The Apple Watch is undoubtedly the best selling smart watch of all time. In its 3rd generation, the Apple Watch retains the same design and if you’re still on the first gen Apple Watch, there’s very little reason to upgrade unless you’re into swimming and require better water resistance.
If your good old Apple Watch from 2015 is having its screen popped up as shown above, don’t attempt to fix it yourself. It happened to our own unit and we just managed to get the whole watch replaced for free.
This problem is caused by a swollen battery. And as you can see, the battery has expanded so much that the screen was pushed out from the case.
In most cases, the Apple Watch only comes with 1-year warranty and it appears that Apple is aware of this issue for its first-gen product. Although it isn’t a wide-spread problem like its iPhone battery issues, Apple has quietly extended the repair warranty up to 3-years.
There are several complaints about the popping screen on Apple’s community forum and most of them are resolved by a free fix or have given a free replacement. From our experience, it looks like this extended warranty for first-gen Apple Watch is applicable for Malaysia as well.
Our Apple Watch was purchased in mid-2015 and the screen came off partially during the Chinese New Year holidays. It’s still working, just that the screen was hanging from its connection cable. We dropped it off at an Apple Authorised Service Provider and the new Apple Watch replacement is ready about 10 days later.
Whether they will fix or replace it completely would also depend on the condition of your watch. At the moment, this free replacement appears to be applicable to the first generation Apple Watch. So, if this happens to you, we highly recommend that you send your watch to Apple’s authorised service provider first before you fix it at a 3rd party repair shop.
