Buyers across the refurbishment and repair industries are competing for parts that were previously considered worthless scrap.<\/p>\n
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Salvage values climb as parts become scarce<\/p>\n Marketplace figures from B-Stock, a large business-to-business platform for used smartphones<\/a>, show pricing for both Apple<\/a> and Samsung<\/a> devices rose in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the prior two quarters.<\/p>\n Grade D handsets, the lowest condition tier, made up the bulk of units sold last year, with millions changing hands through the platform.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n In the first half of 2026, mid-tier C-condition phones actually overtook the lowest tier by volume, accounting for 37.8% of sales versus 31.6% for the bottom grade.<\/p>\n The iPhone 17 Pro Max fetched the strongest average price among Apple models, reaching $940 across all condition levels during the quarter.<\/p>\n Samsung’s top-selling models were the S23 Ultra, the S22 Ultra and the S24 Ultra, with the S22 Ultra pushing the older Z Fold5 out of second place.<\/p>\n After the Galaxy S26 launched, prices for previous-generation Samsung flagships climbed as well, with a well-kept S23 Ultra reaching $425 in June, its strongest month of the year.<\/p>\n Repair industry sees new value in broken parts<\/p>\n B-Stock has cautioned against assuming shoppers are simply rushing to dump unwanted hardware.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n The company points out that people are keeping their phones for extended periods, a pattern that itself drives up the volume of low-grade listings as devices age.<\/p>\n Manufacturers are not yet routinely pulling memory chips from damaged phones to install in new products, since testing, compatibility and reliability checks complicate that approach.<\/p>\n According to the company, the economics of recovering usable components are shifting as memory prices climb, making it worthwhile to salvage parts that once were not worth the labor involved.<\/p>\n Displays, camera assemblies, batteries, charging ports, housings, speakers, cables and circuit boards can all retain value even when a phone itself is beyond repair.<\/p>\n A single low-grade device does not necessarily mean every part inside it shares that same poor rating.<\/p>\n A phone traded in after four or more years often fails battery health testing alone, which is enough to place it in the bottom tier under standard platform rules.<\/p>\n The current trend feels less like a sudden environmental awakening and more like a market correction.<\/p>\n Consumers are not necessarily recycling out of ecological conviction, and retailers are sweetening trade-in offers to keep the supply of parts flowing.<\/p>\n Whether the shift meaningfully reduces electronic waste, or simply redirects it toward a more profitable pipeline, remains an open question worth watching.<\/p>\n \n Follow TechRadar on Google News<\/a> and add us as a preferred source<\/a> to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI memory demand is making even broken smartphones increasingly valuable to buyersOld phones are gaining value as replacement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-623881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789345691_10_diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78.jpg\")
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