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Ten years. Same Phoenix team.
IPHONE XS BUYBACK
A used iPhone XS pays from $12 at the bottom of the table below to $107 at the top. Almost nobody owns the phone at the top, because it means a 512GB that was never switched on. Capacity moves the number a little. What has happened to the screen moves it far more, and one five second test tells you more about that than your own eyes will.
Worth saying before you pick anything. Much of what moves the number on an eight year old iPhone is not on the outside of the phone at all. Whether it is still tied to a network, whether the last installment on it was ever paid, whether an Apple Account is still signed in, whether the display in it came from Apple: none of that shows up in a photograph, and none of it is what a counter has time to ask about. A Buyback is a purchase, so we are buying the record along with the parts, and every item on that list is something you can check yourself before you commit to a price. The network answer on this model is not the obvious one either. A Verizon 512GB can pay more than an unlocked one, and the carrier question further down sets out exactly where.
Before you pick a grade, do one thing. Press hard on an app icon.
The iPhone XS is one of the last iPhones Apple built with a screen that can feel how hard you are pressing. It is called 3D Touch. Apple dropped it after this generation, so the iPhone 11 does not have it, and the iPhone XR sold next to the XS never had it either. On an XS it is real hardware sitting under the glass.
Here is the test, and it takes about five seconds. Go to the home screen and press firmly on the Camera icon, or Mail, or Settings. On a working XS display the phone answers almost instantly: a short thump under your finger and a menu of shortcuts. The important part is that it responds to the pressure, not to the waiting. Now try again but rest your finger lightly and hold it there. A menu turns up eventually on any iPhone, which is why holding is not the test. Firm and immediate is the test.
If a firm press does nothing, and the only way you can make the menu appear is by waiting, that phone probably has a replacement screen. Almost no aftermarket iPhone XS display includes the pressure sensing layer, because it costs money and the copies leave it out. An aftermarket or replaced display grades Faulty here, every time, however good the screen looks and however well it works otherwise.
Two honest caveats before you write your phone off. 3D Touch can be switched off in software, so check Settings, then Accessibility, then Touch, then 3D Touch and Haptic Touch, and make sure it is on. There is a sensitivity setting there too, with a picture to practice on. Set it to Light and try the test again. The other caveat is that a screen replaced by Apple with a genuine part still passes this test, because the real part has the sensor in it. So what a dead 3D Touch really tells you is that a copy panel has been fitted at some point, which is exactly the thing that changes your grade.
The rest of it is plain. Sell your iPhone XS here whether it is mint, scratched, cracked or has a screen somebody else fitted, and the Buyback price for each of those is in the grid below. Not sure whether yours is an XS at all? It is the 5.8-inch one with a stainless steel edge and two cameras. The 6.5-inch version is the iPhone XS Max, and the colorful aluminum one with a single camera is the iPhone XR.
LIVE PRICES
The used resale value of an iPhone XS runs from $12 for a 64GB with a crack in it to $107 for a sealed 512GB. A tidy everyday 256GB sits around $54.
Three things set the number: how much storage it has, what condition it is in, and nothing else. Each figure below is read live from our price feed at the moment you load the page.
| Comparison row | 64GB | 256GB | 512GB |
|---|---|---|---|
Brand New | $67 | $87 | $107 |
Flawless | $49 | $64 | $79 |
Good | $39 | $54 | $62 |
Average | $33 | $45 | $52 |
Fair | $23 | $32 | $37 |
Faulty | $12 | $16 | $19 |
HOW IT WORKS
Pick 64GB, 256GB or 512GB, pick unlocked or your carrier, then pick the condition. Do the firm-press test first. A phone with a copy screen has to be quoted as Faulty, and finding that out now is far better than finding out when the offer changes at inspection. Accept a Buyback price and it is held for 14 days.
We email a prepaid USPS label the moment you accept. Copy off anything you want, sign out of iCloud so the phone stops being tied to you, then erase it from Settings. Keep your SIM, leave the tray in the phone, and skip the charger and the box. They add nothing to the price.
The phone is checked within 48 hours of arriving. If it is what you said it was, the payment leaves the same day, and you choose whether that is a gift card, PayPal, a bank transfer or a check. Everything that comes through here is wiped to DoD standards, bought or recycled, no exceptions.
SPEC SHEET
Model numbers are taken from Apple's identify page rather than from a third-party list, because those lists get iPhone A-numbers wrong surprisingly often. Yours is on the back in fine print and in Settings, General, About.
| Apple's name for it | iPhone XS, pronounced ten S |
|---|---|
| Released | September 2018 |
| US model number | A1920 |
| Other model numbers | A2097 is the version sold across most of the rest of the world and it turns up here as an import. A2098 is Japan, A2099 and A2100 are mainland China. Every one of them quotes on this page. |
| Display | 5.8-inch Super Retina OLED, 2436 by 1125 at 458 ppi |
| Pressure sensing | 3D Touch. The XS and XS Max were the last iPhones to have it, and most replacement screens do not. |
| Chip | A12 Bionic |
| Storage we buy | 64GB, 256GB and 512GB. The XS is the first iPhone Apple sold at 512GB. |
| Rear cameras | Two 12MP lenses, a wide and a 2x telephoto, on a diagonal in the corner |
| Unlocking | Face ID. No home button, no Touch ID. |
| Charging | Lightning, plus wireless charging through the glass back |
| SIM | Nano-SIM tray plus eSIM in the US. The tray must be present and undamaged. |
| Water resistance | IP68, rated to 2 meters for 30 minutes when new. Seals age, so do not test it. |
| Colors | Silver, Space Gray and Gold. Gold is the quickest way to know it is not an iPhone X. |
IPHONE XS QUESTIONS
It depends on storage and condition and on nothing else. A 512GB in Good condition is $62, the same phone at Average is $52, and a 64GB with a cracked screen is $12. Put your exact one through the quote tool at the top of this page for its Buyback price.
Press firmly on an app icon on the home screen. A genuine iPhone XS display feels the pressure and answers within a moment, with a small thump and a shortcut menu. A copy panel cannot feel pressure at all, so nothing happens until you have held your finger there long enough for the ordinary long-press menu to open.
Check the setting before you conclude anything, because 3D Touch can be turned off. It lives in Settings, Accessibility, Touch, 3D Touch and Haptic Touch. Make sure it is switched on, set the sensitivity to Light, and try once more.
If it still does nothing, the screen has almost certainly been replaced with an aftermarket part, and that grades the phone Faulty. A screen replaced by Apple using a genuine part keeps working, so this test is specifically catching copy panels. It is worth doing because a swapped screen can look perfect and most owners have no idea their phone has one, especially if they bought it secondhand.
Yes, and please say so when you build your price. An aftermarket or replaced display grades Faulty, which is $12 at 64GB, $16 at 256GB and $19 at 512GB. Telling us up front costs you nothing and saves the whole business of a revised offer after it lands here. Nobody is annoyed about a repaired phone. We buy plenty of them.
Hardest pair in this generation, because they are the same size and shape with the same stainless band. Two ways to be sure. Color first: gold only exists on the XS, so a gold one is settled. Model number second, and it is definitive. A1920 is an iPhone XS. A1865 or A1901 is an iPhone X, and that page has its own prices, which are lower.
Size. The XS has a 5.8-inch screen and fits a hand comfortably. The XS Max is 6.5 inches and noticeably bigger in every direction. If you have nothing to compare against, look at Settings, General, About: A1920 is the XS, A1921 is the iPhone XS Max. The Max is worth more, so it is worth getting right.
Yes. Every crack and every chip grades Faulty, wherever it is: front glass, back glass, or the covers over the two camera lenses. There is no hairline crack small enough to ignore and no arrangement where a phone that still works perfectly escapes the rule. Faulty is a paying row on this page, so choose it honestly and the number you see is the number you get.
It can. The XS has an OLED panel, and OLED can keep a faint permanent ghost of anything that sat still on it for years, usually the status bar or the keyboard. Burn-in grades Faulty. Check it in a dim room with the brightness up and a plain white screen, looking across the panel at an angle rather than straight on. This is one thing the iPhone XR does not have to worry about, because its screen is LCD.
Under 80 percent it is Faulty, and so is any phone showing the service battery message. Settings, Battery, Battery Health and Charging gives you the number. A 2018 battery that has never been swapped is very often below 80 by now. It is the single most common reason an iPhone XS that looks immaculate cannot be graded Flawless, so look before you choose.
Then the phone is Faulty. There is no fingerprint reader on an iPhone XS to fall back on, so if the sensors in the notch have failed there is no working biometric way into the phone at all. Test it properly: lock the screen, pick it up and look at it. Face ID that works only sometimes, or that has been disabled by an error message, both count as not working.
No, and it is worth explaining why rather than only saying no. A phone that has no power cannot be tested, so we cannot confirm what we are buying, and your data cannot be erased from it, which we are not willing to skip. What we will do is take it for free recycling: a free label out to you, a DoD-grade wipe once we can reach the storage, and proper disposal. Or we send it back to you free. Charge it from a wall socket for a solid half hour first, though, because a completely drained XS can sit black for a long time before it shows anything.
Not until the plan is settled. Anything with payments still running on it, a carrier installment agreement or a lease, counts as being under a financial obligation, and we do not purchase devices under financial obligations. Check the balance in your carrier account. Once it is zero, come back and it quotes like any other iPhone XS.
No to both. A clean ESN is required at every grade including Faulty, and a phone that has been reported lost or stolen, blocked by its carrier, or left signed in to an Apple Account will not pass. The Apple Account part is the fixable one and it is on you before shipping: sign out of iCloud, erase the phone, done. A locked phone that arrives here goes straight back out unpaid, which wastes a week for everybody.
The carrier lock first, and on this model the answer is not the usual one. AT&T, T-Mobile and Other come in under the unlocked price in every row at every capacity. Verizon does not. On the 512GB a Verizon iPhone XS pays more than an unlocked one at Good, Average and Fair, and matches it at the other three grades. On the 256GB the two are level at the top two grades and unlocked is ahead below that. On the 64GB unlocked leads everywhere. Pick the network the phone is genuinely on rather than assuming unlocked is the ceiling.
The other half of the question is the offer your carrier or Apple puts in front of you. A trade-in there is credit: it comes off a new phone, or it arrives as a bill credit paid out monthly for two or three years, and it usually needs a plan attached. A Buyback is a sale. We send money, once, and you owe us nothing afterwards. Both are worth pricing before you decide, and this page shows our side of it without you having to ask.
Back up first if there is anything you want. Then Settings, your name at the top, scroll down, Sign Out. That is the step that unhooks Find My. Then Settings, General, Transfer or Reset iPhone, Erase All Content and Settings, and enter your Apple Account password when it asks. Our erase your device page has the whole thing laid out if you want to follow along. We wipe every phone to DoD standards on arrival too, but that is a second layer, not a substitute, and a phone that shows up still signed in has to be returned.
Four options, chosen at checkout, all paid the same day the phone clears inspection. Gift card comes out about 3 percent ahead because brands add their own bonus on top. PayPal is immediate but PayPal charges 2.99 percent on it. Bank transfer runs 2 to 4 days, a check 3 to 5. If you are selling a sealed Brand New iPhone XS, PayPal is the only method available on that grade.
Press an app icon, pick your storage and grade, and the number is on screen in about a minute.
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