"Touch Disease"
These are what the two IC Touch chips look like. Image: iFixit
Jones says she's been inundated with phones that have touch disease. Image: Jessa Jones/Instagram
Some repair people who perform the fix told me they believe that Apple just recycles phones that have broken Touch IC chips and doesn't bother to repair them. Others have said they've found leftover solder flux on logic boards that have touch disease, suggesting that Apple has refurbished them."They have no incentive to repair anything or to offer us any help. Why invest in this complicated repair when they can throw it in the garbage and give you a brand new one?" Thomas Heffernan of Burlington, Vermont's Wires Computing, who repairs Touch IC issues, told me. "Either way, they're selling a new phone to somebody, whether it's your insurance company or it's you.""People are coming in with a cracked screen and they're replacing it, but the phones still don't work, and independent shops are just absorbing the costs of that."
Repair experts I spoke with say that they are increasingly seeing touch disease on Apple-designated replacement phones. They say they often see refurbished phones with bent or warped logic boards that have clearly been recycled from other damaged phones and are thus more susceptible to touch disease. Apple offers a much reduced 90-day warranty on refurbished products, meaning there's really no guarantee that the $329 refurbished replacement phone will last much longer than three months. In a Facebook post, Ben Duffy of Australia's Geelong MicroSoldering, which repairs Touch IC issues, wrote he had "personally encountered replacement devices issued by Apple … that not only have the same issue, but have been recycled from very clearly bent devices (the board inside the device is bent, however the device is not)."The Apple support thread on this issue is 76 pages long and is full of people who have found themselves with Touch IC issues more than once."The uncool thing Apple is doing is knowingly giving someone a refurbished phone for $329, knowing that phone has a board in it that came from another phone," Jones said."As time goes on more and more devices that I see are Apple refurbished"
The jury-rigged heat shields that iPad Rehab puts on their touch disease repairs. The top image shows the shield off of the logic board, and the second shows the shield when installed. Images: Mark Shaffer
The Toll on Independent Repair

Signs that touch disease is happening to Apple's refurbished phones: The top image has a telltale blue mark. The 'N' on the model number (from the same phone, powered up), signifies that it is a replacement device. Images: Mark Shaffer


