Anyone reasonably comfortable with electronics can DIY as well. The hardest part is removing the old battery. IFixit ftw.

Yeah, about that: I have a horror story.

Tl;dr Apple Store repair techs are crap, right to repair all the way.

I had an iPhone XS that was behaving weird. It was about 84% on the battery scale, which we all know is bullshit. I did all the usual stuff you can do before bringing it in (soft reset, hard reset, various settings, deleting apps, wiping and starting over, etc.). I was hoping their diagnostics would say something but would just as well get a new battery for a fee. They said it was perfectly fine, so they took it back to do a regular non-warranty swap. They said maybe an hour.

One hour later, “come back in 15 minutes.”

30 minutes later, “we’re still working on it.”

30 minutes later still, someone comes out and tells me that while they did replace the battery, they broke two screens trying to get it back on, and for liability reasons, couldn’t try again. They’d send me a refurbished phone. But they needed my fucking phone number so Apple support could call and set it up. This was said dead-faced, broken phone still in the employee’s hand.

They also needed a $1,000 hold on my card for a then-6 year old refurbished phone to be shipped to guarantee a return, and it would be 2-3 days.

Don’t get it done at the Apple Store unless you can afford the risk. Go support your local repair person who isn’t a fucking klutz.

There are a ton of videos on how to do this yourself for less than half the cost you can put in a better battery yourself. I highly recommend Mobile Sentrix if you want to get good quality hardware and responsive support. Invest in some good tools up front and you can reuse them over and over.

https://www.mobilesentrix.com/