EN: Geek tip — When's the best time to buy an iPhone? 🤔
The thoughts in this article applies whether you want to buy a brand new phone (from Apple’s website or from any other retailer), or are looking for a second-hand phone (since they lose value over time too, and you should know what’s the going price for that phone is).
Short answer
To put it simply: the best time to buy an iPhone is on the month the new models are announced.
If you’re aiming for the flagship model, there’s one coming out every Semptember for the same price as the ones currently for sale.
If you don’t really want the newest one, all previous models will lower their prices in September too.
If you’re really looking for the least expensive iPhone possible — the iPhone SE —, one came out just last week (April 2020). Read more about this model below.
Why these timings?
So, there’s an explanation for aiming at September and March/April:
Every year in September, the new iPhones are announced (the exception being the iPhone SE, mentioned at the end of the article). These models almost always have a brand new, top-of-the-industry processor. The processor is important: the newer the chip, the more updates your phone will get. Any iPhone model tends to support between 6 and 7 years of software updates, and contrary to popular belief, it keeps a fast performance, doesn’t get slower. (That was the case around 2013, not anymore).
Throughout the year, the iPhones’ prices never drop. A practical example:
The iPhone 11 was announced in October 2019 for €829 (Portuguese prices) for the 64GB model.
In April 2020, this same phone is still for sale for €829, until September.
In September 2020, Apple is all but guaranteed to announce the iPhone 11’s successor. With that announcement, the new model will keep the 11’s price of €829 (in principle), and the iPhone 11 will lower its price, usually by ±€100 (again, Portuguese prices). As a matter of fact, all previous models still for sale usually have a similar price drop.
So, it’s not such a good deal to buy the iPhone 11 in August of 2020 for €829, when:
A month later, the same iPhone will cost around €100 less
For the same €829, a month later you can buy the most recent model.
In conclusion: buying the iPhone 11 one month ahead of the announcement of the iPhone 12 is throwing away €100; might as well wait for a month. In practice, the phone devalues these €100 throughout 12 months: around €8 per month. The sooner you buy the phone in its yearly life cycle, the less money you’re throwing away.
An exception to the rule
At the top of my article I mentioned the latest iPhone SE. In summary: the iPhone 11’s processor in the iPhone 8’s body with the iPhone XR’s camera. This model is for sale at €500 (€330 less than the iPhone 11 at €829).
The iPhone SE is the best purchase for someone who’s looking for a new iPhone but wants to spend the least possible. The SE’s performance is almost identical to the flagship iPhones’: this model has the same processor as the iPhone 11 Pro, and the only difference between them is that the 11/11 Pro have 4GB of RAM and the SE only has 3GB, justifying a slight decrease in expected performance, but still blowing the vast majority of Android phones out of the water during its entire life cycle.
The 2020 iPhone SE (just like the first phone with this moniker) is a total exception. This model doesn’t fit into the annual September updates — the first SE was launched in March 2016 and the newest one had its debut in April 2020 — and a new iteration appears when Apple feels the need to compliment the iPhone lineup with a cheaper model. The best thing to do is to keep an eye on Apple news websites, or just to email me asking about it.
Since the SE was launched not even a week ago at the time of writing… the best moment to buy it is right now.
Summary:
There’s new iPhones every year in September, and very rarely there’s a new iPhone SE in March as an entry model.
The more recent the iPhone, the more recent its processor, and the more updates it supports (up to 7 years).
The same iPhone model doesn’t have a price cut throughout the year, but it does lose value.
When a new iPhone is launched, the previous models have a price cut of around €100.
Regardless of wanting the latest flagship or a previous year’s model, the best moment to buy it is the month in which the newest phone is announced.,
If you’re near September, the best thing to do is wait.
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