Apple‘s latest iPhone 15 comes with an intriguing battery feature, designed to address concerns about rapid battery degradation experienced in the iPhone 14. However, it appears that this feature is disabled when users replace the battery, raising questions about user freedom and repairability.

Ricky Panesar, the founder of iCorrect, a repair specialist, made this discovery while dissecting the newly released iPhone 15 Pro. When an iPhone 15 Pro’s battery is swapped with another genuine battery from the same model, the option to view the battery’s health measurements vanishes.

Panesar explained, “If you replace the battery, you will immediately lose functionality of battery health, and also the new cycle count feature. So there’s extra levels of pairing this year than there was last year with the battery… you’re punishing me [users] by not giving me the features.“

The new iOS 17 battery features provide detailed information about the battery’s history, including the number of full charge cycles, the manufacturing date, and the first use date. However, if a third-party battery is used without Apple’s authorization, these categories will simply display “unknown.” Additionally, a warning message will pop up, indicating that the device cannot verify whether the battery is a genuine Apple part, even if it is.

While the new battery health feature benefits device longevity and instills confidence in secondhand buyers, the loss of the cycle count and other metrics may be seen as undermining its pro-user credentials. This limitation makes battery replacements more challenging and expensive, as it restricts who can perform such repairs.

This practice of disabling battery metrics when components are not replaced in a specific manner is part of Apple’s serialization policy, also known as parts pairing. Apple has started adding integrated circuits with unique serial numbers to individual components. To replace an iPhone 15 battery or any other component, a user must obtain a genuine part from Apple with a corresponding unique serial number and synchronize it using Apple’s proprietary calibration tool. Serialization is evident throughout various Apple devices, from the camera to the display.

In his examination of the device, Panesar also discovered some other issues. When a genuine iPhone 15 camera module is replaced, the front-facing camera experiences “glitches.” The LiDAR sensor loses core functionality in certain apps when replaced, a problem that Panesar notes has been present since the iPhone 13. Additionally, swapping the display leads to the loss of its True Tone function.

There is, however, a silver lining. Concerns within the repair community that the introduction of USB-C could lead to the charging port being paired to the logic board, potentially restricting iPhone 15 users to using only Apple chargers or cables, seem unfounded. Panesar clarifies that the level of serialization in the iPhone 15 is not significantly different from the iPhone 14, debunking such fears.