On account of “sharply inflated” reminiscence prices, international smartphone costs are up an estimated 20 % for the reason that begin of the 12 months, which cellphone makers are passing on to shoppers. Accordingly, persons are holding on to their units for longer, or turning to refurbished telephones. Perhaps that ought to have been the case all alongside, however there’s nonetheless one main barrier to handset thriftiness: tech firms largely don’t supply low-cost battery replacements.
Let us take a look at how a lot Apple costs to switch your cellphone’s battery. Should you personal the latest Professional mannequin, you are taking a look at $129 (or $10 greater than older Professional fashions) for an out-of-warranty battery service direct from the corporate, whereas an older base mannequin, such because the 2020 iPhone 12, will set you again $89. Apple has priced iPhone Duo batteries at $229.
Apple’s present costs are consistent with its rivals. Samsung does not prominently checklist the price of out-of-warranty battery replacements on its web site, however most experiences on-line counsel you possibly can anticipate to pay between $99 and $129 for a brand new one in the event you go immediately via the corporate. Each Apple and Samsung incentivize individuals to enroll in their prolonged guarantee plans (AppleCare and Samsung Care+, respectively) with included battery replacements, however these are packages you want to enroll in shortly after shopping for your machine. iFixit is a superb DIY various, however most fashionable telephones aren’t designed to be simply user-repairable.
At first look, none of these costs are egregious, however traditionally Apple has charged far much less. In 2018, the corporate dramatically decreased the worth of out-of-warranty battery swaps as a part of the fallout from its iPhone throttling debacle. For a full 12 months, the corporate charged simply $29 within the US — $50 lower than its common value on the time. Earlier than 2018, it averaged about 1 to 2 million battery swaps per 12 months; in 2018, that quantity reportedly jumped to 11 million.
Should you do not forget that episode, you might also recall then-CEO Tim Prepare dinner lower the corporate’s income forecast in January 2019, saying some clients had been “making the most of considerably decreased pricing for iPhone battery replacements” as a substitute of upgrading. Apple’s income for the quarter fell 5 % year-over-year, pushed by a 15 % drop in iPhone income. However Prepare dinner attributed a lot of the shortfall to an financial slowdown in China, worsened by the commerce struggle between the US and China. Low-cost battery replacements had been, at finest, a minor issue.
Since 2018, cellphone costs have climbed, steadily at first after which sharply in current months. On the identical day Apple introduced the iPhone 18 Professional and iPhone Duo, it raised the worth of its older iPhones, together with the 17, by $100. In the beginning of this month, Samsung hiked the worth of most of its S26 telephones by $100. That got here after the telephones had already launched at the next value than their 2025 counterparts. Even midrange telephones have been affected. Take Samsung’s FE line of telephones. At $700, the latest mannequin, the S26 FE, prices extra at launch than the S25 FE and S24 FE did, and the brand new cellphone affords solely modest upgrades over their predecessors.
Extra broadly, American shoppers have seen their buying energy decline, whilst paychecks have grown. Client costs are up about 34 % since January 2018, which means a greenback now buys roughly 1 / 4 lower than it did then. On paper, employees are incomes extra. Common hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose from $26.72 to $29.91 by December 2020, an 11.9 % enhance, whereas the Client Worth Index rose 5.3 %, for an actual acquire of about 6.3 %. However the common masks what occurred to the standard employee. A current Pew Analysis Middle evaluation discovered that median weekly wages, adjusted for inflation, fell about 3.2 % between December 2020 and December 2025. Common wages have slipped too: actual hourly earnings are about 1 % beneath their December 2020 stage, and in August they had been down 0.3 % from a 12 months earlier as inflation outpaced pay.
One of the disappointing elements of the reminiscence crunch has been watching firms like Apple and Samsung reply. For essentially the most half, they’ve moved to guard their profitability by elevating costs above inflation. For instance, the $100 enhance on iPhone 17’s earlier $799 value represents a 12.5 % leap at a time when the price of different shopper items solely rose about 3.4 %. Whereas telephones have change into extra complicated, labor prices have elevated and a few elements have grown extra scarce, the one a part of a cellphone that has really cratered in value has been the lithium-ion cells that energy them.
Earlier than the reminiscence crunch, there have been already good sustainability arguments for firms to supply low-cost battery replacements. Nevertheless, if the predictions from SK Hynix and different reminiscence producers show true, and provide will not meet up with demand till 2030, Apple, Samsung and each machine producer ought to supply low-cost, out-of-warranty battery replacements whereas reminiscence shortages final.
