iPhone 13 trade in? iPhone 12’s value is holding better than its predecessor

While most don’t buy the latest iPhone every year, some certainly do. And for those people eyeing the new iPhone 13 this fall, the online marketplace SellCell has some good news: the iPhone 12’s resale value appears to be depreciating more slowly than its predecessor.

During its first six months of sale, the iPhone 11 family of handsets lost 43.8% of their original value, the site reports. Over the same period, however, iPhone 12 smartphones lost an average of 34.5% 

This figure is also made worse by the unpopular iPhone 12 mini. According to SellCell’s data, the 5.4-inch mini has lost 41% of its value after six months, while the iPhone 12 Pro Max has dipped only 28.9%. 

If you’ve got your heart set on the upcoming iPhone 13, the key question is when you should be looking to sell last year’s handset. If the iPhone 11 data is anything to go by, then the sweet spot seems to be the nine-month mark. Given the iPhone 12 came out on October 23 2020, that essentially means right now.

As you can see from the table above, the iPhone 11’s resale value took a steep fall at the 12-month mark which is around the time of the iPhone 12’s arrival (thanks to a Covid based delay, it arrived in October rather than at Apple’s traditional September event, but close enough for correlation to likely mean causation in this case).