaked document, damages occurring from “accident, disassembly, unauthorized service and unauthorized modifications,” are not eligible for repair. It means if you drop your phone, take it apart or get it repaired at a third-party service center, Apple will not repair it as it will void the warranty.

“We have one just like that for all of the products. Used more for the physical inspection and how to determine cost for damage. That's basically half the training for iPhone techs," one Apple retail technician told Business Insider.

Apple instructs its technicians and authorized service centers to inspect iPhones for repair and determine whether the devices would be eligible for in-warranty repair which wouldn’t cost much to the consumer or out of warranty repair, which would cost.

The technicians can also determine whether Apple would be able to repair the device or will have to replace it. For example, screen damage generally costs $129-149 for an out-of-warranty repair and if you have Apple Care, it will cost just $29.

The guide also reveals that in case a device has been water damaged, an Apple technician must take apart the phone, examine the damage and then only deny the warranty.

Older versions of the guide are also available online and on examining those, changes in the company’s repair policy are reflected.

For example, a single hairline crack on an iPhone is covered in the warranty in the present guide, which wasn’t the case with earlier guides; in case you see dead pixels on your display, you can actually go to an Apple repair centre and ask it to be fixed.

This is a result of iPhone 6S’s “touch disease” because of which many devices lost touch sensitivity and which rendered the phones unusable.

This kind of warranty coverage is available for other Apple products such as Apple Watch Series 1, iPad 4 and iPad Air 2.

Also, in case your iPhone is damaged because of a case or cover, something which the company calls ‘enclosure wear’, don’t expect the company to repair it.

The guide isn’t the last word on repairing iPhones though, and sometimes Apple technicians take their own calls on repairing iPhones, so having one as a friend won’t hurt if you need to get your device repaired.

Apple is yet to comment on the matter.