Compare new iPhone and refurbished

Often, when try­ing to buy an iPhone in some Chi­nese online store (or even on eBay), you can come across very inter­est­ing offers. It seems to be the device of the last or at least the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion — but it is sold for mere pen­nies. Unless the ad itself is marked “Refur­bished” or Refur­bished.

Let’s fig­ure out how the new iPhone dif­fers from the restored one and whether it is worth buy­ing this device.

How does a new iPhone get refurbished?

In short, refur­bished iPhones are iPhones that, for some rea­son, have already been to an Apple ser­vice cen­ter. But why they were brought there is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ques­tion.

In the best case, the iPhone acquires the sta­tus of “Refur­bished” if it was returned to the ser­vice cen­ter because the own­er did not like it. For exam­ple, because of the col­or. Or just feel sor­ry for the mon­ey.

But the worst cas­es are much more:

1. Found a fac­to­ry mar­riage;

2. The device was dam­aged dur­ing trans­porta­tion;

3. The device was used as a demon­stra­tion mod­el and stood in the win­dow for a long time;

4. The man­u­fac­tur­er has recalled the prod­uct.

In all these cas­es, the device was dam­aged or worn out. The man­u­fac­tur­er sends it to a ser­vice cen­ter, replaces the bro­ken com­po­nents, and returns it for sale as “refur­bished”.

Is it safe to buy refurbished iPhones?

Speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly about iPhones and oth­er Apple prod­ucts, it is com­plete­ly safe to buy refur­bished devices. They are cov­ered by the same war­ran­ty con­di­tions as new ones. In addi­tion, the man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny replaces bro­ken com­po­nents with so-called orig­i­nal ones, which guar­an­tees a long oper­at­ing time.

How­ev­er, some devices may have prob­lems with water resis­tance. Ser­vice inter­ven­tion means that the iPhone will be dis­as­sem­bled and then assem­bled back. And such a pro­ce­dure, of course, neg­a­tive­ly affects the tight­ness of the case — even if it is car­ried out by Apple spe­cial­ists, and not by some­one in the “base­ment”.

But with oth­er devices and from oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers it is bet­ter to wait a lit­tle. There is no guar­an­tee that the ser­vice inter­ven­tion was car­ried out at the prop­er lev­el. In addi­tion, the ques­tion is in the con­fig­u­ra­tion.

For exam­ple, the refur­bished Google Pix­el 2 XL comes in a plain white box with­out any acces­sories at all. Of course, there and in the orig­i­nal there is only a charg­er, a paper clip and an adapter from USB Type‑C to 3.5 mm for con­nect­ing head­phones, but it’s still a shame.

iPhones are not lost in the pack­age. How­ev­er, instead of a beau­ti­ful brand­ed box, the smart­phone comes in a dull and white, unmarked. That’s the cost of sav­ing.

An important “but” when buying refurbished iPhones

There are two types of reman­u­fac­tured goods:

1. Man­u­fac­tur­er Refur­bish­ment;

2. Sell­er Refur­bish­ment.

Man­u­fac­tur­er refur­bish­ment means that ser­vice oper­a­tions were car­ried out direct­ly by the man­u­fac­tur­er of the device. In this case, Apple. This guar­an­tees that the device will be repaired with high qual­i­ty, using orig­i­nal spare parts and acces­sories.

Sell­er refur­bish­ment — is more con­tro­ver­sial. This mark means that ser­vice inter­ven­tions were made by the sell­er. There­fore, there is a risk that the work to restore the func­tion­al­i­ty of the device could be per­formed poor­ly, using non-orig­i­nal com­po­nents or iden­ti­cal spare parts.

If it is pos­si­ble not to buy iPhones marked “Sell­er refur­bish­ment” — do not buy. It’s bet­ter to look at some­thing else. In addi­tion, dis­play goods are often marked in this way, which means that one of the com­po­nents of the device may be phys­i­cal­ly worn out.

So, in the new gen­er­a­tion of iPhone, the bat­tery phys­i­cal­ly wears out (it los­es capac­i­ty) and the dis­play (it burns out, that is, inac­tive pix­els remain on it with a trace of con­stant­ly dis­played inter­face ele­ments).

It is also worth not­ing the mark­ing “Reserve Fund”. These are com­plete­ly new devices that are stored in ser­vice cen­ters as exchange ones. They are in no way infe­ri­or to those sold in stores in func­tion­al­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty, but at the same time they come with a min­i­mum con­fig­u­ra­tion — or with­out it at all, just a smart­phone in an enve­lope.

It should be not­ed that devices from the reserve fund can be ser­viced under war­ran­ty to a lim­it­ed extent. In addi­tion, ques­tions may arise about their ori­gin, since the buy­er will not be able to pro­vide a receipt, a war­ran­ty card and a box on which the IMEI of the device is indi­cat­ed. They should be bought with cau­tion and a will­ing­ness to bear respon­si­bil­i­ty.