Buying An iPhone 6S? Here’s How To Make The Most Of Your Old iPhone

So you’ve made the upgrade, and your new iPhone 6S is everything you thought it would be and more, but have you thought about what you’re going to do with your old device? Here are a few ideas for you.

When iPhones first hit the streets, no one imagined they could get any better, but they did, and in more ways than we thought. Technology has a habit of forever improving, it’s what it does. Yet the question remains, once you’ve made that all-important upgrade, how can you make the most of your old iPhone, which now seems as obsolete as an Atari computer

E-waste is becoming a big, bad, and expensive problem, so binning it is not an option. After all, you shelled out all that money for it, so you don’t want to just throw it on the scrap-heap. Neither do you want to let it gather dust and degrade at the back of some forgotten drawer alongside your old Rubix Cube, Gameboy, and calculator watch. It may seem more dated than a dinosaur, but any smart-phone is a groovy piece of kit that you can still do a hundred and one different things with. Here are a few of them.

Turning your old iPhone into cash is the most obvious and the most lucrative avenue available to people who have purchased an iPhone 6s but still want a second bite of the apple when it comes to their old iPhone, so let’s start with the most popular option first. If you really don’t want your old model hanging around and cramping your style, it’s time to sell it and possibly use the money to buy a designer case for your new model. The older the phone gets, the less money it makes, so don’t delay. Sites like eBay are great places to gauge the market price of any particular model, and there’s an abundance of places that will make reasonable offers for your old devices. You just need to look around a little.

There’s nothing greater than the gift of giving, and in these tough economic times not everyone can afford an iPhone, let alone an iPhone 6s. So why not do your parent, child, partner, or friend a favor and tell them to dump their outdated and ugly old phone because you’re going to give them something simply “Appletastic.” The euphoric reaction you’ll receive when you give someone an iPhone will make you feel like the big-bearded fellow in the red suit himself, and because iPhones can be tailored to suit a host of contracts and functionality, it’s win-win all the way.

Alternatively, why not shine a little light into the dimly lit world of that Samsung user in your life and give them an old iPhone this Christmas. It’s the right thing to do.

Or you can opt to go for Plan B and keep hold of your old iPhone in case, god forbid, your iPhone 6s ever breaks down. We all know that shiny brand new iPhones have an unfortunate tendency to get stolen, lost, and broken. So what are you going to do if this happens to you? It can take an agonizingly long time for a replacement model to come through on your insurance, that is of course if you have any. So for an unbearable amount of time you might just find yourself being denied of all those amazing iPhone features you foolishly took for granted and have come to rely a little too heavily upon. That’s even before you get a taste of the bitter technological humiliation of being forced to use a standard pay-as-you-go phone. However, if you keep your old iPhone as back up for emergencies, this need never happen to you. Remember, an old iPhone, no matter how dated, is still an iPhone.

Your new iPhone 6s may be able to do a whole range of intergalactic things mankind once never imagined possible, but a lot of iPhone users are very precious when it comes to who handles their latest “baby” and what environment and situations they use them in. For example, do you really want to go for a bike ride or jog and risk using your new iPhone as an iPod when the old one will suffice? And as for letting the kids play on the apps when it’s still box fresh, forget about it! That’s what the old one’s for. So remember, if you’re particularly fussy about the gadgets in your life, keep your old iPhone for those situations when it’s too heartbreaking or risky to use your new one.

On a final note of caution, always remember, whatever you choose to do with your old iPhone, whether it’s selling, recycling, passing it on, or keeping it for emergencies: Transfer any personal data onto your new model before wiping the tapes clean on your old one. At the end of the day, our iPhones know more about us than we do about them. So treat them well and give them the respect they deserve.

[Lead Photo by Stephen Lam/ Getty Images]