Among Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi and OV, whose Care+ plan is the most generous?

To be honest with all of you, Tony used to almost never spend money on a certain category of services when buying mobile phones — screen breakage protection, accidental damage protection, and all kinds of Care+ plans.

The reason is quite simple: you have already spent five or six thousand yuan on the phone itself, and paying hundreds or even thousands of yuan extra just for a rainy day will make your first reaction to save as much as possible. Besides, when you get a brand new phone, who would think that you will accidentally break it one day sooner or later?

But in the past two years, the situation has indeed become a little different.

Nowadays flagship phones often cost seven, eight thousand or even over ten thousand yuan, and their repair costs are getting higher and higher accordingly. If you really encounter a serious accidental damage where the screen, back cover, camera and even the main board are all broken, it is not unusual to see the repair fee reach over a thousand or even several thousand yuan.

What's more, people don't change their phones as frequently as they used to. It is increasingly normal for a flagship phone to be used as the main device for two or three years. As a result, those service guarantees on the order page that you never even looked at before are now worth a second glance.

But when I actually entered the official websites of several brands, Tony found that there are far more hidden details in these services than imagined.

Apple has AppleCare+, Huawei has HUAWEI Care+, OPPO and vivo also have their own Care+ plans, while Xiaomi calls its service MiCare Premium Edition; further down the list, there are screen breakage protection, accidental damage protection, battery protection, extended warranty, no-repair-only-replacement policies...

The most troublesome part is that these services look similar in name, but the actual coverage they provide is completely different.

For example, some Care plans offer unlimited times of full-device accidental damage coverage, while some mainly cover screen breakage and battery degradation; some require you to pay an extra service fee for each repair, and some claim to cover two years, but in fact screen breakage can only be repaired once. You can't figure out which one to pick just by looking at the names.

So this time Tony simply checked the flagship services of all five brands: we will sort out exactly what these services cover, how much they cost, and whether they are worth buying for you all at once.

First of all, let's highlight the key point: after checking all these services, if I could only pick one from the five brands, Tony thinks the MiCare Premium Edition from Xiaomi is currently the most worthwhile option to buy.

Its coverage items are not fancy, and they are all targeted at the problems that are most likely to be encountered in daily use: 2-year multiple screen breakage protection, 1 free water damage repair within 2 years, plus 1 year of extended warranty.

Moreover, the "screen breakage" here does not only refer to the front display. According to Xiaomi's service scope, accidental damage to the front screen, back cover and rear camera are all covered.

This feature is really very practical on Ultra models. After all, the camera modules of current flagship phones are getting larger and larger, and the lenses are getting more and more protruding. If you drop the phone once, it's not necessarily just the front screen that gets damaged — the back cover and the camera lens are also very likely to be broken.

The MiCare Premium Edition corresponding to Xiaomi 17 Ultra currently costs 699 yuan. You can enjoy multiple corresponding repairs during the coverage period, and you don't need to pay extra service fees each time. However, it is not unlimited repair, and the total accumulated repair cost cannot exceed the service limit corresponding to this phone model.

In addition to MiCare, Xiaomi is now also selling several of these protection plans separately.

For example, the 1-year screen breakage protection for Xiaomi 17 Ultra costs 349 yuan, which covers one free repair for accidental screen breakage; the 1-year accidental damage protection costs 699 yuan, which covers accidental damage such as water ingress and bending in addition to screen breakage; the 1-year extended warranty costs 244 yuan.

After listing all these plans, it becomes much clearer how to choose.

If you are only worried about breaking the screen, you can just buy the separate screen breakage protection; if you want coverage for more complex full-device accidental damage, you can choose the accidental damage protection; if you plan to use the same phone for two or three years and want to cover screen breakage, water damage and extended warranty at the same time, the MiCare Premium Edition obviously provides more comprehensive coverage.

So for Xiaomi's service guarantee system, Tony's evaluation is: it is not the one that provides the most comprehensive coverage among the five brands, but it is indeed a set of services that gives you pretty good value for money.

If Xiaomi is defined as "high cost-performance", then the biggest feature of HUAWEI Care+ is its wider coverage scope.

The HUAWEI Care+ for Pura 90 Pro Max costs 499 yuan for a one-year plan and 899 yuan for a two-year plan. Its price is a notch higher than Xiaomi's, but the coverage is also obviously more thorough — for the Pura 90 series, the Care+ plan has already offered unlimited times of accidental damage coverage.

Out-of-warranty faults caused by accidents such as dropping, collision, squeezing and liquid ingress can all be covered by the corresponding services; the two-year plan, on this basis, also includes 1 year of extended warranty and 2 years of battery refresh service. You can get a free battery replacement if the battery capacity drops below 85% and meets the corresponding conditions.

However, friends who are reading this need to note that "unlimited times" does not mean "all repairs are completely free".

If the damaged part is the screen, back cover, camera or main board, you need to pay an extra 168 yuan service fee for each repair of each part. It is equivalent to Huawei having reduced the large repair cost, but every time you use the service benefit, you still need to bear a small part of the cost yourself.

Tony has reason to suspect that Huawei set this rule mostly to prevent some people from deliberately dropping their phones to defraud insurance, or repeatedly exploiting the service benefits — after all, if it is truly unlimited times and every repair is completely free, it is inevitable that some people will take advantage of the loopholes and have bad ideas.

In this case, it is very clear what kind of people this plan is suitable for.

If you usually protect your phone very well and only worry about accidentally breaking the screen once, the 899 yuan two-year package may not be cost-effective; but if you are the type of person who uses the phone without a case and has broken many phones before, this unlimited full-device accidental damage protection has very obvious advantages.

So for Huawei's service system, Tony's evaluation is: it is more expensive, but it is indeed the one that provides the most comprehensive coverage among the five brands.

In fact, Apple was the first brand that figured out how to make these extra protection services work well. Everyone should be very familiar with AppleCare+. For the iPhone 17 Pro Max generation, the two-year service is priced at 1599 yuan, which is also the most expensive tier among the five brands.

The coverage content is very straightforward: accidental damage caused by dropping, collision, liquid ingress and other accidents can all enjoy unlimited times of repair; if the battery capacity drops below 80% and meets the conditions, you can also get a free battery replacement.

But just like Huawei, the "unlimited times" for Apple's plan does not mean all repairs are completely free either.

If only the screen or the glass back panel is damaged, you need to pay a 188 yuan service fee each time; if it is other types of accidental damage, such as damage to other parts of the body or liquid ingress, you need to pay 628 yuan each time, which is significantly much higher than Huawei's 168 yuan service fee.

So to put it this way, in terms of protection coverage, AppleCare+ is indeed the industry benchmark; in terms of price, it is also very "benchmark" as well...

As for OPPO, its service protection system is not as "all-in-one" as the previous several brands. OPPO prefers to sell different items separately.

For example, for Find X9 Ultra, if you are afraid of breaking the screen, you can buy the separate screen breakage protection; if you plan to use the phone for a long time, there are extended warranty and battery protection; if you are worried about quality problems of the device, there is also a 180-day no-repair-only-replacement policy; if you don't want to choose separately, you can directly purchase the OPPO Care+ priced at 799 yuan.

OPPO Care+ mainly includes 2 years of screen breakage protection, 1 free battery refresh, and 1 year of extended warranty.

However, it is different from the unlimited full-device accidental damage idea of Huawei and Apple mentioned before. OPPO Care+ focuses more on screen, battery and extended warranty, and full-device accidents such as water ingress and bending are not within its main coverage scope.