The iPhone 14 was lauded for its repairability but it's just as bad as other iPhones

When Apple released the iPhone 14 last year, the repair specialists at iFixit gave it a solid repairability score of seven out of 10, saying that it was recommended. That was a big deal for iPhones which normally fare pretty badly due to the way repairing them can often cost a lot of money or require removing multiple parts to get to relatively common ones that could need to be replaced. But iFixit now says that it has made a change to its score.

That new score is a rather poor four out of 10, with iFixit saying that the iPhone 14 is no longer recommended. Why? It turns out that the iPhone 14's repairability isn't quite as solid as it was once thought to be.

In a new blog post, iFixit says that when it gave the iPhone 14 such a good score last year people were surprised. Those within the repair industry have since reached out to say that actually fixing these devices isn't as easy as first thought, with official Apple parts often required and their costs being prohibitively high. What's more, some repair shops say that they are on the verge of collapse due to Apple's repair practices. Ships often use third-party parts or harvest them from other devices - something that Apple no longer makes possible.

Some parts that can't be easily replaced by used ones include cameras, batteries, and displays - all things that are most likely to be broken or fail during use. Those parts need to be paired with the iPhone they're being installed into, something that requires specialist software that most don't have access to. And that's bad for customers who just need their display replaced.

For that reason, iFixit's new score for the iPhone 14 seems more accurate. Time will tell how the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro fare, but we aren't expecting good news.