Fix a cracked iPad screen

Broken your iPad’s screen? Whether it’s cracked or smashed Lewis Painter reveals your options

Smashing the screen on your iPad (or iPhone or iPod, for that matter) has got to be one of the biggest First World problems. You drop your beloved phone or tablet, reach down and pick it up – of course it landed screen down – and inspect the damage, only to have your worst fears confirmed. The screen is shattered.

Well, chin up. It’s bad, but it’s not disastrous. You have options. Here we round up the five best ways of repairing a damaged iPhone or iPad display, and explain the pros and cons of each.

Get Apple to repair it

Apple will come to the rescue and repair your cracked screen, but it won’t do this for free, even

if you’re still in the warranty period as accidental damage isn’t covered by the standard warranty.

If you went the extra mile and paid for AppleCare+, then the cost won’t be too high. AppleCare+ includes repairs for up to two cases of accidental damage. But there’s still an excess fee. While it used to cost users £55 for iPhone SE, 5c, 5s, 6 iPhone 6 Plus, £79 for 6s and 6s Plus and £39 for all models of iPad, Apple has since updated its warranty. Now, users need to pay £25 to fix their iPhone display no matter what model it is, with all other repairs costing a flat rate of £79.

Assuming you haven’t got AppleCare+, the cost of your screen repair will be higher. It’s best to get in touch with Apple and see what they’d charge in your case, but the company quotes the following prices for screen repairs on iPads not covered by AppleCare:

iPad mini or mini 2: £156.44 iPad 1, 2 or Air 1: £196.44 iPad 3, 4, mini 3, mini 4 or Air 2: £236.44 9.7in iPad Pro: £316.44 12.9in iPad Pro: £506.44

The non-AppleCare costs for iPhone screen repairs, meanwhile, are:

iPhone 7 Plus, 6s Plus, 6 Plus: £146.44 iPhone 7, 6s, SE, 6, 5s, 5c, 5: £126.44

Go to a high-street retailer

The high street. The one-stop shop for all your needs - including iPhone or iPad screen repairs.

The high street is where most of us will go when we break our phone or tablet screen because, generally speaking, people like the personal touch, which is something you tend not to get when using online repair services. Another point for the ‘high street versus online’ argument is that if anything goes wrong with a high-street repair then you know where to go to complain (unlike with most online services).

High-street chain Timpsons (timpson.co.uk) has noticed the growing demand for a local repair service and have added screen repair services at a number of stores – last year they told us that 412 of their 1,409 stores offer this service. To avoid disappointment we strongly recommend either calling your local branch to see if they can help, or using the firm’s store locator with the filter set to ‘Phone and Tablet Repairs’.

This should be a far cheaper option than Apple. We’ve been quoted a pretty reasonable £49.99 for older iPhone models, rising to around £80- to £90 for newer phones; the service starts at £39.99. Speak to Timpsons and get a quote for your device. The firm says it can repair screens on all models of iPad and iPhone.

Screen repairs on iPhones should be carried out the same day, but Timpsons warns that tablet repairs take longer: seven days. In both cases there may be additional delays if the staff have to order in a part, but we imagine that Apple devices are sufficiently mainstream that this would be unusual.

Timpsons isn’t the only high street chain to offer iPhone screen repairs though, as Geek Squad (found within certain Carphone Warehouse stores)

also offer Apple certified screen repairs, although only for the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6s. The company offers standard screen replacements for £89, but that’s not all – as a fully approved iPhone repair provider, Geek Squad can carry out any warranty repairs just like the Apple Store, completely free of charge. The company only uses genuine Apple parts, meaning your iPhone warranty won’t become void by using the service, and the company provides all customers with a 90-day guarantee following any repairs.

The catch? It’s only available in a handful of stores at this time: Birmingham, Bristol, Central London, Glasgow, Leeds, Southampton and Stratford. Those interested should head straight into store, no appointment required.

Down sides of high-street screen repairs

High-street retailers are an obvious option, and Timpsons is a well-known brand, but what of the

lesser known high-street shops promising to fix your iPhone? Using a high-street retailer could be a risky process because when you leave the store, you don’t know who’s handling your iPhone or what they’re doing to it.

People like to keep their private lives private – and what is at the centre of most people’s lives? Smartphones. From email to texts to photos, our digital world revolves primarily around smartphones. When you take your iPhone to a highstreet retailer, you’re handing over your central hub, so to speak, and there’s a small risk that your data could be browsed and even remotely stored. A lack of security regulation in smaller, independent shops could be risky, especially for business users.

Replacement screen parts are fairly easy to come across and can be bought fairly cheaply online. The issue with this is that cheap screens and parts seem to have a tendency to break more often than official Apple parts. What does that result in? More trips to the shop to get it repaired and more money spent. If a high-street retailer charges as little as £40 to replace an iPhone 6s screen, say, you should start questioning how that’s possible.

Send your device to an online repair service

The next option to consider is an online repair service, such as MendMyi (mendmyi.com). Such businesses are becoming ever more popular, with people becoming too busy to take a damaged iPad or iPhone to a shop themselves. MendMyi have become a household name for UK iDevice repairs and customisation over the past few

years – even customising Stephen Fry’s iPhone with their Colour Lab service.

With MendMyi being a primarily online service, you have to rely on the postal service. People are often wary about sending their phone off in the post to a company that they’ve found online. What if it breaks? MendMyi offer an additional ‘Express Pickup’ service that insures your iPhone in transit. MendMyi is very active on social media and you can chat to the guys on Twitter before sending your phone off, or alternatively drop it to one of their branches in Haverhill, Cambridge or Sudbury.

MendMyi only uses official Apple parts in the repair so you can be sure that your screen replacement is genuine. The firm also runs a diagnostics test on your phone while it’s being repaired to make sure there’s nothing else wrong with it – a great extra that you won’t find with many phone repair services.

So, what’s the down side? When it comes to pricing, MendMyi aren’t the cheapest, while an iPhone 5s screen repair costs a reasonable £79, an iPhone 6 screen repair jumps up to £127 and the iPhone 6s Plus is £359. Ouch. iPad pricing is generally in the £100 to £150 range, but the most recent models are absent – the iPad Air 2 and mini 3 are the most up-to-date iPads on offer.

While it may be more expensive than competitors, MendMyi aims to have your phone diagnosed and repaired within one-to-three days and it is couriered back to you shortly afterwards.

Another online repair and customisation service to think about is iSmash (ismash.com), based in London. Similarly to MendMyi, you can select the repairs you need on their website along with your choice of postage, whether it be them sending you a ‘Post in Pack’ for £5.99 or you directly organising a courier. Their pricing is also similar, with an

iPhone 6 screen repair costing a little less than MendMyi at £99. Interestingly, iSmash only charge £149 for an iPhone 6s Plus screen repair – less than half the price of the same service at MendMyi. Like MendMyi, at time of writing iSmash hadn’t updated its site to include the iPhone SE.

One advantage of iSmash, if you’re based in the capital, is that the firm has walk-in shops all around London. That means that you can book an appointment, take your Apple device into store and get it repaired on the same day.

Get your device repaired at your home

Some people can’t – and won’t – wait for days for their iPhone screen to be fixed. What alternatives are there? Depending on your location, there are companies that can come to you and repair your phone or tablet. One such company is Repairly (repairly.co.uk) – they will come to you anywhere in central London and hope to expand soon. They’ll take your iPhone and repair it within two to three hours and bring it right back to you when it’s done.

Repairly fixed our iPhone 6s within two hours, and we’ve been using it for months since with absolutely no problems. Communication and emails were great fun and the friendly Repairly representative arrived on a push scooter with a padded box ready to whisk our iPhone away. It was fast and brilliantly hastle-free if a little more expensive than going to some high-street options.

An alternative is Phone Dudes. Amazingly, Phone Dudes claim that once the engineer arrives, your iPhone will be ready to use again within just 10 minutes. That means that you don’t have to be

away from your iPhone for too long and it destroys any issues with phone security – the repair is done in front of you. The downside is that the company can’t yet fix Apple’s newest phones and it doesn’t offer fixes for iPads or laptops.

DIY repairs

If your screen damage is more cosmetic than anything, there are other DIY options available. With the internet being the internet, there are a variety of home remedies for scratches (not cracks) on your screen – including, weirdly enough, toothpaste. Other options include car scratch removal creams, such as the 3M Scratch and Swirl remover that apparently works wonders on a scratched screen. Make sure that all ports are sealed before attempting to use creams, as you don’t want to add liquid damage to your list of problems.

There’s one more option, but it’s not for the faint-hearted. iFixit (tinyurl.com/pfLgfzc) provides tutorials on how to repair any part of any iPad (and similar articles for the iPhone). They give clear and easy-to-follow steps with high-resolution images highlighting exactly what you need to do. They’re also a one-stop shop – once you’ve found the tutorial you need, you can buy all the parts directly from them, making it far less likely that you’ll buy the wrong parts.

Do pay attention to the difficulty rating of each tutorial, however. You need to be fairly confident with your technical ability, as any unauthorised repairs of your iPhone will void the warranty and Apple won’t touch it.