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An internal 128GB iPhone storage upgrade? Only at the Shenzhen market… [Video]

Shenzhen-market-flash-upgrade

You can get just about anything at the Shenzhen market in China, and that apparently includes an on-the-spot internal storage upgrade for your iPhone (in addition to a long list of counterfeit Apple products). It’s a service that, save for perhaps the most hardcore DIYers, is unheard of stateside.

Apple charges a $100 premium each time you bump up to a higher capacity iPhone, but at the Shenzhen market this third-party upgrade costs only around $60 to go from a 16GB model to 128GB. The 128GB iPhone model would normally be a $200 premium over the 16GB model retail price, and that’s not accounting for the fact you’d also have to purchase a new device. You can also get an upgrade to 32GB for $20 or 64GB for $35. 

The process takes around 30 minutes and sees a Shenzhen market employee taking apart the iPhone and replacing the device’s internal flash storage with a new 128GB chip from Toshiba. And all of the device’s storage is transferred to the new chip, so you don’t lose any data in the process and can continue using the device with everything intact from before the upgrade.

The upgrade apparently works for iPhone 6, iPad Air and older devices with around 50 upgrades per day done at the Shenzhen market alone, according to the full video below courtesy of local company BeSound.

And not surprisingly, getting this type of upgrade from a third-party will completely void your warranty with Apple. But — Shenzhen aside— we aren’t holding our breath for seeing a similar service become popular stateside, as Apple will likely not be too happy about an unauthorized third-party cracking open iPhones, voiding warranties, and undercutting its lucrative margins on flash storage in the various iPhone models.

For the rest of us there are great external storage add-ons for iPhone that can be a solid solution for those running out of space. Lightning to USB thumb drives— like the one Hyper recently showed off at CES— is one way of getting some extra storage while on the go. And there are versions that accept microSD cards if that’s more your style.

Check out the full video of the upgrade being performed below:

[youtube=https://youtu.be/2bGb5AOwp44]

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Comments

  1. afuentes18 - 8 years ago

    lol nice bug in the background 2:09

  2. zachoblog - 8 years ago

    I wish the U.S. had a Shenzhen market! That place is awesome

  3. applegetridofsimandjack - 8 years ago

    ‘It’s 100$ more if you get a 16GB phone compared to a 16GB? 00:14’

    So what’s the difference? The speed of the flash? That’s why it’s 100$ more expensive?

  4. 89p13 - 8 years ago

    PARANOIA ALERT!

    The transfer computer now has ALL your data stored on the HDD / SSD.

    No Thank You!

    • applegetridofsimandjack - 8 years ago

      Maybe you can restore your phone before going to the market and request to just put a fresh install of iOS 8 / iOS 9 on the phone. When you get home you just restore from backup.

    • michabailey - 8 years ago

      No, that’s not correct. iPhones’ entire flash chip is encrypted, using a key burned into the device itself. Trying to read a flash module extracted from an iPhone will return what is, for all intents and purposes, random data. Even swapping the chips between 2 iPhones should result in both devices being unable to read them.

      • William D - 8 years ago

        I’d love to think that key was truly unbreakable. I bet the NSA can unlock it.

  5. applegetridofsimandjack - 8 years ago

    I was going to say 60$ is pretty expensive, despite the fact it’s 140$ cheaper than what Apple charges, add to that you don’t get your 16GB chip back.
    But when I saw all the work that is required to upgrade the flash storage, I was thinking the opposite… I would give the dude 80$ instead of 60$.

  6. Ryan Simmons - 8 years ago

    Wow. I never thought that was possible.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the equipment he’s using is from an actual Foxconn factory!

  7. I question if this is true. He came in with a black iPhone and in the comparison shot, they showed a white phone as previous and black phone as current. A lot of it looked legit, but that is a pretty big inconsistency.

  8. standardpull - 8 years ago

    My bet is that the shops that do this work for $60 offer no warranty once the device leaves the shop – and perhaps even no warranty if the device doesn’t survive the operation. And so I don’t think Apple will be particularly concerned about this.

    In contrast, customers of state-side shops expect a warranty of some kind. Customers in the US would expect that the upgrader to stand behind the reliability of the upgrade for at least a couple of years.

  9. el3v3nty - 8 years ago

    wait… so at the end of the video there… how come both phones have serial number? that’s fucked up~~ (dude is clearly working on the black colored iPhone in the beginning).

    9to5 just lost some credibility points. no thanks!

    • michaelbeiler - 8 years ago

      The technician took a screenshot on the reporter’s black iPhone before the procedure and sent it to the white iPhone. This was done in order to simultaneously display a before and after shot of the phone’s settings information, showing that the serial number, IMEI, etc. are identical while the storage capacity had increased.

      • BeSound (@besound666) - 8 years ago

        yes sir, that’s basically it. I forgot to add that I actually took the ‘before’ screenshot myself

      • michaelbeiler - 8 years ago

        Ah, my apologies, sir, I shouldn’t have assumed that it was the technician who took the screenshot. Thanks for the correction and great job with the story!

      • el3v3nty - 8 years ago

        gotcha! i’d think displaying before and after on the same phone would be easier. that’s just me.

    • BeSound (@besound666) - 8 years ago

      Actually I took the screenshot myself :D

  10. Avieshek (@avieshek) - 8 years ago

    So, let’s upgrade to a Samsung UFS 2.0 flash storage with 256GB capacity

  11. BeSound (@besound666) - 8 years ago

    oops, I should add: I took the screenshot myself before he got on with the upgrade

    • nathanllarsen - 8 years ago

      @BeSound666 Can you confirm or deny whether the worker who replaced the memory was properly grounded and met ESD safety standards? Also, was the software he used the same software they use at Foxconn when they flash the memory with the system image? Reverse-engineered maybe?

  12. Mark Granger - 8 years ago

    Never say never. It won’t be long before there are small highly dextrous and extremely precise robots on the market for work like this. It should be able to open an iPhone, replace any component and do it perfectly every time. The thing about iPhones is that every one of them is identical internally so training a robot to replace a component is one of the easier tasks to automate. When this happens, little automated repair shops will spring up all over the place. Just tell the robot what you want it to do and insert your phone and a credit card.

  13. HiroiSekai - 8 years ago

    $40 less to completely screw over a warranty? No thanks. People should have learned by now that running vanilla Apple ensures you’ll actually have someone who can help you when you’re in need.

    The trade up program is giving back pretty much double what it used to, take your old phone to the Apple Store and get your savings that way.

    • Math fail. $140 less and it includes the part and labour. Not sure how much your time is worth…

      • HiroiSekai - 8 years ago

        Typo, sorry. Still not worth it. It’s not a matter of time, it’s the fact that these guys don’t offer a counter-warranty despite breaking into your phone. If anything at all happens to that phone, you can’t even get proper technical support from a Genius Bar. Modern iPhones are a lot more intelligent in discovering foreign parts as well, such as third party displays causing darkening of your screen over time. This is one of the many signs Geniuses use to instantly tell it’s been messed about with.

        The only way I see it having worth is if indeed, your warranty is completely out and you’re just left with the phone for the time being. However, that kind of goes against the point of this upgrade program. Are you willing to sit at 16 GB for a year for that warranty to run out, then upgrade the storage?

    • mabmodron - 7 years ago

      Apple only gives one year of warranty, that’s pretty pathetic in my book, after owning the phone for one year what, you’re supposed to get a new one from Apple? I’m not an idiot sorry

  14. Josh Lambert - 8 years ago

    Time to take a trip to Shenzhen

  15. Scott (@ScooterComputer) - 8 years ago

    But but but MARGINS! High ASP! The ONLY WAY APPLE CAN SURVIVE!

    (Yeah…this comment is aimed at all the morons who argue that Apple can’t afford to up the base storage from 16GB to 32GB with current pricing, because that would be tantamount to “chasing margins” and “a race to the bottom”. Like there are only two paths to go, idiots.)

  16. Steve Lawrence - 8 years ago

    So your comment about alternative solutions for storage upgrades (lightning to USB thumb drives) aren’t a solution for anything but extra space to transfer your photos / videos to. You cannot use that solution to install extra apps etc.

  17. desksaver - 8 years ago

    Few people realize that this is the reality that China is full of engineers, because their education policy focus on pumping out people that have productive skills. I used to work in a high tech company on carrier grade optical gear. When we wanted to outsource our optical amplifier to a 3th party locally, there wasn’t any company that can make what we wanted. When we turned to China to find one, we quickly found out that you can order one as easy as ordering a pizza. Just call them up, give them the spec, and they return with a quote within a week. It’s unbelievable.

    • standardpull - 8 years ago

      Of course, this is a technician’s work. The skills required to perform this kind of work has nothing to do with engineering, or a degree of any kind. A few hours of training and suitable tools are all that are required to have the skills to remove and replace a surface mount chip carrier.

  18. When I think that here in Paris two Apple Stores haven’t been able to remove a depleted battery from my old AppleCare covered 5s, one of them bending it and the other refusing to proceed because it was dangerous… These guys in Shenzen really know their job !

    • William D - 8 years ago

      J’ai eu de nombreuse mauvaises experiences dans les Apple Stores en France en 2015. Ils m’ont complement detruits mon iMac apres plusieurs ‘reparations’.. Carte meme, memoire, ecrant.. bref.. Apres plus de 3 mois de chaos et des centaines de km pour des aller retours chez eux en train /cars et voiture de location pour recuperer les ‘reparations’ etc, les personnelles d’Apple en Ireland m’ont envoyer une nouvelle iMac a la place. Heureusement! Mais j’ai aucune confiance aux techniciens dans les boutique maintenant. Avant je penser qu’ils etaient super, mais..decidement…

  19. Gerardo Quintanar - 8 years ago

    I wonder if they could also max out to lets say 32 GB of RAM in the current Macbooks (Pro and Air) that have non-swappable memory, I wanted to do exactly this (replacing chips directly) to my 2010 MBA, but of course I’m not as skilled as these guys.

  20. Zombi Teks - 8 years ago

    we do the same thing at Zombie Techs

  21. Elmore Leonard - 8 years ago

    Here is the deal, if you are already out of warranty, then no prob. The worst that can happen is that you buy a new iPhone; the best: you have a 128 iPhone for the cost of a 16! The previous entry is correct, the Genius at the Apple Store will know within 5 minutes if there are unauthorized parts in your iPhone. I have a friend who works at an Apple Store and they place the phone in some sort of device that checks all the hardware.

  22. Komrad - 8 years ago

    I just checked plane, hotel, rental car, and ticket prices to China plus the cost in vacation time for the trip… I can buy 6 new 128gb iPhones 6s plus’sfor that price

  23. accidentally restored my iphone 6. lost very important data. ios updated from 8.4 to 9.3.5. anyway to get data back out of NAND memory? A lot are saying no but some are saying there is a slight chance to recover the data. From the way this video looks! I hope it would be possible! I wish

  24. Navin Lalani - 8 years ago

    @besound666 would it possible to ship my ipad from the US to get this upgrade?

  25. fundthatpart - 7 years ago

    I can technically do this. I have the NAND programmer.

  26. Indemic (@Indemic_Gamer) - 7 years ago

    It even makes your screen change from black to white?!?!? Obviously just a cloned iOS that had the serial number manipulated.

  27. Felipe Henrique - 7 years ago

    Apple can’t do sh*t if a Shenzhen market appears in the U.S.
    After you buy the phone it belogs to you, you can do whatever you want with it, including replacing the flash memory unity for another third party one, the obvious problem with doing this upgrade is voiding the warranty, but Apple only gives 1 measly year of warranty so after a year of ownership you have nothing to worry since you don’t have warranty anyway. And funnily mine ends in this december, I’m totally going to research more into this because I’m 100% interested in doing this.
    I have an iPod 5.5th generation, the best product Apple ever released, from a time when Apple actually made great products to facilitate people’s lives, hundreds of Gigs of memory for anything you need to store? Apple nowadays would never do that, so that they discontinued the ipod classic, they want you to pay monthly fees for cloud storage. And I just upgraded the memory to 700Gb, you can upgrade up to 1 Tb of memory, and I got a bigger battery with the fat case mod.
    And only 16 Gb in the entry level phone, when all other manufacturers offer 32? Apple does that so you get frustrated and unhappy with the meager 16Gb of memory and buy a new phone with more. Apple doesn’t really make their products, virtually every single part of the iPhone is made by other companies in Asia, Samsung, Sony… they just market it and sell for thousands to their fanatic Apple cult, just look how Apple charges 200 dollars more for 128Gb when the chinese guy does it for 60

  28. Henry Taylor Jr. - 7 years ago

    where do i send my phone for storage upgrade and what is the cost for upgrade on i phone 6 plus

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.