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14-day lock
Offer holds when description matches.
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Two business days from arrival to confirmed offer.
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Prepaid USPS label in your inbox.
BBB 4.69
Ten years. Same Phoenix team.
SELL YOUR GALAXY S10E
A Galaxy S10e is worth between $5 and $45 right now. The floor is a 128GB with something broken on it. The ceiling is a sealed 256GB still in its wrapper. The S10e was the cheap one in 2019 and it is the cheap one now, so these are small numbers and we are not going to dress them up. Every step in between is in the table further down the page.
The word matters more than it looks. Swapping a phone at a carrier counter is a discount on something you are about to buy. A Buyback is a sale, and you are on the selling side of it: we take the Galaxy S10e, you take the money, and the two of us are square that day.
There is one part on this phone that can cost you the grade twice over, and it is the button on the right hand side.
The Galaxy S10e is the only S10 with its fingerprint reader in the power button rather than under the screen. Samsung put an ultrasonic scanner beneath the glass on the S10 and the S10 Plus. On the S10e the reader is the side key itself, so one small piece of hardware does two separate jobs: it wakes and locks the phone, and it unlocks it with your thumb.
That means it can fail in two independent ways, and Samsung grading treats both the same. The rule here is a principle rather than a list: if something on the phone does not work, the phone is Faulty. A button that has stopped clicking is one fault. A reader that no longer recognizes your thumb is another. Either one on its own drops a 256GB to Faulty, which is a fifth of what the same phone makes in Good condition.
So test both, separately, before you pick a grade. First the click: press the side key ten times with the screen off and count how many times the display actually lights. Ten out of ten or it is failing. A key that needs a harder press than it used to, or that has gone mushy and silent, is on its way out. Then the reader: lock the phone, rest your thumb flat on the side key without pressing, and see whether it opens first time. Try it three times with a clean dry thumb. If two of the three do not read, the sensor is the problem rather than your hand.
The prices below are unlocked, and unlocked is well clear on this phone. Every carrier column pays less, and the gaps between them are set out in the questions at the bottom of this page. On a payout this small a free carrier unlock is a bigger share of the total than it is almost anywhere else on the site, and if the phone is paid off the carrier has to do it on request, usually inside a day.
Where to sell a Galaxy S10e is a shorter list than it used to be, because a lot of buyers dropped the 2019 Samsungs. We still buy them, working, worn or broken, on a free prepaid label. If yours will not switch on we cannot put a price on it, but we will recycle it for free with a Department of Defense grade wipe, or send it home to you, and neither costs you anything.
LIVE PRICES
The used resale value of a Galaxy S10e runs from $5 for a cracked 128GB to $45 for a sealed 256GB. Most phones people actually send us land between $15 and $35.
Storage, carrier and condition are the whole of it. Every price here is pulled live from our feed rather than typed in by hand.
| Comparison row | 128GB | 256GB |
|---|---|---|
Brand New | $35 | $45 |
Flawless | $35 | $45 |
Good | $25 | $35 |
Average | $22 | $30 |
Fair | $15 | $21 |
Faulty | $5 | $7 |
HOW A BUYBACK WORKS
128GB or 256GB, then your carrier, then your grade. Do the side key tests first, both of them, because on this model that one button decides more grades than the screen does. The number you accept is held for 14 days, so you can post it whenever suits you.
We send a prepaid USPS label by email. Take your Google account and your Samsung account off the phone, factory reset it, then remove the SIM and the microSD card. Just the phone goes in the box. Chargers, cables, cases and the original packaging are not priced in, and no Galaxy S10e ever came with a stylus, so there is nothing else to hunt for.
One of us opens the parcel and checks the phone by hand inside 48 hours, and you get told what we found whichever direction it goes. If it is what you described, payment leaves the same day by gift card, PayPal, bank transfer or check. Every phone is wiped to Department of Defense standards, the bought ones and the recycled ones alike.
SPEC SHEET
Settings, then About phone, shows the model number on the line that starts SM. Both US versions belong on this page and both are worth the same.
| Samsung's name for it | Galaxy S10e |
|---|---|
| Year | Announced February 2019, on sale March 8 |
| Model number, US carrier version | SM-G970U |
| Model number, US unlocked version | SM-G970U1 |
| Display | 5.8 inch flat FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED, 1080 by 2280. Flat, not curved, unlike the S10 and S10 Plus |
| Panel type | OLED, so the burn-in rule applies to this phone too |
| Glass | Gorilla Glass 5 front and back, aluminum frame |
| Fingerprint reader | Capacitive, built into the side power key. The only S10 that works this way |
| Chip, US version | Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 |
| Memory | 6GB, or 8GB on the 256GB |
| Storage we buy | 128GB and 256GB |
| microSD | Yes |
| Rear cameras | 12MP wide with OIS and 16MP ultra wide. Two, not three |
| Front camera | 10MP, single round cutout |
| Battery | 3,100 mAh, 15W wired and 15W wireless |
| Headphone jack | Yes, 3.5mm |
| Weight | 150 g, about 5.3 oz. The lightest phone in the S10 family |
| Water resistance | IP68 |
| S Pen | None. No Galaxy S10 supported one |
| Colors | Prism White, Prism Black, Prism Blue, Prism Green, Canary Yellow and Flamingo Pink. Price is identical across all of them |
GALAXY S10E BUYBACK QUESTIONS
Storage, carrier and condition. A 256GB unlocked in Good shape is $35. Average is $30. A 128GB with something broken on it is $5. The quote box at the top of the page will give you your exact combination.
These are small numbers and we would rather be straight about that than talk them up. It is a seven year old budget phone. If the total does not feel worth the trip to the mailbox, free recycling is a perfectly good answer and we will still wipe it properly.
Yes. Samsung grading runs on one broad rule instead of a checklist: if something on the phone does not work, the phone is Faulty. A power key that needs two presses, or that has gone soft and silent, is not working. A 256GB goes from $35 to $7.
Test it properly rather than guessing. Screen off, press the side key ten times, and count how many times the display lights up. Anything less than ten out of ten is a failing key. It is the most used button on the phone and on an S10e it is doing double duty, so it wears out sooner here than it does elsewhere.
It is a separate fault with the same outcome. On the S10e the fingerprint reader is inside the power key rather than under the screen, so one part carries two independent ways to lose your grade: the click can fail, or the sensor can fail, and either on its own is Faulty.
Check the sensor on its own. Lock the phone, rest your thumb flat on the side key without pressing it, and count how often it opens first time out of three tries, with a clean dry thumb. Two failures out of three is the sensor rather than you. Before you write it off, delete the stored print in Settings, Biometrics and security, Fingerprints, and add it again, because a print registered seven years ago on a younger thumb genuinely does stop matching.
Yes, and it pays $5 at 128GB or $7 at 256GB.
Any crack or chip anywhere is Faulty, however well the phone works. One thing worth knowing before you assume the worst: the S10e is the only S10 with a flat screen rather than one that curves over the edges, so a drop tends to chip the aluminum frame rather than spiderweb the glass. A dented or scuffed frame is wear, not damage. An actual chip out of the glass or the frame edge is damage.
Take the screen protector off before you judge it. A cracked protector over an intact screen is the single most common mistake people make grading themselves, and it costs them money they did not need to lose.
It applies. The S10e screen is OLED like every other Galaxy S, and burn-in grades a phone Faulty. Turn the brightness right up, open a plain white image in a dark room, and tilt the phone so the light travels across the panel. You are looking for a permanent faint ghost of the clock, the status icons or the navigation bar. The detailed version of the test, and Samsung's own on-device tool for it, sits on the Galaxy S23 Plus page.
A single stuck pixel is not burn-in. Neither is the color shift you see looking at any OLED from an angle. Do not lose a grade over either.
No. There is no battery percentage rule on Samsung phones, so there is no number to check and no health screen to go looking for. The S10e came with the smallest battery in the family at 3,100 mAh, and seven years later it will not last the way it did. That is normal aging and it is already reflected in the prices. Only a battery that has genuinely failed matters, and that lands under the same rule as any other broken part.
Count the rear cameras. Two means S10e. Three means Galaxy S10 or Galaxy S10 Plus, because the S10e is the only one in the family without a telephoto lens.
The second check is the edge of the screen. Look at the phone side on. The S10e is flat. The S10 and the S10 Plus curve over both long edges. Third check, run your thumb down the right hand side: on an S10e the power key is also the fingerprint reader, and on the other two the reader is under the front glass.
For certainty, Settings, About phone. SM-G970U and SM-G970U1 are the two US Galaxy S10e model numbers.
Not for money, no. Without power there is no way to test it and no way for either of us to clear your data off it, so a price would be a guess. Leave it on a wall charger for an hour with a plug and cable you have seen work, since a phone that has been flat for years takes longer to show life than you expect. If it stays dead, use the free label anyway and we will recycle it at no charge with a Department of Defense grade wipe first, or post it back to you free. On an S10e that is often the sensible ending.
Not until the balance is gone. Anything on a carrier installment plan or a lease counts as being under a financial obligation, and those are not phones we can buy. Ask your carrier for the payoff figure. On a seven year old phone it is nearly always already settled, and once it is, they owe you a free unlock as well, which is worth more here than the phone's own condition in some cases.
No. Three separate checks, and all three have to come back clean.
The Google account lock, which Samsung calls Factory Reset Protection. Sign out of your Google account and your Samsung account in Settings, and only then factory reset. Doing it the other way leaves the lock in place, the phone cannot get past its own setup screen, and it goes straight back in the post to you.
Knox. Root the phone or flash unofficial software and the Knox counter trips permanently. A tripped counter means no purchase at any grade, whatever else is right with it.
The IMEI. Reported lost, reported stolen or carrier blocked all fail the check. Dial star hash zero six hash to read yours off the screen, and do it before you accept a price.
It does, and on a phone this cheap the proportion is large. A Good 256GB pays $35 unlocked, $25 on AT&T, $20 on T-Mobile, $20 on Verizon and $18 anywhere else.
This page shows the unlocked column, so switch carrier in the quote box if that is not you. Where the phone is paid off, asking the carrier to unlock it is free and usually done within a day, and here it can add roughly half again to what you are paid.
No. Prism White, Prism Black, Prism Blue, Prism Green, Canary Yellow and Flamingo Pink are all worth exactly the same. Canary Yellow was only ever an S10e color, which makes it a useful identification clue, but it has never been worth an extra cent.
Check the shape of the offer, not just the number. A trade-in figure is promotional, it is tied to buying a particular new phone, and it usually comes back as bill credit split across 24 or 36 months. Stop paying that carrier and the remaining credit stops with you.
A Buyback is us purchasing your Galaxy S10e. Cash, within days, no strings, and nobody cares what you spend it on. On a phone worth this little the carrier number is sometimes higher on paper, so read what you have to buy and how long you have to stay to actually collect it.
Back up anything you want to keep, then two steps and the order matters. Settings, Accounts and backup, Manage accounts, and remove your Google account and your Samsung account. Then Settings, General management, Reset, Factory data reset. Accounts first, always, because that is the step that clears the Google account lock. Pictures and full instructions are on our erase your device page.
Take out the SIM and the microSD card afterwards, and delete any eSIM you added. Your photos, your messages and your saved passwords are erased and they cannot be recovered. When the phone reaches us it gets wiped again to Department of Defense standards.
Four choices at checkout. Gift card by email, which is worth about 3 percent more because the brands add a bonus. PayPal, instant, less PayPal's 2.99 percent fee. Bank transfer in 2 to 4 days. Check in 3 to 5 days. All of them leave the same day your phone passes inspection. On an S10e payout the gift card is usually the best of the four, because the bonus goes on and no fee comes off. Sealed Brand New phones are PayPal only.
Storage, carrier, and the grade the side button really earns. A minute to find out, and the price stands for 14 days.
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