One of the mandatory steps before handing out your iPhone for repair is to turn off the Find My and Activation locks. This allows service center executives to flash the iPhone during the repair. Now, Apple has added a new ‘Repair State’ for all the devices running iOS 17.5 beta. Once activated, the Activation Lock and Find My Remains are active. Furthermore, the device remains fully functional in the repair state.
One of the Apple executives told me that Apple establishes ownership by asking customers to deactivate Activation Lock and Find My. In other words, a person cannot simply turn in and hand over a stolen phone for repair. Find My is one of the strongest protection preventing people from using iPhone with other Apple ID.
On the flip side, the iPhone remains untraceable during the course of repair. If it gets lost or misplaced during transit, there is no way to track the same. The Activation Lock is activated alongside Find My during transit to a service center in the “Ready for Repair” state. Find My shows a small stethoscope icon against the device in Repair State. It is worth noting that the feature is only available for iPhones.
The tracking in Repair State works only when the device is online and added to Find My. Apple is still working on the feature and could add new functionalities in the upcoming builds. Furthermore, they might extend the feature to other devices such as iPad and Apple Watch. iPhone users often complained how they had to wait for an hour to disable Find My. The delay is due to Stolen Device Protection, and it can be avoided by directly activating the Repair State.