Expensive Phones Aren’t the Flex You Think They Are

I carry around a two-thousand-dollar phone. Except here’s the thing—I didn’t pay that much for it. And even if I did, it’s neither an extravagant nor luxurious purchase. But we’ll get to that. Let’s start at the beginning.

I Didn’t Pay Two Grand for My Phone

I carry around a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. It’s not Samsung’s newest book-style foldable, but it was when I got it in November 2024. This phone had a starting price of $1900. I bought a 512GB model, so the price was actually higher: $2020.

Thing is, I didn’t buy my Z Fold 6 from Samsung or Best Buy. I bought my book-style foldable on Swappa, an online marketplace for second-hand tech. I paid just over $1000 for the phone, which was on sale in used “like new” condition. That’s a lot of money (more than I’ve ever spent on a phone before), but it’s also the same price as an Apple iPhone 16 Pro or a Google Pixel 9 Pro. It’s well under the starting price of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6

SoC

Qualcomm Snapdragon Gen 3 for Galaxy

Display

7.6-inch AMOLED inside display, 6.3-inch AMOLED cover display, both with 120Hz dynamic refresh rate

RAM

12GB

Storage

256GB, 512GB, 1TB

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a foldable smartphone that combines the functionality of a tablet with the convenience of a phone. It features a large, flexible internal screen that automatically picks up where you left off on the cover display.

There Are Many Ways to Lower the Price

Virtually every review or podcast discussion of a book-style foldable seemingly involves a reviewer at some point balking at the price. Here the thing—foldable phones aren’t as pricey as you might think. I’ve bought several at this point, and the amount I spent on my Z Fold 6 was the most I ever paid. When I bought a Z Fold 5, I got it open box (as in the box was opened, but no one had used the device) for $930 before tax.

The Z Fold series isn’t unique in this regard. Foldables don’t hold their value very well in the second-hand market. If you want to try out a book-style foldable for the first time, you can grab a reburished Pixel Fold for under $500. If you really insist on having an unopened, unused device, you can get that same phone for just $650. Either price is not that far from a Pixel 9a, and the Pixel Fold still has years of updates left.

Even if you buy a foldable directly from Samsung or your carrier, there are often substantial trade-in deals. People who already have a Z Fold in great condition can trade it in for up to half off the price of the newer model. Samsung improved the value of its trade-in deals this year, so that despite the price hike, some people are upgrading to the Z Fold 7 for less than it would have cost to upgrade to the Z Fold 6 last year. Switching over from an iPhone? You can snag a good deal, too.

Phones That Replace Other Devices End Up Saving Money

Buying a Z Fold 6 has been one of the more frugal tech decisions I’ve made. You see, this isn’t just my phone. My Z Fold 6 is my only computer. I no longer have a separate laptop. I work every day from this device, directly from its internal screen. When I do occasionally need a larger screen, I connect my phone to a wireless lapdock or dock to an external monitor and fire up Samsung DeX.

Bertel King / How-To Geek

I no longer have much desire for a separate tablet, since my phone is large enough to perform most of the tasks I want a tablet for. I don’t want a separate eReader either, since my phone is the same size and shape. The cameras on modern phones are good enough that I don’t need a separate one of those either to do my job. That’s all over $1000 worth of tech I no longer have a need to buy.

Some of Us Spend Way More on Other Tech

Even if I paid full-price for my phone, that would have been a worthwhile investment. This one device fulfills so many roles in my life, and it’s a remarkable feat of engineering.

Many people who question the value of expensive phones easily drop far more money on other types of tech. They’ll spend $700 on a PlayStation 5 Pro or $1,800 on merely the body of a mirrorless camera whose lenses may cost another grand more. PC gamers will invest several thousand building their own gaming PC. Do they need to? No. Gamers who aren’t chasing eye-popping graphics can get by with a cheap gaming mini PC or a powerful gaming handheld. And we haven’t even gotten into the amount of money that can be sunk into hard drives when building your own NAS.

Justin Duino / How-To Geek

From a sheer engineering standpoint, it’s understandable for modern phones to be comparable in price. My Z Fold 6 is faster than my previous laptop. Its camera outperforms my previous point-and-shoot. Even as a foldable, it’s still far more durable than most of my other tech, able to survive drops outside and being submerged in water. The pixel-dense OLED screen is superior to most TVs, and the speakers are good enough that I don’t bother with a Bluetooth speaker most of the time.

Phones have come a long way since the days when the Nexus 5 cost $350, a time when phones were still not all that powerful, the screens weren’t as good, the apps were often buggier, tap-to-pay was a novel idea, and so many of the features we take for granted hadn’t been developed yet. We may bemoan the loss of the headphones jack and the microSD card slot, or even my beloved S Pen, but that does nothing to diminish the time and effort it takes to engineer devices that are this powerful, durable, long-lasting, energy-efficient, and fanless all at the same time.

In short, if you see someone with a nice phone, you don’t know how much they actually paid for it—and even if they did fork over full-price, it’s still a worthwhile investment. Besides, folks are more likely to be carrying around fancy phones like a flip-style foldable in the US because their carrier offered it for “free” than because they bought one outright. Who are we to judge, especially when we don’t have all the details?