Is the iPhone SE 2020 affected by System Configuration?

The SE 2020 is a victim of Apple's parts pairing frenzy so it's not good but not as bad as it could be. I'll explain.

Starting with the iPhone XS, Apple began pairing batteries to the logic board. The practical effect of this is twofold; first you'll get a pop-up warning giving you an "Important Battery Message" to the effect that the battery may not be a genuine Apple battery - even if it is a genuine Apple battery. That pop-up will go away after a couple of weeks, but a notification badge will appear on your Settings icon and a warning under the battery section will appear with the same sort of warning about a non-genuine battery.

In addition, the battery health information will no longer be displayed, taking away a useful diagnostic for deciding when to replace the battery.

Repairers and the aftermarket industry soon found that the only practical way around this restriction is to remove the BMS, or Battery Management System, from the battery and transplant it to a brand new battery cell without a BMS. Although the replacement cell can be soldered on, a spot welder is recommended, figure $40 for a usable one.

This keeps the parts pairing and gives you a new battery, but there's one catch - the battery's health information is kept in the BMS so it gets carried forward to the new battery. Which means it's no longer useful for deciding when to replace the battery. The way around this is to use a device programmer such as the JC V1SE or the QianLi iCopy to clear the health data; the percentage gets reset to 100% and the cycle count to zero. Best price I found was about $85.

So you've gone from $15 for a new battery, open it up, pop it in and you're done, to:

1. Open the phone and remove the battery
2. Remove the BMS from the old battery
3. Solder/spot weld it onto a new cell
4. Reprogram the health information
5. Reassemble the phone

If this looks and sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth, then congratulations, Apple has gotten exactly what it wanted with that change. Be glad you don't have an iPhone 11 or later, as they've made it even worse; a change to the health information has made it impossible for the device programmers to reset the health information!