I’ve had an iPhone 6 since early 2015, and with only a few hiccups, it’s been great. In 2018 it still does 95% of the stuff I need it to do, and seems to keep up with most of the modern apps I need to use. Unfortunately the battery was on its last legs last year, right about the time I wasn’t able to do anything about it. I was getting about a quarter of a day of light use, which was alarming.

I finally made an appointment at the Apple Store at the beginning of April to have the battery replaced, and in the meantime was using a Mophie battery pack to extend its life. Unfortunately on the Saturday before my appointment, the phone fell onto the concrete sidewalk out back and shattered the screen, so my service call now included two replacements instead of one. At the Apple Store I waited for a Genius to help me, and he told me they would have to send it out overnight for a fix instead of being able to handle it in-store. Grudgingly I obliged, and the next day I picked up my shiny phone–only to find the battery life still sucked. Unable to get back in before my Colombia trip, I stuck the Mophie case back on it and made do until I got back.

A brief note: the Mophie case is a great idea with one fatal flaw. In execution it works brilliantly: it goes on like a standard case but adds a switch on the back to send a charge to the phone when you need it. You charge it with a mini-USB connector and it charges the phone first and the battery pack second. The problem is that it’s not shock resistant, and with the added weight of another battery pack, any drop above about 3 feet will result in a broken phone.

Last Saturday I made another appointment at the Apple Store and went about my weekend. At the Dunkin Donuts on Sunday evening, as I jumped out of the Scout, my phone slipped out of my jacket pocket to the pavement…and smashed the screen again. Disgusted, I walked into the Apple Store today and explained the issue; the Genius looked up my account and admitted that they’d replaced the screen in April but not the battery. I handed over my phone and let them take it for a couple of hours to do the repair, and we went on with our day.

Upon return, the Genius showed me my phone, which had failed their validation test (the screen looked like a distorted screencap of Qbert) and they handed me a brand new phone, charging me only for the $30 battery replacement. I brought it home, restored it from a March backup, and updated the apps on board. All is well again, and it looks like that iPhone 8 will have to wait another couple of years.