Apple Tags iPhones With Warning Message Following Third-Party Battery Replacements
Apple has notoriously been against the practice of consumers servicing gadgets on their own, whether it is through their own hands or by an unauthorized third party. Further evidence of this can be seen in a message that some iPhone users are seeing in regards to their batteries. There have been reports of Apple implementing a mechanism to detect if a user has replaced their iPhone battery on their own, and if so, the handset will display a warning message.
Source: iFixIt
Fortunately, it appears as though the battery icon in the upper-right corner still works normally, showing users how much battery life they have remaining. However, if an affected user navigates to Settings > Battery, there is an annoying message in the Battery Health section that seemingly indicates there is a problem.
Source: iFixit
"Unable to verify if this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery. Health information not available for this battery," the message states.
There could be a legitimate reason for doing this. After all, lithium ion battery packs are potentially dangerous, as we were reminded with Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 handset, which was prone to overheating and catching fire. The culprit ended up being the battery.
Here's the thing, though. This message shows up even when swapping out the battery for a genuine Apple replacement.
"It’s not a bug; it’s a feature Apple wants. Unless an Apple Genius or an Apple Authorized Service Provider authenticates a battery to the phone, that phone will never show its battery health and always report a vague, ominous problem," iFixit says.
The teardown gurus said they were able to replicate the message on an iPhone XS running both iOS 12 and the IOS 13 beta. According to Justin from YouTube channel TheArtofRepair, the person who first brought this to attention, this mechanism affects the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max handsets, but not any others.
This is a crummy restriction. It doesn't even stop there—Apple also prevents third-party battery health apps from functioning properly in these cases, so there is no obvious end-around for users to check the status of their batteries. There is an end-around of sorts, though. If you are affected by this and have access to a Mac, you can plug your phone into it and install a Mac app like coconutBattery. It's not exactly convenient, but it does work.
