If you drop your iPhone and you don’t have it covered by AppleCare or another insurance plan, it’s almost always cheaper to have it repaired by a third-party than it is to have Apple do it. Unless you have an iPhone 5.

Apple’s tight control over iPhone 5 components means that they’re so hard to get hold of, repair costs remain high — even with third-party services. Some have even been unable to offer iPhone 5 repairs because they cannot obtain the parts.

Apple charges up to $229 to replace a broken iPhone 5 display, which is $29 more than the price of a new device with a two-year contract. It’s also more than a third of the iPhone 5′s $650 price tag without a contract. But using third-party repair services won’t save you much. In fact, in some cases, they’re more expensive.

According to a new report from MarketWatch, some charge as much as $250 for a new iPhone 5 display. Others just won’t repair Apple’s latest smartphone at all.

“Due to the high cost of replacement parts, we are not yet offering iPhone 5 repairs,” reads an online statement on ComputerOverhauls.com. “Currently, the Apple Store is the least expensive option for repairing damaged iPhone 5s.”

If the components were cheaper and easier to obtain, repairing an iPhone 5 display would be super cheap, because it’s an easy job. AJ Forsythe, the founder of iCracked, a repair service for iOS devices, says that it takes between five and ten minutes to replace and iPhone 5 screen, because there are only five screws that keep it in place.

In comparison, an iPhone 4 display takes a lot longer, because it’s held in place by 27 screws and a whole host of tiny components. And yet the iPhone 4 costs significantly less to repair at $79 to $99.

“Market forces determine the price,” Forsythe says. “Apple sells about 300,000 iPhones a day and, as the repair market grows, prices will get lower.”

But that can only happen if Apple loosens its control on iPhone 5 components.

“Apple controls everything from the manufacturing to the gear for the iPhone 5,” says Jeff Haynes, editor at deal site TechBargains.com. “Apple is trying to get people to sign up for Apple Care for $99 and to rely on their services at the Apple store. If you don’t, that cracked screen could cost you at least $230.”

If you have butter fingers and you frequently drop your smartphone, then, an iPhone 4 or 4S is likely to be a much better option than an iPhone 5. Unless you’re willing to spend $99 on AppleCare, in which case iPhone 5 repairs aren’t anywhere near as expensive.

Source: MarketWatch

This post was written by Killian Bell from Cult of Mac.
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Virgin Mobile has slashed 15% off both the 8GB iPhone 4 and the 16GB iPhone 4S on one of its prepaid Beyond Talk Unlimited data plans. The deal will get you a new iPhone — without a contract commitment — for less than $300.

That’s for the 8GB iPhone 4, of course, which is priced at $297.49 after the 15%. That’s not a bad price for a very capable smartphone — you would typically pay that for some midrange Android-powered devices.

If you’re happy to spend a little more for a newer model, then the 16GB iPhone 4S is $382.49 with the 15% discount.

Virgin isn’t the only provider offering some great iPhone deals at the moment. If you don’t mind signing a contract, then you can currently get an iPhone 5 for just $99 on Verizon (if you currently own an old feature-phone), and AT&T will give you one for free if you trade in your old iPhone 4S.

These deals come just months before Apple is expected to launch its next-generation iPhone 5S, which, according to recent rumors, could bring a better camera, a faster processor, and fingerprint scanning technology.

Source: Virgin Mobile

This post was written by Killian Bell from Cult of Mac.
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Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, has long been Apple’s biggest manufacturing partner, with around 60-70% of its revenue coming from the Cupertino company. But local rival Pegatron is hoping to change that.

By offering Apple more competitive prices and sacrificing its profit margins, Pegatron appears to be securing iPhone and iPad assembly orders that would have normally gone straight to Foxconn.

What’s more, it’s though that Pegatron will play a big part in manufacturing Apple’s rumored low-cost iPhone after the company announced it will increase its number of workers in China by up to 40% in the second half of 2013.

“Pegatron posts a long-term risk to Hon Hai because as it catches up on margins by supplying more components, it can provide more aggressive pricing,” Daiwa Capital analyst Birdy Lu told Reuters. “Hon Hai’s margin uptrend is not a guarantee.”

According to analyst averages, Foxconn will post a net profit of T$18.76 billion ($638.24 million) for the first quarter of this year, which is 26% higher than the net profit it saw during the same period last year. However, it’s only half of the record T$36.97 billion Foxconn saw in the previous quarter.

Some of that decline has been blamed on decreasing demand for the iPhone, which Foxconn has come to rely on following its tremendous success in recent years. The device has recently seen increasing competition — particularly from Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, which continue to be big sellers.

The fact that Apple hasn’t launched a new product since last fall also doesn’t help its manufacturing partners.

Pegatron is already an Apple partner, and it’s mainly tasked with assembling older devices, such as the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S. But the company is involved with iPad mini production.

Pegatron’s revenue grew 29% during the first quarter of this year — compared with the same period last year — while its net profit rocketed 81% to T$2.31 billion ($78.59 million). Foxconn, on the other hand, saw revenue slide 19.2%.

“Hon Hai would see a flat revenue this year at best… while Pegatron has great growth potentials because it is going from nothing to something,” HSBC analyst Jenny Lai told Reuters. “But Hon Hai’s margins would improve, benefitting from getting more component orders.

Foxconn is said to be betting on Apple’s rumored television. It recently purchased a 37.6% stake in Sharp for $840 million to secure large LCD panels, which it will be hoping will one day make their way into the “iTV” — if Apple ever makes one.

Source: Reuters

This post was written by Killian Bell from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Mother’s Day is in just a few days, and if your way of saying “I love you” is gadgetry, then T-Mobile thinks they have the perfect gift for you by heavily promoting its deal to get an iPhone for $0 down.

The deal has been running since April 12th, when the carrier rebranded itself as “The Uncarrier”. T-Mobile will ramp up the promotion by displaying prominent ads Mother’s Day iPhone 5 ads in the top 20 markets, along with 3 National ads in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times.

T-Mobile’s Trade-In promotion allows customers to purchase an iPhone 5 with $0 down, by trading in an older iPhone. New and existing customers can trade in an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S and get some cash back to help lower the cost of the iPhone 5 so that you have a $0 down payment. You also get your monthly payment decreased from 20 bucks down to 15.

To get your trade-in value for the iPhone 4 or 4S your device must power on, not have a cracked screen, and there can be no other liquid damage or physical damage. They’ll even take Verizon CDMA iPhones along with GSM iPhones.

If you’ve got an older iPhone that’s in decent shape and you’ve been thinking of switching carriers or upgrading, T-Mobile wouldn’t be a bad choice. You can get the offer at any company owned T-Mobile store until June 16th.

Source: TmoNews

This post was written by Buster Heine from Cult of Mac.
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Woah.

One enterprising soul over on the Apple boards at Reddit has taken a bunch of comparison photos from the Camera+ app website and put them together to show just how far the iPhone camera has come, with the same image taken with the original iPhone, the iPhone 3G and 3GS, the iPhone 4 and 4s, and then the iPhone 5.

The difference between the first and last photos is stunning, but there’s an initial ratio of improvement between two models of the iPhone that’s simply stunning.

Each picture in the compiled image shows guitar tuning pegs at two levels: a general snapshot of the whole tuning peg assembly, and a macro shot of one of the gears in a tuning peg up close.

The original iPhone turns in a decent enough snapshot, but the macro is horribly blurry. I remember thinking how much better the camera in my iPhone was than my current digital point and shoot, though. The iPhone 3G isn’t much better, but you can see a definite improvement in both the basic and hyper close up.

Where the huge improvement comes, however, is between the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3Gs, at least as far as image detail. Now I feel kind of silly not upgrading to the 3Gs when it came out (who needs a faster chip!?) After the 3Gs, the iPhone 4, 4s, and 5 improve in color balance and general better resolution, but nothing is as dramatic as that iPhone 3G to iPhone 3Gs image.

Kudos to redditor, camerack, for a fine job putting this all together.

Here’s a link to the full image over on imgur.

This post was written by Rob LeFebvre from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.