Refurbished Mobiles guide - official forum discussion

virgo17

ballyblack wrote: »

digging up an old thread.........spammer

Indeed. One click more - gone now.

oldagetraveller

Post 92 reported as Spam.

Capitano

When the galaxy Note 5 was released, I bought a refurbed Note 4 from an Ebay seller who had thousands of positive feedbacks. Guess this was about 4 years ago. The price was half that of what I would have paid for a new Note 4. The phone was indistinguishable from a new model in terms of wear and tear. It has been excellent and faultless to date. I love it. I use a GiffGaff sim which is excellent value. I am still on the original battery, in spite of the phone being used quite heavily. I would follow the same route again.

PC2016

I did a quick search on "security updates" within this forum mainly trying to focus on this thread "Refurbished Mobiles guide - official forum discussion" however I did not find any mention so apologies if this topic has been covered...

I have recently found myself attempting to find a £100 refurb phone to replace my, and no stick please, blackberry on OS10 that will not be supported security wise by the end of the year... and I am shocked at the prices I see for some mobile phones, I wanted a decent camera, NFC and at least android 9, so I looked at new (argos) then realised my price point would have to increase to accommodate a half decent camera so I started looking at £100-£200 mark then started looking at refurbs - I found some half decent phones that were 2018 released and some that were circa 2016 trading at £100+ then I found a good amount of these phones are unsupported 3-5 years after release rendering some of the refurbs sold at £100+ effectively useless after 2020 if not already, and if you didn't know that a phone does not get any more security updates you could leave yourself open for hackers etc if you tie your bank details to said phone - Yet these companies still sell these phones and make vast profits, how can this be, surely this is an issue for trading standards or at the very least there needs to be some sort of regulation put in place to warn/inform people they are purchasing a phone that the company no longer supports to protect people from what I can only class as a con.    
So anyone doing a bit of research before buying a refurb phone please be aware that most android phones are only supported by the company for 3-5 years after release and apple looks as if they do go a bit further 4-5 years this can include OS updates and security patches but do check with the company you are thinking of purchasing before you buy....

My example was a Sony Xperia xa2 released early 2018 £100-£139 last firmware update from sony is this year april  and security update could be an upgrade to android 9 on sept 2019 but that was hard to fathom. However whether or not it will be supported going forward is hard to find.... I still have not found a phone.

JJ_Egan

Always a problem with buying old stuff  be it a phone or cement mixer.