At the end of January, Apple made a major change to one of its long-standing company policies. Apple Stores will now do on-site repairs of any damages to the screens of an iPhone 5C, the newest version of their smartphone. The repair service will cost customers a reported $149.

This might sound expensive, but it is actually significantly cheaper than the repair services Apple offers for its other products. Before this new policy took effect on Monday, Apple would ship its customers' phones to an off-site repair center to fix whatever was wrong, including cracked screens. This costs $229 per repair. The new policy does not extend to the iPhone 5S or the older model 4S, but instead only applies to the 5C, which has been marketed as Apple's low-cost smartphone option since its release in September.

Industry insiders believe this move from Apple is a response to the rising popularity of people utilizing third parties for any repair services they require, which generally cost less than an official Apple repair. This new strategy has actually been in the works at Apple for several months, but the company needed time to provide each of its individual stores with replacement screens and machines that can properly calibrate a newly fixed phone.

Apple is offering this service as a convenience to its customers, because a broken display can usually be fixed within an hour and will not require customers to have to re-download all of their apps and data as they would if the whole unit needed to be sent out and replaced.

PortableOne offers its own repair services and can fix any damaged electronics you own, whether it is a smartphone or laptop.