A couple of weeks ago, I changed the long-suffering iPhone SE 2020 to the iPhone 13, which so far has almost no complaints. Naturally, I immediately put the old iPhone up for sale: as a rule, the buyer is within 3-4 days, but with the iPhone SE 2020 everything turned out to be much more complicated. It turned out that now almost no one needs a budget iPhone in the secondary market, and even excellent condition does not allow selling it at least for half the original price. Here’s a little story for you about how difficult resell iPhone SE even for pennies.
Should You Buy an iPhone SE?
My ownership of iPhones went into some kind of curved wrong spiral: first there was the iPhone XR, then the 1st generation iPhone SE, then the second. Inexpensive iPhone I bought it almost by accident, considering that it fits perfectly into my concept that a smartphone should not be expensive: 38,000 rubles by the standards of the beginning of 2021 is a rather small amount. Now for this money you can take the iPhone 11, iPhone 12 or iPhone 12 mini. In principle, official sellers like Megafon iPhone SE 2020 even now have the same price.
To iPhone SE performance never had any complaints: a powerful processor copes with all tasks. Even the display and camera are average, but not bad. But the presence of the “Home” button and the obscenely weak battery I hated the most during this time. By the release of iOS 16, the system became such that an iPhone with a button became completely superfluous, and a very bad battery gets worse and worse over the years. True, the new iOS still corrected the situation a little. But the iPhone SE turned out to be the first smartphone from Apple that I could not resell even for half the price.
How to Resell an iPhone Properly
Usually iPhones on Avito are sold very quickly even at a fairly high price: recently my friend sold a two-year-old iPhone 12 Pro on Avito for 65,000 rubles, provided that the new iPhone 13 Pro could be found for almost the same money. I myself have both iPhones and iPads sold quickly and with minimal losses. In general, there will always be a buyer on the site who will be ready to pick up the smartphone even at the original price without bargaining, although this will take a long time.
However, the situation is different with the iPhone SE: in my small town there are offers on Avito, but the ads hang there for months. Price for used iPhone SE 2020 obviously overpriced: there are 64 GB smartphones far from being in perfect condition for 20,000 rubles, although now you can find a new iPhone SE 2022 for 23-24 thousand rubles. For 14,000, even the iPhone 8 was on sale! What is going on?
The fact is that the budget iPhone has fallen in price a lot over the year: if initially gray trucks offered it for 50-60 thousand rubles, now the price has fallen by almost three times. Respectively, iPhone SE 2020 depreciated even stronger – in theory, it should cost less than 20 thousand at all, since there is a significant difference in performance and even autonomy. But the depreciation occurred only in the secondary market: if you look at the scale of the average market price for Avito, it varies within 16,000 rubles.
I put up an iPhone SE for 16,000 rubles, but in two weeks I was approached only with an offer to exchange for ancient Android smartphones, even video cards and other nonsense. But no one dared to buy it at full price: I found at least ten more iPhone SE 2020 offers in my city, but the price was much higher, and the condition was worse.
As a result, only two weeks later they bought my smartphone, but for 14,500. That is, iPhone depreciated almost three times in less than two years. Scary to imagine, how much will the iPhone SE 2022 cost in the secondary market in one and a half to two years on Avito.
Usually the iPhone becomes cheaper slowly, so in a year and a half you can resell it for 70-80% of the original price. But the outdated iPhone SE loses even more in price, largely due to the fact that more attractive models are getting cheaper in parallel. The most annoying thing is to buy SE in official retail, where it costs even more, and resale brings mere pennies almost like from an Android smartphone.
Do not repeat my mistakes: iPhone SE, whatever it may be in the future, is still cheapest apple smartphone, which depreciates faster than others. If you buy it, then from gray sellers, and not from official retail, so at least you won’t overpay too much. It is advisable to take it for a long time, and not for a year or two, otherwise then it will be impossible to sell this junk in principle.
