The crisis in refurbished, top-tier smartphones

If, like me, you’re one of those rare people who doesn’t feel obliged to own the very latest consumer electronics, you’ll probably have been well served by the refurbished market for smartphones. Manufacturers push out new handset models at such a pace, that it’s been possible to buy very sophisticated devices at a fraction of the original price after they’ve been on the market a relatively short time. In my experience, two to three years after release, refurbished premium devices sold for about one quarter to one third the original price. A device that originally sold for £1000 when new, could be had for £250-300 a few years later, in excellent refurbished condition.

What a lot of people didn’t realize – at least until recently – was that a three year old, refurbished flagship smartphone would be a hugely superior product to a brand-new, budget or mid-priced model from the same manufacturer, while costing no more.

For example, in 2020 the Galaxy Note 9 – Samsung’s flagship smartphone – sold for more than £1000. In 2024 I bought one for under £200. I’m not sure what I could have bought new for £200 in 2024, but I’m certain the Note 9 would have outclassed it. In fact, this device holds up well even in 2026, for speed, screen quality, storage, and so on. If it weren’t for the fact that we can’t de-Google Samsung cellphones any more, I’d be using it today.

If you’re a de-Googler – if you want to keep your smartphone free of Google’s intrusive, privacy-destroying spyware – you’re probably limited to handsets that are a few years old, anyway. It takes that long for the de-Googling community – largely driven by hobbyists – to adapt to a newly-released device. The fact that such devices are a comparative bargain might be a side bonus for a de-Googler, rather than the main reason for purchase. In any event, I’ve always bought two- or three- year old flagship smartphones, and paid relatively low prices for them.

Unfortunately – for de-Googlers and bargain-hunters alike – this situation is starting to change.

Newly-released, top-tier smartphones have become insanely expensive. The version of Samsung’s S26 Ultra with 1TB of storage is currently selling for an eye-watering £1700. Sony’s Xperia 1 viii is a little cheaper at £1400, but that only has 256Gb of storage. So far as I know, though, this year’s more-money-than-sense award goes to the 2TB version of Apple’s iPhone 17, at a jaw-dropping £2,000.

This means that people who want top-quality smartphones, but don’t want to sell their internal organs to raise the funds, are starting to look with less snobbery on the refurbished market. One large-scale refurbisher tells me that sales of former flagship handsets are up more than 15% over last year. That’s certainly plausible, but prices have increased far, far more than even this increase in sales would suggest.

The reason, I think, is that demand for refurbished flagship phones now outstrips supply. These devices don’t last forever – they are, notoriously, designed not to – so there just aren’t enough of them for sale.

For example, I could have had an Xperia 1 v – an excellent Sony handset – for about £300 last year. Right now, the best price I can find in the UK is £629. That’s still 60% of the original, new price – and that’s if you can even find one for sale. Many refurbishers don’t have any in stock. In fact, it’s hard to find any refurbished, top-tier Sony phones these days. You’d do better with Samsung or Apple, because there were always more of them in circulation – but not an unlimited number, so prices are still higher than they were.

So far as I can see, this price increase hasn’t affected budget and mid-range smartphones – not yet, anyway. Google’s Pixel 7a, for example – a solid mid-range contender – sold for about £449 when it was new in 2023. Last year I bought one for £155. This year I can buy one with the same condition and specification for £148. This is a good price for a serviceable phone (one that is, ironically, easy to de-Google). Samsung’s mid-tier models remain similarly affordable from refurbishers.

It isn’t just refurbished units that show a price hike: plain, used devices from outlets like CeX show the same increases. There just aren’t enough to go around.

In a market economy, of course, price tends to follow demand, and demand is at an all-time high because new top-tier smartphones are largely unaffordable.

Why is this? It’s plausible that the rise of artificial intelligence is to blame, for at least two different reasons.

First, the global enthusiasm for AI technologies like large language models (LLMs) has increased the demand for electronic components of all types, but especially memory. Again, price follows demand, which has never been higher for RAM.

Second, handset manufacturers are rushing to cram AI-based features into their products, increasing the resources they need. Modern flagship smartphones typically have 12Gb RAM and an 8-core CPU – a specification that would have served a good desktop computer until recently. It still will, in fact, if you’re a Linux user. This sort of specification would have been expensive even before the AI boom pushed up component prices.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what the explanation is: refurbished top-tier smartphones are rapidly becoming as unaffordable as new ones. Get one while you still can.