I don’t know about you, but I know a lot of people who just upgraded their smartphone over the holidays. Maybe you and your siblings pitched in to buy your parents new devices, or maybe your grandmother just jumped on the Android bandwagon for the very first time. Maybe you’re reading this very article on a brand new Pixel 9 Pro, one that was waiting under the tree earlier this week with your name on it. Either way, tis the season for unboxing new hardware, which begs an obvious question: What do you do with your old phone?




You’ve got all sorts of options for what to do with your old hardware. Most people likely trade their devices in, either through a retailer like Best Buy or a carrier like AT&T. Trade-ins help save some serious change on today’s most expensive smartphones, especially if you’re buying during a shopping holiday like the past month-and-change. It’s far from your only option, of course. Selling it independently on sites like Swappa or eBay, giving it away to friends or family, or keeping it alongside your new device are all valid options — in fact, I’ve done practically all of them.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra being held in a hand with the screen on and a rug in the background.

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Personally, I don’t think I’m a good representation here, and it’s not just because of my job as Phones Editor at AP. My first handful of smartphone upgrades were fairly straightforward: I jumped from an HTC Thunderbolt to a Galaxy Nexus after about a year, which I used until the charging port died less than two weeks into my first year of college. Three phones in nearly three years is certainly more than the average buyer — even over a decade ago — but considering how much I enjoyed smartphones, it only made sense to keep upgrading.

Things got pretty quickly after that. The HTC One M7 that replaced my Galaxy Nexus only lasted through the holidays, when a nasty fall in an ice puddle ended its run prematurely. The LG G2, HTC One M8, Galaxy S4, and the first Moto X all floated around my rotation for a while, with my previous daily driver usually funding an acquisition of my next one. Eventually, after graduating college — and having replaced several more phones, including a Nexus 6 and an LG V10 — I landed on the Pixel 2 XL, which kept me pretty happy for at least a couple of years.



By the time I had to replace that phone, I was living on my own with, for the first time in my adult life, true discretionary income. Since then, I’ve very rarely traded in a device, only doing so whenever a deal is simply too good to pass up. Call me a hoarder, but I love looking back on older hardware — and, frankly, regret selling plenty of my phones a decade ago. But, as I said, I’m an outlier here. Nothing about how I’ve ever used smartphones has been anything remotely close to “normal,” and considering the site, I’d bet plenty of our readers are in a similar boat.

So, how about you? Are you giving your smartphone to your carrier when you’re finished with it? Maybe you’re looking around the house for old ways to use your tech, like a dedicated security camera or MP3 player. Maybe you upgraded because your old phone broke, or was stolen, or maybe you simply dropped it off at an electronics recycling center to be (safely) disposed of. Either way, let us know in the poll below, and if you did get a new smartphone — or tablet, or smartwatch — for Christmas, sound off on whatever you got in the comments.