The "SERVICE" issue in XR XS & XS Max Batteries | is APPLE taking part lock down TOO FAR? By TheArtofRepair

Hey my name's Justin, and this is the art, repair and guess what Apple you got some explaining to do. Because I know about you, I figured it out. So what am I talking about I'm talking about the no service issue inside Apple battery health, where it says service after you have change the battery for another battery on the XR, XS and XS max, even if you use another original apple battery. So with that being said, we're going to take a field trip today out into the markets here in Shenzhen, because I've got one XR I'm, definitely not buying a second one, just to make a video, so we're actually just going to go get another original battery, and we're going to do some experimenting, and then I'm going to reveal to you exactly why this is the way it is, and then I'm going to reveal exactly why this won't change and the possible implications for write to repair as a whole. So, let's get on out there. Okay, so first stop on our little field.

Trip today is we need to go, get an OEM original, iPhone XR battery to do a comparison. Testament I am in probably, if not the biggest used market here in Shenzhen and populous I have to be super careful in here, because they are always kicking me out. When I have the camera. You can pretty much get anything here, any type of use stuff for all the iPhones. You can get the huge phones anything, so we're going to go up in here.

Real quick, I, really, don't think I can film this, so I will catch you guys back outside, and we'll take it to step.2, alright, so perfect news, my friends inside the market help me out. We've got ourselves an original iPhone XR battery, and you know I was gonna, say: let's go back to the lab and let's deal with all this there, but they were kind enough to change the serial numbers over from my original battery so that they matched on this one. So we don't even have to actually go back to the lab. We can hang out here for a little, and we can go visit some other friends of mine, and we can do the comparison at their shop. Just because.

I'll, be honest, I, really, really don't like the way that low my lab looks now for the YouTube set. You guys know how I did it before, and this one doesn't really feel like it's up to the task, so we're gonna head on over here to the long Shang market, and we're going to visit some friends of mine at the tool store, and we'll do the comparison test there. Okay, so we are in the long fang market. We're actually going to take a couple steps down here. Real, quick and I went ahead and I.

Let my buddies know that I was coming over here, so they should have everything ready for me. I just figured that you guys would want something better to look at something a little more entertaining than my boring little lab here, hey! What's going on guys, oh hi, all right, so I'm gonna! Let you hold on to that for a minute, and we're going to go ahead and get started here. So the deal here is I, went to the other market and I got an original battery, and I'm going to put it into an iPhone XR here, and we're going to check the Apple battery health and the big problem right now is that when we put this in here- and you guys can see that's an original battery, and we can tear it down later in the lab, if you guys want to see some more, no, it's fine. Sometimes the screen turns off no worries, guys we're gonna, let this boot up for just a second, and then we're gonna check in the battery settings, and we're going to see what it says, because this is an original battery. Okay, so the phone is on now, I, don't know if you guys can see in the video you guys should, but it says service right here now when we click that you're going to be able to read this.

Maybe but I'll read it to you. It says unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery Apple Health information not available to this battery. So that's fascinating, because this is a genuine Apple battery that doesn't really make any sense when it comes to like tearing things up, usually there's a reason for it. You know we saw with the touch ID that it was for security reasons, and you know you didn't want somebody stealing, your financial information with your fingerprint. So you know I can halfway understand why they lock that down, but I'm really having a lot of trouble coming up with a reason for them to lock down the battery, and I've, been doing a lot of research over the last couple of months and when we get back to the lab, I'm going to explain exactly who? What when, where how and why this thing is locked down, but something I want to show you real, quick, I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to turn this off, and I'm going to put another battery in it, and we're going to check that out real quick, actually we're just going to go ahead and pull this one.

Okay, so we've got this other battery boot nap here now this is the original battery. I know this is the boring for guys. Okay, so we had the secondhand original right here. Funnier now check this out maximum capacity 100% this battery works just fine. This is also a good battery, but one works and one doesn't now here's the hilarious thing you guys saw.

We did some little like move out of the way sneakiness there's a good reason: why that's not the original battery, so we're gonna head back to the lab I'm gonna. Take all this stuff, and we're going to show you guys exactly what's going on here, and you know kind of my opinion on the situation, but I do want to say thank you to my friends, real quick, so I want to take the camera here. If you guys have your WeChat, do you guys can do you got WeChat on your phone? Let's see the code, the code, you want your we check code, yep yeah, so if you guys need anything, anything fun feel free to hit these guys up. They're, always helping me out in the market. Put your code, man, oh yeah! So if you guys need anything hit, my boys up, there's their codes right there, and I will catch.

You guys back in the lab to explain this tomfoolery. So I'll see you guys, just in a few minutes we're actually on day two now I really didn't get to finish everything the first day, I've just been very busy, but with that being said, we are back here now, and we've got both batteries, and we're going to get to the bottom of this. As you remember, from the last clip, we had an original iPhone XR battery. Here you can kind of see it's already been taken out of the device. It's got that crinkle wrap to it that they usually do, and you know if you want to call me out and say, but Justin you're, probably not using an original battery you're trying to light it was I kind of, dare you to go and run the experiment yourself, because you're going to be sorely mistaken when you find out that I was absolutely correct.

So again, this was an original Apple on XR battery, and it did not work, and it showed a service error, and it said that this is possibly not a genuine Apple battery. That is interesting. Isn't if it's only even more interesting because the mysterious no label battery worked fine, hmm? How about those apples? So let's talk about that a little! First and foremost, both of these batteries do have the original serial numbers in them. So that's not really an issue. We do know that with things like vibrators or screens, sometimes functions are disabled because the original serial number has not been transferred over that's been, it's been pretty normal for a while.

Now ever since you know actually that's been, that's been normal for a while. Now that's been normal for a while. Now, let's just go ahead and say that, but what has not been normal is after switching them things, still not working properly. Hmm, and I am pretty sure, I figured out. Why so with that being said, we need to know a little more about the anatomy of an iPhone battery.

So on the bottom here I've got an iPhone 6s battery. You can see that there is some exposed circuitry here. Okay, this is considered the protection board. It houses the gas gauge and houses all the little small SD components that make everything work properly. I, don't know how well you can see that, but here are all kinds of fun little stuff down there, and you know if you play with them for a little, you can clearly see when they're original and when they're not original.

Okay. Let me give you an example. So an aftermarket one you're going to notice the three little dots right here for the solder joints, because it's usually just a two layer, PCB versus the original ones that have very nice, flexible, no solder, joint type situation. Here, that's the easiest way to tell, but why are we talking about that? What makes that so important? Of course, it's got circuitry Justin blah blah blah blah blah. What makes it so important is the fact that if we look in to the original chip used on the original battery, we're going to find something very, very interesting.

So, let's jump on over here, and we're going to see some information from Texas Instruments on the B Q, twenty-seven, five, four six now, if you're, really fluent with the whole Apple batter, you're gonna, say Justin stop right there. That is not the original TI chip. Their original TI chip is the Sen TI chip, bla, BLA, BLA, BLA, bla, yes, you're, absolutely right, but unfortunately the s in nomenclature, twenty-seven five, four six chips is completely proprietary and locked down by Apple. So we have the BY twenty-seven five, four six, which, for all intents and purposes, is an identical chip, but either the firmware or lithography something you know something about. The chip is just slightly, slightly different, just because it's Apple, and they wanted it different.

That way. We pretty much have an identical chip. Okay, so since this is the only information available, this is what we have to go on. So with that being said, we can see here, there are all kinds of fun: information, blah blah blah everything that nobody really cares about, but guess what there is something we care about. Secure memory now I say secure memory, and you think touch ID.

Well, guess what I'm going to read something to you, and you're, not going to like what it says on eight point, three point: five point: three and I'll: try and link this PDF below and you guys can read it for yourself. The BY 27 5 4, 6, ?, g1, secure memory, authentication key is stored in the secure memory of the BY 27 5 4 6 ? g1 device. That's the gas gauge! That's the original chip! Ok, if it's a car memory key has been established. Only this key can be used for authentication challenges. The programmable data flash key is not available.

The selected key can only be established or programmed by special arrangements with TI using TI secured b2b protocol. The secure memory key can never be changed or read from the BY 27 546. That's g1 fuel gauge. Now that is Super-duper important okay, because what that means is that for a long time now, we've all been pretty stupid and Apple pretty much installed. It's like it's like you have this door to your room.

Somebody put it in there. It was a really nice door and everything was cool, and they put a lock on there, and you know when you got the door you're like hey. Did this door come with a key, and they're right? Now don't worry about it? Man don't worry about the key and then one day after nobody was paying attention, somebody locked the door, that's exactly what's going on here, Apple's being super sneaky, they literally put this in so long ago, so, so long ago this was even in the 27th five four five chip, okay, this is this has been around for a minute and nobody said anything. The only reason I even came across this was because I was talking to a buddy of mine, Ben Duffy, and we were sitting there, and I was I, was talking to him about it, and he's like wait. A minute huh, and you know, he's pulling up the information, and he sends it over to me, and I'm looking at it.

I'm like oh, my gosh, we're literally sitting on the touch ID situation, and we were both like well I. Guess that's that, because at the moment, I was trying to figure out how to get Apple Health to work, and we were both just sitting there talking about it, and then we came to this, and here we are now in possibly or so it might seem. Guess who has a working battery I do now. How did I do it? That's the important question. The next little I swear to you.

If you are not a really, really good technician like, and I know, that's really hard to gauge, but I promise you. If you attempt what I'm about to tell you, and you don't really have any clue what you're doing. Not only are you an idiot, but you're gonna literally catch a battery on fire in your store, so calm down with that? Okay, don't do what I'm about to tell you? Okay, the only way to make this work is to very carefully cut off the original protection board and put it on a new cell okay. So if you have a cell with the electrodes just sitting out there, you can spot weld it back on there, and it's going to work. Okay, now I'm telling you again, if you have no idea what you're doing do not offer this service.

Okay, we don't know if you're going to catch a battery on fire right now, because I'm sure there's somebody out there, who's gonna, think Justin I don't mean to go there and punch weld that on there I don't I, don't need to spot weld that on there I'm going to solder on there with my soldering iron, and you would be wrong. That is a bad idea. Don't do it and I know I'm being you know extra about this, but don't do it! Okay! Now, if you are well versed in making like power walls or something like that, yes, you can make this happen, but you definitely need a little micro spot. Welder and you're gonna need to be very, very careful, and you can only currently use an original capacity. So, okay, the reason I say that is there is still some programming mumbo-jumbo.

That needs to be done if you want to work on an extended cell okay. So if you know about that, then I guess to be honest, this video, probably didn't really mean anything to you anyway, because you probably would have known what I just told you anyway. So that means nobody should be trying to do this on an extended cell right now, it's not really going to work out right. It's probably not going to perform the way you want it to, but if you have a standard capacity cell with the electrodes just sitting out there, and you want to transfer the original protection board over, you can make the Apple Health work, and that is the only way. But this really kind of leads into a huge right to repair issue.

Okay, I cannot and I have been wracking. My brain I cannot, for the life of me figure out why Apple is locking down the battery so hard, and what this means to me and my opinion of the situation is that they're being super sneaky with this and to be honest, the next batteries that come out of the next phone that come out could really lock some stuff down. I mean we could literally be facing a complete lockout here real soon, and the thing is this door has been there forever. They just installed the door and acted like they weren't going to lock the door, but they did so here we are so anyway. I've gone on quiet enough about this, and I will be doing quite a bit more videos in terms of like batteries, protection boards, fuel gauges.

The difference is all that kind of fun stuff. So if you want to learn more about batteries, I'm definitely going to be doing more videos about it. Now that you know, as you guys probably know, some of my battery work is kind of done now, that's kind of why I've been quiet for a while now I've been you know, just working in the darkness over here in China, trying to make stuff awesome, but now that that's over I can talk about a lot of things and I hope to teach you guys a ton more about batteries than you already know, and please, if you are part of the right to repair movement, say something about this. This one is super sneaky. This one's underhanded- this is not there's no reason for the battery to be locked down like this.

No reason at all: okay, I'm, sorry- but you know, after switching over the cell and using it as a test cell for a while, it works just fine. It does proper reporting, it's just a different cell. That's it this directly impacts, not only shops, but customers. It takes away choice. You know when a customer goes in and asked for a battery replacement, and you give them a battery replacement, and they start to complain, because it doesn't have all the functions that had before and in fact it may say, service or maintenance, or something detrimental that may make the shop look bad when they may be a pillar to their community, doing nothing but taking care of everybody.

You know what that just makes them look bad. That makes them look like they have no idea what they're doing, and the problem is they couldn't do anything about this. If they wanted to I can't do anything about this. You can't do anything about this. The only thing that's going to do anything about this.

It's making them stop anyway. I'm done. Please share this. Video I never really asked that, but please share the video, and you know I like subscribe, I feel we were even saying it doing. The notification thing I feel really weird on that this time, because this video is more or less just like I'm kind of upset.

You know I've been kind of holding this one in for a while. Now and okay.

Source : TheArtofRepair