The new iPhone 14 smartphones are on display at an Apple Store at The Grove in Los Angeles, Friday, Sept. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
On March 1, Apple will start charging an extra $20 for battery replacements on out-of-warranty iPhones, according to an update on the AppleCare+ webpage.
The new price will be $99 for the iPhone 14, and while these models are currently under warranty, they won't be after the one-year anniversary of their release in September 2023.
At that point, the higher price point could encourage customers with broken batteries to simply buy a new phone rather than shell out nearly $100 for a replacement part.
Apple has adjusted prices multiple times in recent years, as supply chain issues have raised production costs. Just last month, labor unrest at an iPhone supplier in China led to a production shortfall. The company struggled with similar disruptions throughout the pandemic.
There is also a history of consumers pushing back against Apple's practices around batteries. The company in 2020 was forced to pay $113 million in fines to settle consumer fraud lawsuits around a controversy known as "batterygate," in which iPhone users discovered that Apple installed new software that made devices with older batteries operate slower.
In addition, CEO Tim Cook in 2019 wrote in a letter to investors that "some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements" was partly behind a lower-than-expected iPhone sales.
Mastercards's Chief Technology Officer Ed McLaughlin shows Cheddar News Senior Reporter Michelle Castillo what shoppers can expect in shopping technology.
Almost a week after the Apple faithful collectively gasped at the first evidence that the iPhone’s red “end call” button might soon be vacating its center position to take up residence one column to the right, it looks like it might have been mostly a false alarm.
Meta is under scrutiny for the way it has moderated reproductive health content. Women's health advocates say the social media giant has allowed male health content to flow more freely than content geared toward women and gender diversity.
The vote by the state's Public Utilities Commission came despite reservations from city officials and residents spurred by erratic behavior that resulted in unmanned vehicles blocking traffic, including the path of emergency vehicles.
Practically overnight, ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots have become the go-to source for cheating in college. Now, educators are rethinking how they’ll teach courses this fall from Writing 101 to computer science.
