Most iPhone owners have been there: you accidentally drop your handset, and if it doesn’t have adequate protection from a case and falls from a height to a hard surface, the screen is likely to be shattered.

Some people continue using the screen with a crack in the corner, although this is unadvisable and it is more likely to fracture further. It’s like a windscreen on a car: get it fixed at a chip before the crack creeps across your whole screen.

The good news for iPhone 5 owners is that if the worst should happen, they can take their handset into an Apple Retail Store and have the screen repaired on-site.

Any iPhone 5S or 5C repairs involving screen replacements and other aspects, including the volume buttons, vibrating motor, rear-camera and speaker system can be repaired in-store, meaning that faulty smartphones won’t have to be fully replaced unless the damage extends beyond these circumstances.

The iPhone 5 and 5C home button will also be repairable in store, but the more advanced 5S handset’s fingerprint sensor will have to be sent off for repair.

Apple news site 9to5mac, reported: "The sources say that Apple will be providing its stores with special machinery to replace the touchscreens on both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. These machines will be used specifically to calibrate the displays. The screen replacements cost $149 for each device, and this price point is significantly more affordable than the several-hundred dollars required to completely replace a device with a damaged/cracked screen."

If your iPhone is still under AppleCare warranty, repairs are free. If not, Apple will incur a fee depending on the nature of the repair of replacement.