Varna, Bulgaria, 25th January 2024 – New smartphone Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with S – Pen on screen … [+]
Do not throw away your old Galaxy phone, or sell it on the secondary market. Samsung has shown in the last year that old handsets hold their value as they gather dust in your drawer.
In the last 12 months, Samsung has focussed on running promotions with enhanced trade-in prices instead of straight money-off discounts for new Galaxy phones. That has resulted in some astonishingly high prices for years-old phones.
For example, a December promotion for the Galaxy Z Fold 6 had some of the best valuations I’ve seen for older phones yet.
- Galaxy Z Fold 3 – $1000
- Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G – $800
- Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G – $800
- Galaxy S9 – $500
- Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max – $800
- Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max – $700
- Apple iPhone X – $550
These phone prices are not repeated when buying cheaper Samsung phones, such as the Galaxy S24 Ultra. With that said, S24 Ultra buyers still get some of the best prices on the market for older handsets.
- Galaxy S21 Ultra – $650
- Galaxy S20 Ultra – $400
- Galaxy S9 – $300
- Galaxy S8 Plus – $300
- Google Pixel 5 – $300
- Google Pixel 4 $300
Samsung, Google and Apple’s price war
It’s not just Samsung playing this game. A decent rule of thumb is that you will get the best trade-in prices for old phones from the company that made the device.
Google paid $650 for the Pixel 6 Pro last month, beating Samsung’s price by $300. Apple—a company that rarely engages in promotions—has matched some of Samsung’s iPhone trade-in prices in the last year.
Samsung, however, beat both Apple and Samsung for old Pixels and iPhones a few times in 2024. For example, Samsung will pay $300 for any Pixel, which includes the 2016 Pixel 1. The most Google will pay for it is $110. For Apple tech, Samsung will pay $300 for the iPhone 13, whereas Apple won’t fork out more than $220 for any phone below the iPhone 12 Pro.
This has an impact on pricing from third party retailers who make their money from hardware sales, not subscriptions and data. Best Buy, Amazon and others can’t match manufacturer trade-in prices (Amazon has offered $5 for the Galaxy S8 Plus compared to Samsung’s $300).
This is why we have seen some of the cheapest upfront prices from the likes of Amazon in the last few months— repeatedly undercutting Samsung and others in sales.
Manufacturers play the trade-in game because they want to keep users in their respective ecosystems. Samsung is likely losing money paying hundreds of dollars for eight-year-old handsets.
But people using Samsung’s services is far more valuable in the long term than simply selling hardware. That may be especially true if Samsung decides to charge for Galaxy AI this year, as it has repeatedly hinted at doing.
These increasingly high trade-in prices dramatically changes how valuable your old Samsung Galaxy phone is. Combine this with new policies from manufacturers that promise software support for the best part of a decade and we will see more people holding on to their phones for longer than ever before.