Why I can't find an OLED screen replacement

Thank you Jerry!

If there is availability on ebay (or AliExpress), any idea why non of the repair shops (I checked 4) said that they can't do OLED?

All of them said if you want OLED you need to go to Apple.

Additionally, do you have any experience with the OLED screens from AliExpress? Are they good?

@kosmonaft I don't know why your repair shops are saying that unless they are being absolutely fixated on using genuine Apple screens for some reason. The thing is, they don't get that much of a price discount from Apple, so their repair prices are close to and sometimes higher than that of Apple's cost.

But no, it is absolutely not true that you cannot get OLED screens anywhere but Apple. As I mentioned, I've gotten several for iPhone X's that are OLED and not made by Apple.

I have used OLED screens from AliExpress. Now keep in mind these are my grandchildren's phones and not mine so I don't use them every day and know the nuances inside and out, but on a visual examination when I installed the screens I couldn't tell the difference between the original and the replacement. There's going to be a lot of variation in quality on AliExpress so look for ones with good ratings and lots of sales, but for a cheap screen AliExpress is absolutely the way to go.

@kosmonaft One possible reason the repair shops don't want to do iPhone OLED screens is that as of the iPhone 11, Apple has started pairing the screen with the logic board. Functionality is not affected, but you will get a warning message when you log in telling you that they are unable to determine if the screen is a genuine Apple screen - whether or not it actually is a genuine Apple screen. After a couple of weeks that pop up message will finally go away, but an alert to that effect will remain in your settings permanently.

The only way to get around that warning is to transfer the touch module chip from the original display to the replacement; a process that requires expert level microsoldering skills that even most repair shops won't attempt. Outside of that, paying Apple to replace the screen is the only other option; Apple's self repair program only starts at the iPhone 12 so owners of earlier phones are out of luck.

@kosmonaft Rereading your initial post, I see they're willing to do LCD replacements which *definitely* aren't genuine Apple, so I'm at a loss to explain why they can't or won't do aftermarket OLED; there's no shortage and they're a LOT cheaper, which of course is the whole point to aftermarket parts in the first place.