Even the cheapest new iPhone Duo comes in at a shocking £1,999 — or £66.30 a month for two-and-a-half years — if you’re getting it straight from Apple. This is how to pay less for it or any iPhone
Apple has released its first ever foldable handset — the iPhone Duo. Opened up it’s got a 7.6 inch screen rivalling smaller tablets, when folded in half there’s still a 5.4 inch screen on the outside. It costs from £1,999 to £3,199 depending on how much memory you want.
But you don’t have to pay that much — for it or any other iPhone. Here are five ways you can to get one for less:
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1. Trade in your old phone
There are two basic ways to pay less for an iPhone. Save on the handset or get a deal from the way you pay for it.
The simplest way to save money — and one offered by Apple itself — is to trade in your old handset.
This can get you as much as £855 credit towards your new phone, although that’s only if you have an iPhone 17 Pro Max. You can see the estimated values of your old phones here.
There are two ways to trade in a handset. The first method is to head to an Apple store.
The staff there will tell you what it’s worth and even help you delete all your data (although you should back it up, unpair it from your watch then sign out of the iCloud, iTunes and the App Store first).
The trade in value will either be applied to a purchase, or can be added to an Apple gift card to use later on.
You can also do this online. If you have your device’s serial number you can get your trade-in value. After that you can start the online process and Apple will send you all the information you need to get your handset ready to send back – including where to post it and how to prepare it first.
More than just old iPhones can be traded in for credit — with Apple watches, iPads and Macs also available for trade in. You can even send in some non-Apple devices.
One final note here — you might be able to get more selling your old phone on eBay or a similar site than you would get trading it in. So check first.
We’ve got a full guide to selling your old phones here, including Andy’s experiences cashing in some of his out of date handsets.
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2. Buy a reconditioned iPhone
There are significant savings to be made buying a reconditioned handset. It’s not quite new, but it’s often the very next best thing.
Reconditioned phones have been tested, cleaned, restored to full working order and even come with a warranty in many cases.
They’re often handsets that are returned, have been traded in or handed back for another reason.
They’re graded by their visual condition — from A (basically pristine) to C (still good, but not perfect) — so if you don’t mind a scratch or two you could save even more money.
For an example of what you can save, looking at Apple’s own Certified Refurbished site, you can save about £40 on the cost of an iPhone 16 and get a brand new battery and outer shell, the same warranty as a new iPhone and it even comes in a new white box.
An Amazon Renewed version of that phone will cost far less — at £516.99 at the time of writing compared to £659 — but that comes with its original case and battery, rather than new ones. You’re guaranteed at least 80% battery condition and no visible scratches from 30cm away, but it’s not quite the nearly new version.
If you go for a “good” quality, rather than “great” or “pristine”, you can save even more — with GiffGaff currently offering one at £459. It might not be visually the prettiest, but that still comes with a 12 month warranty, 21 days to change your mind and the same 80% or better health guarantee on the battery.
If you’re buying a reconditioned phone, make sure you’re getting a warranty with it from the seller. It’s also worth checking battery health, that it works on your network (ie that it’s been factory unlocked) and that the old owner is fully signed out of all their accounts.
Apple also has an approved list of authorised re-sellers on its site that will let you check by postcode to see if who you’re buying from has been checked out.
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3. Consider your contract
It sounds odd, but you could save money by getting a handset with a contract attached to it rather than buying a handset on its own.
That’s because networks like to bundle deals — offering discounts for people who take out more services — as well as money-off offers to get people through the door.
But watch out for any potential costs.
For example: at the time of writing, Sky is offering a deal for the new iPhone 18 Pro at £38 a month with £12 up front. To get the same handset from Apple would cost you £39.96 a month even at 0% interest.
So what’s the catch? The contract length.
The Apple monthly cost is spread over 30 months. The Sky one is 36. The total cost of the Sky deal is £1,380 over three years, compared to £1,198.80 from Apple.
That’s £5 a month more overall – before you include the data plan.
Make sure you’re getting good value for both your data and your handset — over the full length of the contract — if you’re planning to go down this route.
4. Get cashback when you buy
The simplest way to save a bit of money when you buy your handset — or anything else for that matter — is to get cashback on it.
You can do this by making the purchase with the right debit or credit card — but to really ramp things up, you can fold in other cashback services on top.
Why settle for 1% cashback on your credit card when you can also buy through a service like TopCashBack or Quidco — who are currently offering up to £75 cashback from Sky Mobile purchases of the new iPhone 18 for example.
The beauty of this money-saving technique is that it can be layered on top of several of the other ones mentioned in this guide.
One thing to watch out for is cashback limits. Many current account providers and even credit card companies that offer cashback either cap the amount you can earn each month, or drop their rates after you spend a certain amount.
That means your 5% cashback might be capped at £5 a month, or drop to 0.25% cashback after you’ve spent a certain amount on the card.
We’ve got a round up of the best cashback cards as well as the best rewards for signing up to a cashback site if you don’t already have one.
5. Use a gift card
This is one of the favourite money saving hacks here at Be Clever With Your Cash.
If you know you’ve got a purchase coming up, and know who you’re buying from, you can frequently snag a discount by buying gift cards for that brand.
There are even cashback sites — including Jam Doughnut and TopCashback — that let you get money off gift cards.
We have a dedicated page for the latest offers on gift cards you can check back on and see some examples of offers that have been around in the past.
This trick works best if you can wait to buy your handset — letting you plan in advance and buy up gift cards when they’re cheaper (there are often deals around Black Friday, for example) then use them to get your handset stacked on top of another deal.
Always compare prices before you buy
Finally, no matter what you choose to do, running a quick Google search before you take the plunge is something you should always do.
It’s possible you’ve found the ultimate deal, never to be bettered, but if it only takes 30 seconds to check, there’s really no reason not to.
Just make sure you click through from your search results page to make sure the deal is still on offer and the phone is in stock, as Google’s been known to be out of date on prices in the past.
