Skip to footer

iPhone trade-in programs: Where to sell your old smart phone

Which iPhone trade-in program is best? We’ve broken down the big players in the game to find out how to get the most buck for your phone.

Your sibling, your cousin, your creative side

NASA
This golden phonograph record was included on both Voyager spacecraft. The contents of the record, sounds of surf, wind, animals, and music, were chosen by a committee chaired by Cornell University's Carl Sagan. The record also contains images of Earth. The golden cover protecting the record (r.) displays diagrams intended to instruct possible extraterrestrials as to playback of the record.

Okay, let's say that a month has passed, the iPhone 5S is already on sale, and you missed the best time to sell your iPhone 5. Maybe you’ve decided you need another option. Family and/or friends are usually willing to negotiate a decent price for gadgets, plus it is probably less of a risk than Craigslist.

No one willing to buy? Time to have a little fun. You could jailbreak your phone in order to use third-party apps, connect it to a RedEye mini to make it into a TV remote control, channel your inner Thomas Edison (left) and connect it to a phonograph to enjoy some tunes, or create a data-collecting rocket (because why not). The Internet is full of inspiration.

Level of ease: However easy or difficult you would like (though the data-collecting rocket is going to be on the tougher side).

Estimated trade-in value: That is up to you and your loved ones, or your crafting ambition.

7 of 7
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.