Samsung shows your Galaxy phone is now more valuable

Don’t throw away your old Galaxy phone or sell it in the secondary market. Samsung showed last year that old phones retain their value as they collect dust in your drawer.

Over the past 12 months, Samsung has focused on running promotions with improved trade-in prices instead of direct discounts on new Galaxy phones. This has resulted in surprisingly high prices for phones that are several years old.

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For example, a December promotion for the Galaxy Z Fold 6 featured some of the best reviews I’ve ever seen for older phones.

• Galaxy Z Fold 3 – $1,000
• 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 don’t repeat themselves when buying cheaper Samsung phones, like the Galaxy S24 Ultra. That said, S24 Ultra buyers still benefit from 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

The price war between Samsung, Google and Apple

It’s not just Samsung playing this game. Typically, you’ll 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 participates in promotions, has matched some of Samsung’s iPhone trade-in prices over the last year.

Samsung, however, has beaten Apple and Samsung for older Pixels and iPhones several times in 2024. For example, Samsung will pay $300 for any Pixel, which includes the 2016 Pixel 1. The most Google will pay for this is of $110. For Apple technology, Samsung will pay $300 for the iPhone 13, while Apple won’t pay more than $220 for any phone below the iPhone 12 Pro.

This impacts pricing for third-party retailers who make their money through hardware sales, not subscriptions and data. Best Buy, Amazon and others can’t match the manufacturer’s trade-in prices (Amazon offered $5 for the Galaxy S8 Plus, compared to Samsung’s $300).

That’s why we’ve seen some of the cheapest upfront prices offered by companies like Amazon in recent months, repeatedly undercutting sales from Samsung and others.

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Manufacturers play the exchange game because they want to keep users in their respective ecosystems. Samsung is probably losing money paying hundreds of dollars for eight-year-old handsets.

But people using Samsung’s services have much more long-term value than just selling hardware. This could be especially true if Samsung decides to charge for the Galaxy AI this year, as it has repeatedly hinted. to do.

These increasingly high trade-in prices significantly change the value of your old Samsung Galaxy phone. Combine that with new policies from manufacturers promising software support for the better part of a decade and we’ll see more people holding on to their phones for longer than ever.