Many third-party stores or platforms sell Apple products at a lower price than the official website. However, many users do not know if the device is new or refurbished. In this post we are going to see how to know if a device is new, repaired or sold second hand.
Analyze internal aspects of the phone
There are several ways to know very easily if the iPhone is new or refurbished. Next, we are going to see some tools that facilitate its analysis and allow us to establish a clear difference between whether the device is new or used.
- IMEI: If you have doubts about whether iPhone is new or refurbished, the IMEI is a great option. We can see this option from the General Settings of the iPhone. However, you can also do it from the official Apple page, where you will be able to see the date of purchase, if it has support, if it has a warranty and service or repair coverage. So we can know that this device or the entity that sells it is telling us the truth.
- SIM lock: It is important to make sure that the device that we are going to buy is not restricted by any operator. To do this, we have to go back to General settings, operator blocker. If you don’t have any lock, it should show “No SIM Restriction”
- Screen settings: we can perform or edit screen parameters such as the activation of Dark Mode or Night Swift. Finally the Face ID and the Touch ID and see if everything works well.
Analysis from the hardware
We can also see if the device has undergone any repair with third-party parts or not by analyzing some parameters in Settings of the device that we want to buy.
- Original parts or not: One of the great doubts of many users is to know if your phone has original parts or not. Since iOS 15.2, we will be able to see if the battery has been changed. In addition, in the iPhone 11, iPhone 12, 13 and iPhone 14 models you can see if the battery or the screen has been changed. Also, in models 12, 13 and 14 you can see if the screen or camera has changed. In the event that a repair has been produced, two options appear: if the repair is original or if the device is simply not capable of knowing what material or brand the substitution is made of.
- Battery health status: the state of health of the battery is a fundamental indication. If the battery is degraded or even changed, it is a key clue to know that the device is not original. A battery below 90% is quite degraded. You can even go a step further and ask for the battery cycles that the device has. If it has more than 500 cycles, it is a very deteriorated battery.
- Check external components: Among the most recommended options to know the real state of the product is to use basic actions such as bluetooth, wifi, mobile data, connect to google maps or basic functions such as the camera.
- Water discharges: It would be interesting to review whether or not the iPhone has suffered from water spills. To do this, from the SIM we can see if it has a red line or not. If it is positive, that line will appear. It is the witness that Apple leaves for this type of discharge.
