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IPhone 6: error 53 fingerprint sensor incident

From Consumer Rights Wiki
Revision as of 23:00, 16 July 2025 by 141.35.40.74 (talk) (temporal accuracy)

When switching from iOS major version 8 to 9, iPhone 6 users, who chose to replace their fingerprint sensor with another one before the update, had their phones bricked[1].

Background

Apple is known for it's anti-consumer practices regarding repairability, including a more recent "Unknown Part"[2] notification in the "Settings" App, that is inserted on newer devices, when detecting a battery that was installed, not using means only available to their own official repair facilities. The incident discussed here ranks into just another incident, which was interpreted as deliberate practice when it originally happened

The fingerprint sensor incident

Upon updating from iOS 8 to 9, with a not-originally-built-in fingerprint sensor installed, the iPhone 6 would be "permanently disabled"[1], even if it worked perfectly fine before the update and with said fingerprint sensor. After a "fix" of the issue, offered by Apple, the phone's fingerprint sensor was disabled.

Apple's response

At 2:19 p.m. ET on 2/18/2016, Apple has responded to a request from TechCrunch with this statement: "This was designed to be a factory test and was not intended to affect customers,"[3]. The issue of the phone being unusable was fixed later[4], however the fingerprint sensor was disabled.

Lawsuit

None are known of to the original author of this article.

Consumer response

Consumers were very annoyed[5] and had to spend their costly time and money to have a phone repaired at an additional cost for the fingerprint sensor to function again, which they did not foresee to pay. Essentially, after being robbed of an advertised functionality, they had to pay the perpetrator to get that functionality back.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Miles, Brignall (2016-02-05). "'Error 53' fury mounts as Apple software update threatens to kill your iPhone 6". ‘Error 53’ fury mounts as Apple software update threatens to kill your iPhone 6 | Mobile phones | The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2016-02-05. Retrieved 2025-07-16.
  2. ↑ https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254475434?sortBy=rank
  3. ↑ https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/18/apple-apologizes-and-updates-ios-to-restore-iphones-disabled-by-error-53/
  4. ↑ Wiens, Kyle (2016-02-18). "Confirmed: Apple's Error 53 Fix Works". Confirmed: Apple’s Error 53 Fix Works - iFixit. Archived from the original on 2020-04-20. Retrieved 2025-07-16.
  5. ↑ https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7463710?sortBy=rank


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