Buying a Used iPhone Makes More Sense Than Ever

There were already plenty of good reasons to consider buying a used iPhone instead of constantly upgrading. It’s both more environmentally friendly and more cost-effective, an increasing rarity these days. But a few recent developments have converged that suddenly make buying used even more appealing.

Starting this fall, older iPhones will last longer than ever. Some Apple products will be more expensive. And while buying used—or holding onto your own device an extra year or two—means you may miss out on certain features, for many people it’s simply the best option.

“Buying used has never made more sense,” says Kyle Wiens, CEO of the repair advocate service iFixit. “The phones from the last few years are really good.”

If it feels like everything is getting more expensive lately, that’s probably because it is. Even big tech behemoths like Apple are feeling the financial squeeze. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook said that price increases for the company’s products would soon be “unavoidable.” He did not specify which Apple products would be affected, or when the price hikes might occur.

The culprit, as Cook and many other tech titans have framed it, is the ongoing memory shortage, a supply-chain-wide dearth of critical storage and memory components that consumer tech companies like Apple rely on to build their devices. The shortage is the result of the overwhelming demand for those same components to develop AI data centers across the world. It’s hindering everyone from gamers to, well, Apple. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

This economic uncertainty also comes after a year of wildly fluctuating markets in the wake of the Trump administration’s tariff implementation and ongoing conflict with Iran. Getting the stuff to make your new iPhone is just going to get harder, and Apple and every other company is bound to pass those costs along to their customers.

Apple has already been preparing for this. At Apple's WWDC keynote in early June, the company detailed upcoming changes to its iOS 27 that aim to help iPhones last longer by improving its CPU scheduler—which manages software resources on the device—in a way that will apparently even keep the iPhone 11 humming. That means you can soon buy a used iPhone with more confidence than ever that it’s not going to be left behind by an upcoming firmware update.

Maintaining an older iPhone is also often cheaper than trying to fix a new one if you need to, and battery replacements for older phones tend to be cheaper than the newer options. (Apple charges $119 to swap out the battery of a shiny new iPhone 17; an iPhone 13 battery upgrade is $30 cheaper.)

“You can save a lot of money buying a year-old phone and putting a new battery in it every six months,” Wiens says.

Apple has likely tried to hold out increasing prices as long as it could, says Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager at IDC. He noted that until now Apple has mostly absorbed these extra costs. It even released the MacBook Neo, its cheapest MacBook ever at $599, in March, when the specter of the memory shortage was already well underway.

“The company has also built up meaningful goodwill in recent months,” Ubrani wrote in an email to WIRED. “I do not see Apple squandering that by raising prices broadly.”

The price increases will most likely affect Apple’s newer, already more expensive devices more than its older models. The place to look for price hikes will be the company’s upcoming hardware announcements, likely in its Pro models. Apple is expected to announce a new iPhone later this year, possibly along with a refreshed MacBook and, eventually, a folding phone. Those premium devices are bound to be more expensive for Apple to make, and may have higher price tags as a result.

If you’re willing to give up a little bit of camera quality, or not have onboard access to the latest AI features on a phone, buying something used might be a better bet for the immediate future.

(Keep in mind what to think about when buying a used smartphone or any other refurbished electronics.)

Most people replace phones every 2.5 years, but hanging onto them for longer is starting to be en vogue. Buying used devices has also become more popular. Back Market, the refurbished tech marketplace, says its sales jumped in 2025 when people came to the platform out of concern that Trump's sweeping (since largely reversed or repealed) tariffs would cause prices of new devices to skyrocket. Back Market CEO Thibaud Hug de Larauze says they have now seen sales spike slightly in the aftermath of Cook’s statement.

“They don't want to pay like $2,000 for the next iPhone,” Hug de Larauze says. “We should just do everything possible to make people able to keep their devices as long as possible.”

Used markets certainly aren’t immune to economic pressures. According to the market research firm Counterpoint, refurbished smartphone sales have grown, albeit more slowly than expected in 2025. As prices rise, used stuff on places like Back Market will likely get more expensive as well. Hug de Larauze says those increases usually take three to six months to trickle down to the used market, but the increases are likely coming for them all the same.

“All the electronics in the world’s value have gone up,” Wiens says. “Kind of like the stock market rising in value, everything in your drawer is worth more now.”

Even so, you’re still paying less for used than you would for a flagship—or better yet, you could hold on to what you’ve got.