What to Do Before Purchasing a Second Hand iPhone
Buying a used iPhone is a good idea for those who do the shopping on a tight budget or those who want to get acquainted with Apple products without losing much money. In any case, there’s a number of things one should do before acquiring a previously used iPhone.
First of all, make sure the iPhone you’re trying to purchase is not blacklisted. In order to check this, you will need the IMEI of the handset you’re supposed to buy and a bunch of online resources.
Finding an IMEI is a very easy task. Ask the seller to take a screenshot of the page located in Settings - General - About (scroll down to the bottom) and a photo showing the back panel of the device.
[IMPORTANT] THE IMEI ON THE BACK PANEL AND IN THE SETTINGS APP SHOULD BE EXACTLY THE SAME.
You will find more details on finding the device info in the Apple Support article below:
Find the serial number and other information for your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
After the IMEI is successfully located, you can use it to check whether the phone is not blacklisted. Just FYI, the most popular reason for putting a particular phone in the blacklist is a theft. There’re some other reasons as well, but this article is not dealing with them.
So, to confirm that you’re purchasing a legitimate iPhone that wasn’t lost or stolen, you can visit a website called swappa.com. Open the webpage, enter the IMEI and press Enter, this will show you the phone status.
The next step is checking the Activation Lock status. If this security feature is enabled, ask the seller to turn it off and remove the iPhone from his list of devices using the instructions from the following Apple Support article:
Turn off Find My iPhone Activation Lock
Spend a couple of minutes of your time and do some additional reading:
Find My iPhone Activation Lock
What to do before selling or giving away your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
Now let’s get back to our topic. You can check the Activation Lock status at link below:
https://www.icloud.com/activationlock/
After you’re ready with this, you can also check the warranty status of the iPhone. Well, I believe this section doesn’t require obscure explanation.
https://checkcoverage.apple.com/
Some users prefer to jailbreak their iPhones, even though this voids the warranty and opens up a huge hole in the security system of the device. It is not recommended to purchase jailbroken iPhones and other Apple gadgets. Ask the seller to type in ‘Cydia’ in the Spotlight search line. If there’s an app with such name on the handset, you should stay away from it.
The final step in choosing a second hand iPhone is removing all content and settings from the phone. If the handset appears to be whitelisted, legitimate and fully functional, you need to ask the seller to erase it for you. This will delete user data stored on the iPhone including previous owner’s Apple ID, photos and videos, phone numbers etc. as well as all settings.
Erasing an iPhone is an easy task, which is perfectly described in the Apple Support article called Erase all content and settings on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple Watch.
That’s pretty much all you can check before committing the purchase. As usual, let me know if this user tip was helpful and feel free to edit it.