Experts reveal the exact time you should sell your iPhone, or risk losing 65% of its value

(Image credit: Future)

If Apple follows its previous cadence we can expect it to announce the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro lineups this September and with that in mind, you might already be looking at the best time to sell your current handset. And if you aren't, it's time to start.

Whenever Apple releases a new iPhone, trading an old one in or selling it is always a good way to make the upgrade more palatable. But when's the best time to do it??

That's something people have often wondered when planning their next iPhone purchase but now we have the answer. And it's soon.

Time to sell up

According to figures put together by the trade-in people at SellCell, the perfect time to sell your old iPhone is between August 19th and August 26th. Delay, and you risk potentially losing as much as 65% of the value of your old iPhone.

That's based on figures for the last couple of big iPhone launches; the iPhone 13 in 2021 and the iPhone 14 in 2022.

"In 2021, iPhone 11 and 12 series had lost up to $189 of its value between August 26th and September 23rd, during the 28 days prior to the release of iPhone 13; a 60% depreciation in value against MSRP," SellCell notes in an email to iMore.

It was even worse for selling an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13 to upgrade to the iPhone 14 last year, too. "This pattern repeated in 2022, with an iPhone 12 or 13 series losing up to $261 between August 19th and September 16th; a 65% depreciation against MSRP," we're told.

That would suggest that anyone waiting to get their hands on the best iPhones of the year should probably consider selling their iPhone 13 or iPhone 14 before August 26. That should give them the most time with their current handset while still allowing them to get the best price possible. Some trade-in companies let you lock a price in for a period of time, too, allowing sellers to keep their old iPhone while they wait for Apple's new models to go on sale.

That could be the perfect solution for upgraders this September. The iPhone 15 is shaping up to be a big upgrade thanks to the addition of the iPhone 14 Pro's Dynamic Island, making the upgrade a worthwhile endeavor. The iPhone 15 Pro is expected to get a slight redesign and gain a new Action button, too.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.