Samsung sells truckloads and truckloads of smartphones each year, and with the company’s ride to success on its high-end Galaxies, you’d think that there’s little need for Samsung to continue selling refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphones when new ones are announced. If you follow tech news regularly, you’ll know that companies update their smartphone lines each year, with old phones having 2-year shelf life (or 24-month shelf life, depending upon perspective). Well, the reality is that a number of consumers want a Samsung Galaxy smartphone but don’t care to pick up the latest-generation device due to its high cost. The Galaxy Note 7, the latest phone just announced by Samsung, costs $850 USD here in the States. The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge cost around $800 or so. A Galaxy S6 edge would work just as well for some consumers, though Samsung has often let carriers sell refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphones without getting involved in the effort (or online retailers such as Amazon and eBay).
We’d heard that Samsung was considering selling refurbished phones, but the rumor has now turned true. As of Friday, Samsung has started selling refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphones here in the US. A quick perusal at the Samsung US site shows that the Galaxy Note 4, though two years old, is back in full force, with a price tag of around $399.99. The demand for the Note 4 due to its removable battery and IR blaster have kept this phone in high demand even with US carriers (Verizon still has the Galaxy Note 4 priced at $26 a month — for a two-year-old device!).
The refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphone lineup includes non-Galaxy Note 4 smartphones such as the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S4, Galaxy Note 3, and Galaxy S5. All these phones fall within the last 3 years and are rather recent, so there should be something for everyone. Prices start at around $250-$300, which is a steep price to pay for a Galaxy S4 or Galaxy Note 3, for example.
If you want my advice, I’d suggest you save the money you could spend on a refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphone and place it on a new Samsung Galaxy smartphone such as the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge. After all, $300 would be enough to get a phone with a carrier on a two-year agreement or, better yet, pay off a significant chunk of the S7 or S7 edge’s retail price on a monthly installment plan. This would be a better investment of your $300, since you’d have one of the company’s latest smartphones and a guaranteed 2 years of update eligibility as opposed to these older phones like the Note 3 that are soon to be done with security patches (the Note 3 won’t receive any security updates after October, if Samsung doesn’t terminate its support this month; the Note 3 isn’t getting any more Android OS updates, so you won’t find Marshmallow on the Note 3, I’m afraid).
The choice over a refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphone is yours, but I say these things to look out for your money. If you’re buying a refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphone for someone who wants to dabble with them before getting a new one, or you want to root a phone and install a custom ROM to create your own experience, then you’ll like what you see. If you want a reliable phone for the next 2 years, I wouldn’t recommend these refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphones. The Galaxy J7 from Verizon, for example, would be a better investment than these refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphones. The Galaxy Note 4’s specs were stellar in its day, but at 2 years old, its specs are quite dated at this point. I don’t know how “premium” the Note 4, for example, would be at this point.
Head over to the source link to see which refurbished Samsung Galaxy smartphones live “in the Galaxy.”
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