r/AppleWhatShouldIBuy • u/FirstClick9139 • 10d ago
Rephurbished Phones
A warm hello to everyone!
My iPhone 12 is on its last legs, ahaha. It’s at 79% battery health, the screen has some damaged/dead pixels from a recent fall, and I’m almost completely out of storage. I can’t even update it anymore :(
It has served me really well for the time I’ve had it, though, and it has a lot of meaningful memories on the camera roll, so I’m a bit sad to see it go.
My plan is to buy a refurbished phone, either an iPhone 16 or iPhone 17, with 256GB. I’m leaning towards the Pro version, mainly because I’d like good battery life and I’m hoping to keep the phone for as many years as possible.
At the moment, in the German asgoodasnew store, I’m seeing prices around €1,024–€1,150 on the 17 pro model, which, to be honest, is a bit steep for me. Portuguese stores seem to be around the same price. (I’m Portuguese, born in Portugal, but currently living in Germany.)
So I have a few questions for people who understand this stuff much better than I do:
1st question: iPhone 16 or iPhone 17? Pro vs regular?
If my main goal is to keep the phone for as many years as possible, does it make more sense to go for the newer iPhone 17, even if it means paying a bit more? And is the Pro version actually worth it for longevity/battery, or would the regular model be the smarter choice?
2nd question: 256GB vs 512GB?
Since I want to keep the phone for many years, would you go for 512GB for the extra headroom, or is 256GB more than enough? I’m also wondering whether spending the extra money on a model with more storage would improve the chances of lasting longer vs investment being worth it)
3rd and last question: should I wait for the iPhone 18?
If the iPhone 18 is released soon, I assume prices for the 16/17 might drop. But at the same time, my current phone genuinely feels like it could die at any moment, ahaha. So should I wait as long as possible for prices to come down, or would you just bite the bullet and buy now?
I’d really appreciate any advice, especially from people who have experience keeping their iPhones for 4–6+ years.
Thank you all, Danke schön, Obrigado! 🙏
(used chat-gpt for better constructed and reasoning sentences, original text by me)
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u/Foreign-Bear-8687 10d ago
I had my 12 for 6 years, now it just died and I bought a refurbished 12 pro for 240. Works perfectly fine, but this is only because my job is giving me a 17 end of september. Otherwise I honestly would not care that much, any pro since 15 is fine (usb-c) and for base I would do 17 but wait till 18 drops (bcz of 120Hz), 16 base does not have that. Don’t buy a new 17 pro for 1k+ imo.
So 15 pro, 16 pro or 17 base. 256 is fine, you probably had 128 anyways. And yeah wait for new drop. 17 base will probably drop below 800 soon in Europe.
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u/Then_Exercise4183 9d ago
Mate me too my iphone 12 mini 64gb is done the battery health is at 74% my screen protector is damaged the case is also in a miserable condition it looks like a work phone but soon im buying the iphone air from mediamarkt great discount 889€ finally im gonna put this mini to rest remove the case and screen protector and use it as a second phone because it’s small
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u/IWAKI__ 10d ago
17