If you’re the kind of person who’s always dropping your phone, AppleCare Plus may have just become a much better deal. As MacRumors points out, the service now covers “unlimited repairs for accidental damage protection.” According to an archived version of the AppleCare Plus page from last month, you used to be limited to “two incidents of accidental damage protection every 12 months.”
Before you toss your phone in the air in celebration, though, do note that the service fees and deductibles are still around — a screen or back glass repair will cost $29, while “other accidental damage” will run you $99. Also, Apple’s fine print clearly notes that the damage has to be caused by “unexpected and unintentional events” to fall under AppleCare Plus.
The service itself is, perhaps a bit surprisingly, still the same price. (Though that was a recurring theme during Apple’s event on Wednesday). Getting it for a brand-new iPhone 14 Pro will cost $9.99 a month or $199 for two years, the same price it used to cost to cover an iPhone 13 Pro. However, covering the iPhone 14 Plus does cost more than covering the regular iPhone 14 or the iPhone 13: it’s $8.99 a month versus $7.99 a month — or an extra $30 if you buy the two-year plan.
The upgrade to the service isn’t just for the phones Apple announced on Wednesday. You can also get it for the iPhone 13 and iPhone 12, as well as for the rest of Apple’s lineup. Yes, this will also have you covered if you keep accidentally sending your AirPods through the wash, knocking your iPad off the counter, breaking your watch in a fall, or sitting on your MacBook Pro. (It also applies to the Apple TV and HomePod Mini, but I’m hard-pressed to imagine how you’d break a device that mostly just sits around the house.) I wasn’t able to find a single example of the price for coverage going up, though getting AppleCare Plus for the Apple Watch Ultra does cost a little more than it does for the Series 8.
The change is also retroactive. I purchased AppleCare Plus for my iPhone 12 in December 2020, and received an email from Apple on Friday telling me that my plan “now protects your covered device from unlimited incidents of accidental damage from handling.” The email continued, saying that the extra protection comes at no additional charge, and that I didn’t have to do anything to activate it.
One final important thing to note: if you get AppleCare Plus with theft and loss protection, replacements for stolen or misplaced iPhones are still limited to two per year. You’ll still get the unlimited repairs, but if you completely lose your iPhone more than twice a year, you’ll be out of luck — not that it sounds like you had much good fortune to begin with.
Update September 9th, 9:45PM ET: Updated to note that the changes to AppleCare Plus are retroactive.