Upgrade your smartphone smartly

India is witnessing the huge mobile revolution. Buyers have been served with countless choices to relish the technology with more and more smartphones swamping in the market, however, often with a question lingering back of the mind: Which one is the best value for money phone with high ROI (Return On Investment)? When to sell the old phone?Etc.

Update: ZeroWaste is now InstaCash

Many such questions form a cloud of confusion. Here we are highlighting few parameters to be taken into consideration before buying a smartphone and to decide the perfect time to sell your smartphone:

Hardware Cost of Ownership (COO): It is one of the major factors to look up if you are concerned about the expenses of owning a smartphone. Hardware COO includes outright purchase price of the phone and then we can calculate daily/monthly/yearly COO to know how much the phone will cost us on daily/monthly/yearly basis.

Hardware COO/Month= Purchase price/ Total months of ownership

A) Propensity: If you are a tech lover and you have a tendency to switch the phone frequently no matter whether it is an expensive or a less costly phone then in this case the major deciding factor would be the price of the device.

Suppose you have three smartphones, X (OnePlus) Y (Samsung), & Z (iPhone).

X’s purchase price is 25,000/-

Y’s purchase price is 34,000/-

Z’s purchase price is 54,000/-

So after 18 months their respective ownership cost will be:

As you can see “X’s“ hardware COO is less than the popular expensive phone “Y” & “Z” after 18 months.

Thus your behavior and your desires pick the parameters of your phone selection.

Also Read: Best Budget Phones Under 10k

B) Durability: Yes, it also pours an impact on COO of the phone. So if you are looking for durability in a phone then in this case total time of ownership would play an important part to calculate the COO of the device.

As we can see COO is inversely proportionate to durability. That means COO decreases with the increasing time of ownership.

Suppose X & Y’s durability is 18 months and Z’s durability is 36 months then in this case Z’s COO is definitely higher than X but it is lesser than Y, although Y’s purchase price is lesser than Z. Thus buying an expensive phone with higher durability will also be cost effective for you.

C) Buyback Value: This fulfills an essential role while choosing a smartphone. A smartphone with a high buyback value reduces the overall cost and COO of the phone. You can understand it better with the below table.

D) Capacity: Many people spend a lot of money over a phone having higher-capacity. Is it really cost effective? According to an interesting take away from a study if you disburse extra money to buy a higher-capacity phone of the same model this would not add much value to its resale value.

So if your work doesn’t require a phone with higher-capacity, go for the lower one.

With the above all parameters we can decide which phone to buy. Now the question is when to sell a used smartphone?

Reselling is all about right timing- everything has its peak value at a point of its life span.

• Typically within the first year from the launch date you can get the best buyback value of your phone. If we talk about iPhones than Apple has a tendency to announce a new phone annually. The optimum time to sell an iPhone is just about a month before the new version is announced. Same applies with the Samsung’s S series smartphones and OnePlus. But there are many other brands in the market that launch a new phone on monthly or quarterly basis. Such phones reduce their worth faster than the high end flagship phone of the popular brands. So basically you can get more value for current model rather than the previous model.
• Have a look at table 3, the buyback value of all three brands reduced drastically within the first year and after that it almost became constant. So if you are a frequent buyer then you can sell your smartphone within a year just before the launch of its new version. And if you are not a tech savvy & do not change your phone frequently then take your decision on the basis of final total COO.

Total Cost= Direct Cost + Indirect Cost

Total COO/Month= Total Cost/ Total months of ownership

There you go: it’s not a rocket science. You just have to think wisely over all these factors and choose your phone smartly.

Also Read: 5 things you should do for safe selling of your used smartphone

Note: This post was originally published in November 2016 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.