This article is sponsored by numobile.
It’s no secret that the price of new smartphones has been skyrocketing over the past few years. The initial excitement following an announcement by Apple or Samsung is now followed by a common question, “how much did they say it cost?!’
The new iPhone 12 family just landed in stores and costs between the wallet-busting price of $1349 for the basic model all the way up to an eye-watering $2369 for the big daddy Pro Max model. Even the “budget price” iPhone Mini costs $1199.
As desirable as a new iPhone is for a lot of people, is $2000 too much to pay? At a time when many are tightening the purse strings, given the current economic climate, you have to wonder if there’s a smarter way to get the phone features we want at a price that most of us can afford.
Refurbished phones are a great example of an alternative you’ve probably overlooked. It’s surprising, but buying pre-loved phones is a foreign concept to many Aussies, considering how common it is in many countries around the world, including the US.
It seems we think of pre-owned as ‘buying someone’s grubby old phone’ complete with cracked screens, greasy fingerprint smudges and the petri dish of bacteria that collects as people use their devices. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Refurbished phones are put through a rigorous routine of testing and cleaning, before being repackaged and sold. Phones with defects, like dents, cracks and missing components are not sold as refurbs, but are set aside and picked apart for spare parts. Most importantly, refurbed phones come with a warranty, unlike the phones you find on eBay or Gumtree.
So, how much can you save?
There are a few different places you can buy refurbished phones these days, but our top pick is numobile. This new Aussie telco sells pre-loved Australian handsets, rather than grey imports from overseas, and all phones are ‘nucertified’ which is a promise that any handset sold will look and run the way you expect it to. Best of all, numobile has a wide range of iPhones and Samsung Galaxy handsets, including recent models like the iPhone XS and the Samsung Galaxy S9+.
For comparison sake, let’s take iPhone XS 64GB, released in 2018, and compare the cost of ownership to an iPhone 12 64GB on a plan.
With numobile you can buy an iPhone XS on a 24-month installment plan and pair it with a SIM plan, with the total price starting at $48 per month. This includes 3GB of data and access to the Telstra 4G network.
If you choose an iPhone 12 on a plan, the cheapest price on a similar 24-month repayment plan is $96.20 per month.
All in all, that’s a saving of $48 per month, or about $1100 over 24-months. Or to put it in perspective, that’s enough for a holiday to one of Australia’s amazing beaches, with enough leftover for a couple of cheeky cocktails.
When it comes to comparing the phones, there are differences, but you have to question whether these are meaningful differences that are worth paying extra for. For example, the iPhone XS has an Apple A12 Bionic processor while the iPhone 12 has a newer A14 chip. There are technical reasons why one is better than the other, but it’s fair to say that most people wouldn’t experience the difference in day-to-day use.
This same point can be made about a number of other key features. The display on the iPhone XS is 0.3-inches smaller and the battery has a slightly lower capacity. On paper, the phones have matching 12-megapixel cameras, but tweaks to software and hardware will give the newer phones a photographic edge.
But taken as a whole, do these incremental improvements warrant a $1200 hit to your hip pocket? The smart money says no. Your accountant/financial advisor/significant other also says no.
It can be hard to resist the siren’s song of a new iPhone when upgrading your handset, but the savings are there for anyone willing to make the smart choice. We need to rethink what we mean when we talk about refurbished technology, especially with regards to smartphones. For most people, buying a pre-loved phone won’t make a difference to the things they enjoy about using a phone at all. And you’ll love it even more when you are taking photos at sunset on your next beachside holiday, paid for with the savings you’ve made.
Joseph Hanlon
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