The first question most of you would have after reading the title of this article is, "Why would I even want a used cell phone when new ones are cheap or free (with certain wireless post-paid contracts)?" That’s a good question, and I have a good answer in two parts.

1. Battery life has not improved, and in fact has become worse with many newer models

The entire reason why newer phones do not have battery life like the older ones did is because of feature demands.

For example, newer phones have brighter displays; that eats battery life. Newer phones can run more apps; that eats battery life. Newer phones have louder speakers; that eats battery life (as it usually requires a few more tenths of a watt to do it). And, of course, touchscreen phones don’t have nearly the same battery life as featurephones a.k.a. "dumbphones" do.

Battery life is a big deal with your mobile handset. If on average you talk on the phone for maybe 10 to 30 minutes a day and have to charge the thing every 2 days, that’s not good at all.

2. Certain features were removed on newer phones

The best example of this is the lack of ability for newer phones to give you a preview of a text message that’s worth anything.

Many older handsets would show you half of the message as a preview in your message list. If for example the text message was 50 characters in length, you would see 25 characters of the message and who it was from. Many newer phones won’t show you more than 10 characters at the most, and some won’t even show who sent it unless you actually read the full message.

The advantage of the older handsets was that you had enough of a message preview to determine whether you wanted to read the message or discard it. If you discarded it, most of the time you weren’t charged for the message because you never technically read it.

Newer phones purposely made the text preview function extremely limited to force you to read the whole message so that you spend more money on texting.

Busting the myths

Refurbished phones

Most people equate refurbished (or "refurb" for short) as "used". That’s not entirely true. Any electronic that’s been refurbished simply means renovated or renewed.

Used literally means "not new, all original, has wear, no warranty".

Refurbished means "not new, has had parts replaced to fix worn components, has short-term warranty (usually)".

This is more or less the same as when comparing new car to recertified car. "Recertified" for all intents and purposes means "refurbished".

In other words, it is completely OK to buy a refurbished cell phone, as long as the dealer is willing to offer some kind of warranty, even if it’s only 30 days (which is better than nothing).

Antenna range

Some people believe older phones don’t have as much antenna range as newer phones do. This used to be true (when comparing analog to digital mobile handsets), but not any longer.

The range of your mobile handset is more dependent on your location and wireless carrier rather than the actual phone itself. This isn’t always the case as it’s true some phones do simply have poor antenna range, but most of the time the phone is the last thing to blame for any range/signal quality issues.

Lack of feature compatibility on the wireless network

This is something which is both true and not true at the same time.

As far as the ability to talk is concerned, as long as the mobile handset isn’t some ancient 3-watt analog bag phone thing, it will connect to the network and you can place calls as you normally would.

Concerning texting, the only incompatibility you may run into is if someone texts you using MMS, and your particular handset has no MMS capability. But even in that instance, your handset should still be able to retrieve the message and show the text-only portions of it.

Concerning "the G’s" of your phone, be it 2G, 3G, 4G or 4G LTE compatible, the general rule of thumb is that if the handset’s guide states it’s compatible with xG type of network, it is.

The only features of older handsets that absolutely will not work are carrier-specific things that the carrier no longer supports. For example, on certain older Motorola RAZR handsets, there were carrier-specific multimedia features that when new the carrier supported but are now no longer available. You obviously wouldn’t be using those features, so it’s no loss to you not to have them.

Does the carrier care which phone you use as long as it’s compatible with their network?

I’ve never known one that really cared either way what handset you use as long as it’s a compatible-with-their-network phone and you pay the service bill each month.

Some people get confused as to what network compatibility means concerning handsets, so here it is in a nutshell:

You basically have two options with used/refurbished mobile phone handsets. Either you buy one that’s "unlocked", or buy one that’s carrier-specific.

"Unlocked" simply means the phone is compatible with several – but not all – wireless phone networks.

A carrier-specific handset means the phone only works with a specific carrier.

If you go on eBay and search for used handsets, say for Nokia brand, you’ll notice the carrier compatibility list on the left:

How do you activate a used or refurbished phone with your existing phone plan?

It’s literally the luck of the draw whether you’re able to do this hassle-free or not, but I have a few tips that should make the process go a whole lot smoother.

If calling your wireless carrier’s customer service, have pertinent info ready

Turn on the phone, go into the settings menu, get the serial number and any other information that looks like it would need to be required in order to activate the handset BEFORE calling. Having that info at-the-ready will make the activation process go a whole lot faster. In addition, know the make and model of your phone.

The key thing to do while on the phone with customer service is to not ramble and keep it all-business. If you say something like, "Yeah, I just got this great deal on this used phone from eBay…", that is enough of a reason for the customer service rep to discontinue the call for attempting to activate an "unsupported phone" (when in reality it would work just fine). In other words, only say what needs to be said and nothing more. Be pleasant, but don’t be a blabbermouth.

If you have a wireless store for your carrier brand near you, use them instead, but bring relevant paperwork

This is the easier option, as a representative in-person can get the activation done a whole lot faster than you trying it on your own.

However, this process doesn’t come without its own quirks, so to speak. The rep you speak to could go under the assumption you stole the phone even though you bought it, and refuse to support it. The workaround for this is to simply bring along the receipt that proves you paid for it, such as a printed eBay receipt.

Does your carrier offer a self-activation option?

If you’re lucky, your carrier may offer a self-activation option – however I’m going to note up front that this is usually restricted to prepaid phones and not ones with post-paid wireless plans. As to why carriers work that way, I couldn’t tell you because I don’t know.

The way to find out if your carrier has a self-activation option or not is to go to your carrier’s web site and specifically search for "self activate" or "self activation". If your carrier’s web site turns out to be a complete mess that’s difficult to perform a search on, try Google instead. Search for "[your carrier here] self activate" and "[your carrier here] self activation", and you should find the info you were looking for.

Should you purposely buy used or refurbished phones over new?

Ultimately this is dependent on how disgusted you are with the current offerings that are out there for mobile handsets.

If what’s currently being offered bothers you, and I mean really bothers you, older handsets would suit you better for the way you use a mobile phone.

If on the other hand you have an attitude of, "Eh, what’s out there now isn’t, like, great.. but it’s not too bad", stick with what you have.

Or if you have an attitude of, "My phone works fine. It may not have all the features I’d like, but it does the job and I like it", going with an older handset would most likely be a step backwards for you.

"What if I wanted to test a handset, say, for a month? Then I could decide if I wanted to go back to my other handset or not."

This generally isn’t a good idea. Technically, it shouldn’t be a problem to jump to another handset whenever you wanted, but your roadblock here is the wireless carrier itself. If you can deal with the buffoonery that is wireless customer service, then by all means, go for it. If not, stick with what you have.

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