If you ever needed to repair your mobile device screen, you might have come across words like “OEM”, “genuine” and “aftermarket”, what do they all mean? and why should you care about what type of screen you are getting?
“OEM” stands for “Original Equipment Manufacturer”, Which means it is from the same parts manufacturer phone was initially using. Naturally, you would want to replace your screen with an OEM screen. However if you are an Apple user, it may be harder for you to find a real OEM screen. Apple does not sell parts to 3rd party repair shops, so you can only find OEM screens at an Apple service center, which is relatively expensive. When a 3rd party repair shop say they have OEM screens, they could mean refurbished OEM screens or “OEM quality” screens. Refurbished OEM screen are once cracked original screens that has working LCD and digitizer with a new OEM quality outer glass. “OEM quality” screens are aftermarket screens.
“Genuine” screens are directly from the original parts manufacturer, they are exactly the same screens being installed on new phones. So “genuine” is very similar with “OEM”, except in recent years the term “OEM” have been widely misused, some business argue that similar screens from the same manufacturer should qualify as “OEM”, no matter if it is the exactly same product.
“Aftermarket” screens, sometimes called a copy screen, are screens made by different manufacturers. Their qualities are not consistent, sometimes they are decent, sometimes they break within the month, but most often, they work, just with shorter life span and some problems. Aftermarket screens could have a color difference, they tend to have a slight blue hue. An aftermarket screen may work perfectly at the moment when you replace it, then start to have display issue after a system update. An aftermarket screen may also have a slightly different dimension, they might be a bit thicker than the original screens.
With all these terms floating around confusing people, trust between business and consumers are more important than ever, that’s why at Lenwell, we are up front about what our customers are getting: when your LCD is working, we only replace the glass panel, when your LCD is broken we will replace it with refurbished OEM screens. All of our screens comes with an one month warranty.
