My iPhone 7 needs a new battery, is it worth paying Apple £49 and having no phone for a week or will a third party battery from a phone repair/accessory shop be OK?

How hard is it to DIY?

Well worth the £49. iFixit mentions that the waterproof seals need replacing when you open it up. They don’t sell them and the battery is €25 before postage (Li ion cells require expensive courier delivery). Otherwise it looks a bit easier than an SE or 5S to get into.

and having no phone for a week

it only an hour to get mine done if you can get to a branch rather than post it away

I’ll try and get it done in branch then. My local has no appointments for the next 7 days though and using anywhere else will seriously cut into my riding time…

The only time I have ever booked in for a battery swap with Apple (Cambridge store) they ended up swapping the complete phone on the spot rather than replace the battery.

Just my 2 cents.

That would be nice, but my phone is well outside the warranty period.

That doesn’t seem to matter.

Wife had her phone swapped rather than changing battery.

And she bought a second hand phone each for her parents and got new batteries put in before giving them to them. One was swapped, one got a new battery.

So a 66% chance they’ll just swap it over.

There’s another reason to have Apple replace the battery. If you ever recycle your old phones you get more money for an Apple serviced phone then if you had the battery replaced through unauthorised means.