In a time when an iPhone can be preordered, customized, and on its way to your doorstep all through a touch-screen tap, it’s almost quaint to remember that people used to camp out for smartphone releases. That was once the regular routine of Andrew Erickson, a longtime tech YouTuber, who recalled to me with a mixture of nostalgia and awe the time he braved the rain at 4:30 a.m. to join a line for the newest iPhone. The line snaked through the mall, nearly reaching the parking lot.
Next month, when Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 18 Pro, Erickson has no plans to even buy the phone, let alone fight crowds for it. Instead, along with a growing number of Americans, Erickson is buying used. He’s fed up with incremental improvements in gadgets, he told me, and is more interested in getting an old version of the iPhone 17 Pro when it hits the secondhand market at a discount. Already, almost half of his current devices were acquired secondhand, and as electronics prices soar amid an AI-fueled chip shortage, he expects that portion to grow. “The argument’s just getting weaker and weaker to buy brand-new,” he said.
Based on the numbers, old tech products are indeed being looked at in a new light. Globally, the size of the industry could reach $153.4 billion this year, up from $104.1 billion four years ago. The used-smartphone market alone is expected to grow by more than 12 percent in 2026, according to the International Data Corporation, which forecasts that the market for new smartphones will experience a record drop this year. Growth in secondhand electronics and refurbished gadgets that have been restored to full working condition now outpaces that of new products on eBay, the e-commerce giant reports.
I want a device that can do text and mfa. I recently bought a fake iPod for music.
My issue isnt what a new phone offrers, its what it is taking that is now the issue, and impacting my decision.
Had my iPhone 12 for about 6 years, hoping to make it last at least 10 years. Case, screen protector and a battery replacement last year have kept it going strong for not much money.
The only struggle is the 64GB storage - large updates require me to offload lots of apps, and delete/re-download saved music. Otherwise I could get much better camera quality with a new phone, but it’s good enough for me.
When the next fairphone with dp alt mode comes out I’m going to be all over it, then I may never care again.
5G network upgrade ensures the used phone market in Canada is a lot more limited than it was one year ago.
I’m sure they’ll come up with some other reason to force us all to upgrade soon enough. Wife and I are seriously looking at Linux phones or 5G-capable flip phones for our next refresh, due to Google’s noose-tightening bullshit.
Does Canada not have LTE?
I can’t wait until we get replaceable battery phones in the EU.
We already have. You are just buying the wrong phones. E.g Fairphone
I want every phone to be the right phone.
Someone mentioned Fairphone here… which seems to have just that.
Smartphone technology is reaching a plateau. Does the human being really need 16K streams in their mobile device?
What happens when the wavelength is so short that you have knife-edge diffraction with a flea?
I’ve had my Galaxy S9+ for roughly eight years now. The battery doesn’t hold much charge, and the screen has this known bug where it stays completely black unless I do this funny workaround by activating Always On Display first and only then turning the screen on.
But everything on the market now comes with some catch, I really don’t want to give up that SD slot. And I’m unemployed and prices are fucked. So I’ll ride this thing out until it fully dies - which feels like it may happen any day now, honestly…
I really hope some phones are released with support for MicroSD Express.
One of the practical reasons companies started removing MicroSD slots is because SD cards were far slower than the internal storage, and installing apps onto them could make everything laggier. That’s mostly solved with MicroSD Express which is up to 9x faster than the legacy MicroSD standard.
Of course, there’s also the financial aspect, which the manufacturers love. If you can’t insert an SD card, you have to pay the manufacturer for more storage.
Here’s hoping the EU mandates that phones need to support removable storage.
I’m still using the S7e. The failing battery was so nice to pop open the glued back, so I could easily and cheaply replace it.
Moto G 2025
As someone who exclusively shops second-hand the mere existence of this article feels like an omen for prices.
The prices of new electronics have skyrocketed, the used market always follows so you’re right to be worried.
I’m kinda interested in a jolla 2026. But they only promise software updates for 5 years and it’s like 700€.
My current android is 5 years old and is no longer getting security updates. I would keep it forever if i could get updates for it.
Next I wan’t a Linux phone. I’m sick of fighting google. I wan’t something I own.
Maybe you can switch to https://e.foundation/ They often support devices longer with updates. Fairphone dropped my FP3 and Murena simply updated it to Android 15 adding 2 more years of security updates ✌️
They’ll force you to upgrade by making the software run shittier and shittier on your old hardware with each update. That, and your not-easily-replaceable battery will inevitably leave the chat before you are ready to upgrade.
which is why you only buy unlockable android phones, lineageOS is if anything only going to make your device faster every update.
The key here is to know when to stop upgrading. With old Apple devices I always hang back a version or two and don’t ever upgrade to the last version that supports your hardware.
This is not good for security.
Well if you’re going for perfect, just buy new devices when the old one gets slow like they want you to.
Since 2015 I have only upgraded my phone because the previous one broke, and I didn’t notice any difference. I had the first android, and it was slow enough that whatever I replaced it with (I don’t remember what) was better because of the speed. Getting waterproof (resistant, but proof for practical purposes) was a big win. Only other time an upgraded helped was when the camera lens was so scratched that pictures improved. Every phone upgrade has been because the last one broke and so had to be replaced. My current phone is 4 years old and still works fine.
same, the only big improvement i’ve gotten is going from 60Hz to 120Hz display, and i really can’t think of any more major improvements that would be possible.
Sure, it’d be sweet to have more battery capacity or better cameras, but the standard has been more than sufficient for any sort of normal usage for years and years now.My wife upgraded from a Samsung S21 Ultra to an S25 Ultra but uses it mostly same way.
The one new feature I have seen her use is the AI person/object removal in the gallery. Samsung’s AI tools can run entirely on-device, which is nice (avoids sending the photos to the cloud and using an AI data center for the processing). I tried them while in airplane mode to confirm they do indeed work with no internet connection.
She upgraded because the old one had a pretty scratched screen (we installed a screen protector on the new one!) and the battery wasn’t lasting long any more. The official repair store that Samsung use in the US, UBreakIFix, don’t stock S21 batteries any more, and I didn’t trust myself enough to replace it myself.
The last time I upgraded my phone was only because my grandmother wanted a newer one and told me to upgrade so she could get my old one
Alrgiht. Since its ride until this thing dies…is there an alternative OS for me humble Samsung S21 Ultra? I understand Graphene doesn’t work with it. I just need to call, 2FA support, Podcasts, Firefox, Maps, and use Signal. That’s it. And I can do without maps.
Globally, the size of the industry could reach $153.4 billion this year…
For reference this is the “Second-hand Electronic Products Market”; I’ve never heard it referred to as an industry but I guess it is. And good. It’s deserved. Phone manufactures certainly don’t deserve credit for mediocre devices.
as Nabila Popal, a senior director at the International Data Corporation, reminded me, prices reflect demand: If people keep buying up the used gadgets, those prices are bound to shoot up, too.
Hopefully it’ll be less extreme than with desktops/RAM, though. Phones are at least single units that aren’t so easy to be hoarded or cannibalized for the most expensive parts in them. Most people who want a good phone won’t go out and buy 4-8 mediocre ones. Most people who want a good phone can settle for a popular flagship across several years manufacture, which might have been leased out previously.
2 my lasts phones I bought were refurbished and extremely cheap (in the range of 150-200 Euro for iPhone SE with battery capacity >90%). I cannot see any sense in buying a brand new iphone for years already .
Edit : Warranty for both refurbished phones was 2 years vs 1 year from apple. And neither of phones were older than a year
right? You only have to go a couple of years old for the price of a refurbished phone to absolutely plummet, and that’s for as-new quality!
If you go for one that’s just a little bit scuffed but still perfectly functional you can get something indistinguishable from a brand new phone for a quarter the fucking price
