Consumers cash in £2.85m from decade-old handsets with Envirofone in a year

Consumers have traded in £2.85 million of old smartphones over the past year. with trade-in speciaoist Envirofone.

 Envirofone calculates one in seven devices traded in during the past year was more than five years old.

The company analysed 20,810 devices traded in between July 2025 and June 2026 and found that consumers received an average payout of £137 per handset, generating total payments of almost £3m.

Apple devices dominated the list of most frequently traded smartphones. The iPhone 13 was top with 1,393 devices traded in, followed by the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12. Newer premium models including the iPhone 15 Pro Max achieved average payouts of around £400. 

The oldest handset phone traded was the iPhone 6s from 2015 with a trade-in value of around £1, Envirofone said people are still sending in devices that are more than a decade old. 

least 13.8 per cent of all devices traded in models launched five years ago. One in five handsets sent to Envirofone was non-functional but still retained some residual value.

Consumers in the South East were the most active traders, accounting for 15.7 per cent of all located trade-ins, ahead of the North West (11.3 per cent ), East of England (10.2 per ent) and London (10 per cent). Northern Ireland recorded the lowest share at 1.6 per cent.

Sam Hargreaves, chief technical officer at Envirofone, said: “We paid out nearly £3 million in a year, More than one in eight phones had been sitting unused since before the pandemic.”

An iPhone 15 generated an average payout of £250, compared with around £50 for an iPhone 11 and just £7 for an iPhone 7.

NB: Sam Hargreaves will be a speaker at Mobile News’ secondary market conference Circular Summit to be held in London on November 17. Places are limited. Register HERE.