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14-day lock
Offer holds when description matches.
48-hr processing
Two business days from arrival to confirmed offer.
Free shipping
Prepaid USPS label in your inbox.
BBB 4.69
Ten years. Same Phoenix team.
SELL YOUR GALAXY S23 ULTRA
A Galaxy S23 Ultra pays $48 to $335. Between those two numbers sit three storage sizes and six rows of wear, and the table below has every one of them. Read the next few paragraphs before you pick a row, because on this phone one small object moves your number further than anything else you can do.
Two things about that table before you read it. Good means light wear you cannot pick out at arm's length, which is the honest grade for most 2023 Ultras that lived in a case. And the top two rows are level: Brand New and Flawless pay exactly the same at 256GB, at 512GB and at 1TB. Of the two, Flawless is the better one to be in, because a sealed Brand New phone can only be paid through PayPal while a Flawless one can be paid any of our four ways.
Worth being plain about what this is, because it explains the fuss over a stylus. A carrier's offer is a flat figure decided before anyone has seen your phone, so an Ultra with the pen in the slot and an Ultra without one are worth the same to them, and the cost of that gets spread quietly across everybody who sells one. A Buyback is priced the other way round. We are buying the actual phone, which is why the grid on this page can afford to be specific, and why describing yours accurately is not a favor you are doing us. It is what stops a careless seller being paid out of your number.
Before you do anything else, find the S Pen.
The S Pen is the one part of a Galaxy S23 Ultra that is not optional. It shipped in the box and it lives in a silo in the bottom edge of the frame, so if it is not in that slot when the phone reaches us, the phone grades Faulty. Not one grade down. Straight to the bottom row of the table below, from whichever row it would otherwise have been in. At every size, the pen is worth more than the entire Faulty price of the phone, for a stylus that weighs about as much as two quarters.
It is worth knowing why Samsung treats that pen as part of the phone rather than an accessory. The S23 Ultra is the year Samsung flattened the Ultra's screen. In its own words the display got "a reduced curvature to create a larger and flatter surface area", and the reason was the pen: a curved edge is a bad place to write. The whole front of this phone was reshaped around a stylus. A buyer will not take one without it, so we cannot pay for one without it.
So go and look. Press the end of the pen and it clicks out of the bottom edge. If it is gone, check the car, the couch and the bottom of every bag before you quote, because Samsung sells the replacement and it is the same part in every color the phone came in. The part number is EJ-PS918. What we cannot do is pay an Ultra price for an Ultra with an empty slot. Everything else in the box, the cable, the case, the charger, adds nothing and should stay home.
Make sure it is an Ultra first. Turn the phone over: three separate lenses in a stack down the left, plus two more in a small cluster, means five rear cameras and that is only the Ultra. Six point eight inches of screen, 8.25 ounces in the hand, and the pen slot. If yours has three lenses and no slot you want the Galaxy S23 Plus or the Galaxy S23, each with its own prices.
The table below is for unlocked phones, and on this model unlocked wins by a lot at every size and every grade. Pick your real carrier in the quote box and you will see your own number instead. If your carrier still has a lock on it, ask them to release it before you quote. It is free once the phone is paid off and on an Ultra it is worth more than an hour of your time.
Where to sell a Galaxy S23 Ultra comes down to whose number survives someone actually opening the box. Sell my Galaxy S23 Ultra turns up plenty of buyers. Not many of them inspect inside 48 hours, pay the same day, and lock the price for 14 days while the phone is in the mail. Shipping is free both ways, and if you decide against it after we have looked, the phone comes back free.
LIVE PRICES
The used resale value of a Galaxy S23 Ultra runs from $48 for a 256GB with a crack or a missing S Pen up to $335 for a sealed 1TB. Most sellers land between $221 and $300.
Storage, wear and whether the pen is in the slot are what move the number. Every figure below is pulled live from our price feed.
| Comparison row | 256GB | 512GB | 1TB |
|---|---|---|---|
Brand New | $275 | $295 | $335 |
Flawless | $275 | $295 | $335 |
Good | $240 | $260 | $300 |
Average | $221 | $239 | $276 |
Fair | $144 | $156 | $180 |
Faulty | $48 | $52 | $60 |
HOW A BUYBACK WORKS
Pick 256GB, 512GB or 1TB, pick your carrier, pick the grade. Click the S Pen out of the bottom edge before you choose anything, because no pen means Faulty and there is no point being surprised by that later. The Buyback price you accept is locked for 14 days.
A prepaid USPS label lands in your inbox. Sign out of your Google account and your Samsung account, then reset the phone, then push the S Pen back into its slot and box the two together. Leave the charger, the cable and the case at home. None of them add a cent and all of them go missing in transit.
We check the phone by hand within 48 hours of it landing. If it is what you told us, payment goes out the same day by gift card, PayPal, bank transfer or check. Every phone that comes through this building gets a Department of Defense grade wipe, bought or recycled, no exceptions.
SPEC SHEET
Specs below come from Samsung's own launch material. The model number is printed inside the phone: open Settings, tap About phone, and read the line that starts SM.
| Samsung's name for it | Galaxy S23 Ultra |
|---|---|
| Year | 2023, on sale in the US from February 17 |
| Model number, US carrier version | SM-S918U |
| Model number, US unlocked version | SM-S918U1 |
| Display | 6.8-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 1 to 120Hz. Flatter than the S22 Ultra's, which Samsung did deliberately to give the S Pen more room |
| Chip | Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy |
| Memory | 12GB |
| Storage we buy | 256GB, 512GB and 1TB |
| Rear cameras | 200MP wide, 12MP ultra wide, 10MP with 3x optical zoom and 10MP with 10x optical zoom |
| Front camera | 12MP |
| Battery | 5,000 mAh |
| Charging | 45W wired |
| Weight | 8.25 oz, about 234 g |
| Size | 6.43 by 3.07 by 0.35 inches |
| Glass | Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, front and back |
| S Pen | Built in, stored in the bottom edge of the frame. Samsung's replacement is part EJ-PS918 and comes in the phone's colors |
| Water resistance | IP68 |
| SIM | Nano-SIM plus eSIM |
| Colors | Phantom Black, Cream, Green and Lavender, plus the colors Samsung sold only on its own site. All of them quote the same |
GALAXY S23 ULTRA BUYBACK QUESTIONS
Storage, wear, carrier and the S Pen. A 512GB unlocked in Good condition is $260. Take that same phone down to Average and it is $239. A 1TB with a cracked back is $180 if the crack is really only heavy wear, and $60 once it is a genuine crack. Run yours through the quote box at the top for the exact figure.
Yes, and this is the single most expensive thing on the page, so here it is straight. A Galaxy S23 Ultra with no S Pen grades Faulty. Not a grade lower, all the way to the bottom row, even if the phone itself is spotless and works perfectly.
The numbers: a 1TB in Good condition is $300. The same phone with an empty slot is $60. At 256GB it is $240 against $48.
Which is why it is worth twenty minutes of looking. Check under the car seat, down the side of the couch, and in the pocket of whatever bag the phone travelled in. Samsung still sells the pen for this phone, part EJ-PS918, in the same colors the phone came in. What we cannot do is pay an Ultra price for an Ultra with nothing in the slot.
Look at the bottom edge. A slot with a pen in it means Ultra, and no other phone in the S23 family has one. Then count the rear lenses: the Ultra has five, the Galaxy S23 Plus and the Galaxy S23 have three. The Ultra is also the heavy one at 8.25 ounces against 6.91 for the Plus.
If you would rather read it than judge it, open Settings and tap About phone. SM-S918U or SM-S918U1 is this page. SM-S916U is the Plus, SM-S911U is the standard S23 and SM-S711U is the S23 FE. The U on the end is the version US carriers sold and U1 is the US unlocked one. Both quote here at the same price.
Yes. A crack or a chip anywhere on it, front, back or over a camera lens, grades Faulty, and Faulty is a price rather than a no. A 256GB in that state is $48, a 512GB is $52 and a 1TB is $60.
This one catches people out because the phone still works. It does not matter. The rule is about the glass, not the function, and a cracked Ultra is a cracked Ultra whether or not it still takes a 200MP photo. Pick Faulty when you quote and nothing changes when we open the box.
Burn-in grades Faulty. This phone has an OLED panel, and every Galaxy S does, so it is a real risk on a 2023 phone rather than a theoretical one. Burn-in is a faint permanent ghost of something that sat in one place for months: the clock, the status bar icons, the row of navigation buttons across the bottom.
Check it in thirty seconds. Turn the brightness all the way up, open a plain white image full screen, and take it into a dim room. Tilt it. A ghost that follows the glass and does not move with the picture is burn-in. If you find one, quote Faulty. A 512GB is $52 that way. The Galaxy S23 Plus page has the longer version of this test if you want to be thorough about it.
Yes, and this is the rule that surprises Samsung sellers most, so read it as a principle rather than a list. If something on the phone does not work, the phone is Faulty. That is the whole rule.
A speaker that buzzes, a mic nobody can hear you through, a volume key that has gone soft, a fingerprint reader under the glass that no longer knows your thumb, a wireless charger that does nothing, one dead pixel. All Faulty. It does not matter how small the fault is or how good the rest of the phone looks. Grade it Faulty, get paid the Faulty price, and there is no argument at the bench.
There is no battery percentage rule on Samsung phones here, and no screen for you to go hunting for. Do not worry about the number.
The only way the battery touches your grade is the ordinary one: if it genuinely does not work, that is a fault like any other fault and the phone is Faulty. A 5,000 mAh battery that has aged into a shorter day is just a three year old battery, and it does not cost you a grade.
Not that one, no. With no power we cannot test what we are buying and, more to the point, you cannot get your data off it and neither can we clear it properly. Guessing at a price for a sealed box helps nobody. Send it on the same free label and we will recycle it for you at no charge, wiped to Department of Defense standards on the way, or mail it back free if you would rather keep it. Plug it into a wall charger for a full hour first. A phone that has been flat in a drawer for a year can take a while to show anything at all.
No, not while there is money owing on it. A phone on a carrier installment plan or a lease is a phone under a financial obligation, and we do not purchase those. Clear the balance, take full ownership, and it quotes like any other Ultra on this page. Your carrier can tell you the payoff figure in a couple of minutes.
We cannot buy either, and there are three separate checks hiding in that question.
The Google account lock, the one Samsung and Google call Factory Reset Protection, has to be off. It stays armed if you reset the phone without removing your account first, and a locked phone is useless to the next owner. Remove your Google account and your Samsung account in Settings, then reset.
The Knox counter has to be untripped. Knox trips when the phone has been rooted or had unofficial software flashed onto it, it cannot be reset back, and a tripped counter means we cannot buy the phone at any grade.
The IMEI has to be clean. Reported lost, reported stolen or blocked by a carrier all fail, and the phone comes back to you unpaid. Dial star hash zero six hash to read your IMEI before you commit.
It changes it a lot on this phone, and unlocked wins every time. Take a 1TB in Good condition: unlocked is $300, AT&T is $225, T-Mobile is $225 and Verizon is $123.
The table on this page is unlocked, so switch the quote over if yours is locked. Better still, call your carrier and ask them to unlock it. Once the phone is paid off and has been on the account a while they do it for nothing, and on a 1TB Ultra that phone call is worth more than a hundred dollars.
No. Phantom Black, Cream, Green, Lavender and the online-only colors Samsung sold on its own site all quote the same, to the cent. Same for the S Pen, which shipped color matched to the phone: a black pen in a green Ultra is fine as long as there is a pen.
No. A trade-in is what Samsung or your carrier does, and what you get back is credit: money off the next phone, or a monthly discount that only exists as long as you stay on that plan for another two or three years. A Buyback is us buying the Galaxy S23 Ultra outright.
The money is cash, it is not tied to anything you buy next, and the price is locked for 14 days while the phone is in the mail. It is worth doing both sums before you decide. A carrier trade-in credit that vanishes if you switch networks is worth less than it looks on the sticker.
Remove the accounts first, then reset. In Settings, open Accounts and backup, then Manage accounts, and remove your Google account and your Samsung account. Then Settings, General management, Reset, Factory data reset. Doing it in that order is what switches off the Google account lock. Reset first and the lock stays armed and the phone comes straight back to you. There are step by step instructions on our erase your device page.
Take the SIM card out and, if you set up an eSIM, delete that too. Your photos, messages and saved passwords are erased and cannot be recovered. We wipe every phone again to Department of Defense standards when it arrives, but yours has to come first.
Four ways, you pick at checkout. Gift card is emailed and averages about 3 percent more than the rest, because the brands add their own bonus on top. PayPal is instant and PayPal charges 2.99 percent for it. Bank transfer takes 2 to 4 days. A check takes 3 to 5. All four go out the same day the phone passes inspection. The single exception is a sealed Brand New phone, which we can only pay for through PayPal.
Storage, carrier, and the grade that matches the wear. About a minute, and we hold the Buyback price for 14 days. Check the S Pen slot before you start.
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