What is the true cost of an iPhone?

Smartphones are an essential part of everyday life. They’re so much more than just a device to call or text! But, as smartphones become more and more advanced each year, their price tag gets bigger too.

So, how much money do we truly spend on smartphones over the course of a lifetime? For the sake of argument, we looked at how much it would cost if you got your first smartphone at 18, and upgraded every 24 months right through until you turned 81.

When you’re upgrading your phone, the short term cost isn’t considered – but to have spent what could have bought you a house on your phones, it’s staggering.

Even if you had wanted to do something a bit more luxurious and less grown up, you could have flown in a private jet a couple of times, bought a jet pack or even purchased your own private island!

Looking at the two flagship models for Apple, the iPhone XS and the iPhone XR, taking into account the main providers, the average cost per month works out at £55. When your two year contract finishes, you will have paid £1,325.04 for the phone and usage. Not bad, considering the price of the phone is around £1,000.

As we see each September, the brand new iPhone becomes more advanced with amazing features, incredible battery life and a professional grade camera. These upgrades cost more and more each time – which we come to expect, but at £1,000 a phone, the blueprint has been set for the newer era phones.

In the last 10 years, the price of a brand new iPhone has increased by 162%. As you can imagine, wages have not increased by that much over the last 10 years – in fact, it’s not even close!

You can recoup some of the cost of your last phone when you trade it in or sell it privately. You have plenty of options to sell your phone; you can use a trusted name like musicMagpie to buy your phone from you to then refurbish it.

You can use eBay or Facebook Marketplace to list your phone but you should be wary of timewasters. Marketplaces aren’t always safe either – you have no idea who you’re going to meet, or whether the item is legitimate. When you sell with a trusted name like musicMagpie, you know how much you’ll make before you send off your phone and your sale is guaranteed.

If you aren’t bothered about buying a brand new device on the day of release, you could buy a refurbished device and literally save yourself hundreds of pounds.

The phone will work as you’d expect it to and it may not even have any marks to show it’s been used, depending on its condition.

When it comes to upgrading, you can save some money by buying the smallest storage option (likely to be 64GB) as well as reducing the data you sign up for.

For example, if you pay for 20GB of data a month but you aren’t even close to using it all, make some cuts on this to 10GB or 12GB to save a little each month. It’ll make a difference in the long run.

The less you upgrade, the less you’ll have to pay when you do. However, don’t just let your contract overrun the 24 month period because you’ll end up paying over the odds. It’s important to know when your contract ends so you can either go for a SIM only deal or you can weigh up your options for a new deal.

A SIM only deal means you would only pay for your airtime and your data; you would keep the phone you already have – or you’d buy one outright – so you can pay a lot less a month for the network you use.

Shop around for the best SIM only deal. You should understand what you’re using right now and whether that is enough for you.

Mining metals like gold (AU), silver (AG), platinum (PT) and palladium (PD) has a profound effect on the earth. The building of a smartphone represents up to 95% of the device’s total CO2 emissions for two years.

Even when we’re done with our iPhones, simply chucking them away means these precious metals aren’t being reused and other chemicals tucked inside your little iPhone can cause pollution of air, soil and even drinking water.

As trends shift, we’re seeing larger phones coming on to the market with supersized screens and plenty of power inside. The carbon footprint of a larger device is more than the smaller phones we used to use.

Despite the options available like musicMagpie to recycle our old phones, less than 1% are being recycled.

If you were to get an iPhone XR phone, brand new with a contract that has 10GB of data a month from EE, you’ll pay £43 a month for it. It’s below the average, but it still works out as a £1,032 cost over the course of two years.

However, if you bought a Pristine iPhone XR from musicMagpie, the phone will cost you £649.99. You’d pay just £12 a month with a Virgin Media SIM only plan that gives you 12GB of data, meaning the cost over two years amounts to £937.99. A simple change saves you money any time you want to upgrade.