Since 2009 · Graham Kennedy
From the iPhone 3GS to iPhone 17 Pro — 16 Years of Repair Experience
It started on a kitchen table. Sixteen years later, it's a proper workshop in Banks. The repairs are more complex, the tools have moved on, but the service is still what it always was: people drive over, wait, and drive away with a working phone.
2009 — kitchen table repairs on the iPhone 3GS
When the iPhone 3GS came out, people were dropping them, cracking screens, and finding out that Apple wouldn't touch them unless they bought AppleCare. I started replacing screens at home — friends, friends of friends, people driving over and waiting in their cars on the drive while I worked.
That's where the wait-in-car thing started, by the way. It wasn't a service design decision. It was just what customers did because it was a kitchen-table repair and there was nowhere else to wait.
The van years
As volume grew, I moved to a mobile service — driving around Liverpool and the North West, fixing phones at customers' offices, homes, and meet-ups. It was a good way to learn every iPhone generation as they came out, and to earn a lot of trust fast. Word spread, especially among tradespeople and parents of teenagers.
The workshop
The barn workshop in Banks came later, and that's where we are now — 178 Gravel Lane, five minutes from Tarleton, ten from Southport centre, fifteen from Formby. It's the same location as our sister business Games Console Repair Southport. Same workshop, same hands, different specialisms.
The wait-in-car model carried over from the kitchen table days. Most iPhone screen repairs are done in 15 to 20 minutes. People drive over, sit in their car, we do the repair, they drive home with a fixed phone. It works because the workshop's set up for it — a proper bench, the right tools, and every iPhone part you'd expect us to have in stock.
What a "Level 2 Component Technician" actually means
The industry splits repair work into rough levels. Level 1 is swapping modules — you replace the whole thing. Level 2 is component-level — screens, batteries, charging ports, back glass, housing, Face ID modules. Level 3 is board-level micro-soldering — tracing faults, replacing individual chips, rebuilding damaged pads.
I'm a Level 2 technician. That covers probably 95% of what comes through the door, and what I do, I do properly. For the rest — the edge cases where an iPhone 12 or newer has a two-layer sandwich board fault and needs hours of bench time with micro-soldering kit — I refer out to Level 3 specialists. It's an economic decision as much as a skills one: the time investment for infrequent jobs isn't justified when I can point people to someone who does that work full-time.
The exception is iPads, where I do handle board-level charging port work — different construction, different economics, and it's where a lot of repair shops won't go.
Historical capability — Tristar chips and iPhone 8
For a while I was doing Tristar chip replacements on iPhone 8-era handsets — the power management chip that, when it fails, stops the phone charging. It's board-level work and I still have the kit. I moved away from it as a standard service because the iPhone 8 pool shrank and the iPhone 12+ boards made it less practical, but if you've got a specific older iPhone problem that smells like Tristar, get in touch and we can talk.
Today's customer — an example
Earlier today a customer drove over from Formby with an iPhone 17 Pro that had a cracked screen. He waited in his car for 30 minutes while I fitted a genuine Apple screen. When he checked Settings, iOS confirmed "This is a genuine Apple part" with the green checkmark. He drove home with a phone that looks and works exactly like it did when it left the factory.
That's the job, basically. That's been the job since 2009.
Why this approach works for you
You don't have to take the phone back the next day. You don't have to leave it and hope. You don't have to choose between "cheap mall kiosk with a mystery screen" and "Apple Store that can't fit you in for two weeks." You drive over, we fix it, you drive home.
And unlike most repair shops, I'll tell you exactly what screen you're getting before I fit it. LCD copy, premium OLED, or genuine Apple — all three are legitimate choices at different price points, and you get to pick which one is worth it for your device and your budget.