Phone makers and cell carriers are so obsessed with getting your old phone, what do they do with it, and do they sell it again?
According to a report published in the Wall Street Journal, telecom companies buy your old iPhone and renew it and sell it later, but the process goes through several stages.
Do you delete your data?
The data is scanned, cleaned, and two-thirds of the phones that reach wholesalers’ facilities are sold, while another part goes to companies specialized in cleaning, refurbishing and selling these phones to buyers in “Amazon” or “Backmarket”, which is a famous market for used phones.
The renewal process begins with erasing and sorting the data, as special software removes any data left by the previous owner.
The workers then run tests on the machine to make sure everything is working like microphone, speakers, screen, camera, buttons, wireless radios and so on.
How does it come back again?
During this step, they also test the batteries. Devices with a battery health of 80% or less, that is, their power-holding capacity has decreased by 20% or more, are set aside to be resold cheaply elsewhere.
To clean the devices, workers use toothbrushes to get into the cracks, plastic tools to remove stickers, hand sanitizers and microfiber cloths to wipe down the screens.
Price setting
The phone is then examined and a score is assigned so that a price can be determined, based on how clean and scratch-free the device is.
Next, the staff stuffed the clean phone into a padded bag and attached a box containing a new charging cable.
A phone selling site like Backmarket usually prices refurbished products, depending on their final grade, 20% to 30% less than the retail price of the same phone bought new.
