UK Phone Value Index 2026: iPhones Held Value, Samsungs Lost 10%

The Headline: Not All Phones Depreciate Alike

Everyone knows phones lose value. Almost nobody knows how much, or how differently, because the data sits inside buyback companies and rarely gets published.

So we published ours.

Between 25 March and 24 July 2026 we logged 12,221 individual price changes across 354 devices. After filtering out noise (full method below), the pattern is stark:

In plain English: over roughly three months, the average flagship iPhone held its value while the average flagship Samsung lost nearly a tenth of it. On a £600 phone, that difference is about £58 — for doing nothing but waiting.

Widen the net beyond flagships and the gap grows. Across all 234 phone variants we tracked above £80:

The median iPhone did not move at all. The median Samsung lost nearly a fifth of its value in a single quarter.

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Why the Gap Is So Wide

Three things drive it, and none of them are about which phone is "better".

Apple ships fewer models and supports them longer. A four-year-old iPhone still receives iOS updates and still has a deep second-hand buyer pool. That sustained demand puts a floor under resale prices. Android flagships typically age out of the buyer's mind faster, and the resale market prices that in.

Android's model range is enormous. Samsung alone sells dozens of handsets a year across S, A, Z Fold and Z Flip lines. Every new tier gives buyers a cheaper alternative to a used older model, which drags second-hand prices down. Apple's narrower range simply has less internal competition.

Launch cycles hit Android harder. When a new flagship lands, the previous generation absorbs the shock. Because Samsung and Google refresh more lines more often, their handsets take that hit more frequently.

None of this makes an Android phone a bad purchase. It does mean that if you own one and you are not using it, the cost of waiting is materially higher.

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The Phones That Actually Gained Value

Not everything fell. A handful of devices rose over the period, and they share a pattern — all were recently launched, where early buyback pricing is cautious while supply settles, then firms up.

This is the exception, not a strategy. The overwhelming majority of devices we track lose value, and older models lose it fastest. Nobody should hold a phone hoping it appreciates — treat these as a quirk of the launch cycle rather than an investment case.

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What This Means If You Are Selling

If you own an Android flagship you have stopped using, the clock is expensive. A 9.7 per cent quarterly slide on a £600 Samsung is roughly £19 a month evaporating. See what your Samsung is worth before another quarter goes.

If you own an iPhone, you have more breathing room — but not unlimited. Our flagship iPhone figure covers a period with no new iPhone launch in it. That is the crucial caveat: the big iPhone drops cluster around Apple's September keynote, not across the summer. Check your iPhone's value ahead of the iPhone 18 announcement rather than after it.

If you own a Pixel, you sit between the two at −5.3 per cent on flagships. Check your Pixel's value if it is sitting unused.

Whatever you own, the worst option is the drawer. Every device in this dataset was worth more at the start of the window than the end, with a handful of launch-cycle exceptions. Waiting is a decision with a price tag. If you want your own number rather than an average, get an instant quote — it takes about 30 to 60 seconds, and the price is locked for 21 days.

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Method — How We Calculated This

We are publishing the method in full because a number without a method is just a claim.

Source. Every change to our buyback pricing is written to an internal price index log. This report covers 12,221 logged price movements across 354 devices, from 25 March to 24 July 2026.

Filters applied, each one designed to remove a specific way the numbers could mislead:

1. Accepted changes only. We used only price changes that were accepted or auto-accepted into live pricing — not proposals that were dismissed or still pending.
2. At least two observations, 45+ days apart. A variant needed a genuine start and end point across a meaningful period, not a single blip.
3. No manually pinned prices. Any variant whose price was manually overridden was excluded, so hand-set prices could not masquerade as market movement.
4. Actively bought devices only. Devices we no longer actively purchase were excluded.
5. £80 minimum starting price. On a £9 handset, a £4 move is −44 per cent and tells you nothing useful. The floor keeps percentages meaningful. The flagship cut raises this to £300.

What survived the filters: 234 phone variants, of which 108 were flagships at £300 or more (41 Apple, 45 Samsung, 22 Google).

Honest limitations. These are our own buyback prices, not a market-wide index — another buyer's numbers would differ in level, though we would expect the brand pattern to hold. Sample sizes per brand are in the dozens, not thousands, so treat single-model figures as indicative. The window contains no major iPhone launch, which means our Apple figure is flattered relative to what a September-inclusive window would show. And "value" here means what a buyback service pays, which is lower than a private sale and higher than most trade-in vouchers.

We would rather state those caveats than overclaim. The brand-level gap is large enough to survive them.

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For Journalists and Researchers

This data is free to cite in articles, reports and research, provided you credit TechLoop and link to this page so readers can see the methodology.

We can supply additional cuts on request, usually within a day:

• Depreciation by individual model, storage tier or category
• Tablet, smartwatch and games console equivalents (we track all of them)
• A fresh cut timed to a specific launch — the iPhone 18 keynote in September is when these numbers move most, and we will run a launch-week analysis
• Commentary on what a given launch does to older handset values

Get in touch through our contact page and we will turn it around quickly, including under embargo if you need it to line up with a publication date.

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The Bottom Line

Phones are depreciating assets, but they do not depreciate equally. Over three months of tracked data, flagship iPhones held their value, Pixels lost around 5 per cent, and Samsungs lost nearly 10 per cent. Across the broader range, the median Samsung shed 18 per cent while the median iPhone did not move.

The lesson is not "buy Apple". It is that the cost of leaving a phone in a drawer depends on what phone it is — and for most Android handsets, that cost is significant and compounding.

If you have one sitting unused, find out what it is worth today. Today's number is almost always better than next quarter's.

This index covers 25 March to 24 July 2026 and reflects TechLoop's own tracked buyback pricing. Figures are illustrative of relative brand performance rather than a market-wide index, and all prices change over time. We update this index quarterly and run an additional cut in the week of any major phone launch. TechLoop quotes are live and lock for 21 days — check a live quote at /sell for current pricing on your exact model, storage and condition.