How Bad is a Refurbished iPhone...?

Welcome to part two of buying the best selling smartphone on Amazon. I still can't believe which

model it was. Amazon best selling smartphones. And I'm going to go for unlocked. Interesting

This is the Apple iPhone 8 64 gigabytes space gray fully unlocked renewed. It is my first

experience with a renewed Apple product, a renewed product from Amazon, and I think it's my first

experience with any renewed smartphone. I'm trying to remember right now. Renewed is another word for

refurbished. I guess at some point people stopped liking the word refurbished and they went with

renewed. Either way, it's obviously a very popular choice for customers. So I am curious, you're

probably curious what do you get if you recall from the last video when we purchased this

there were some reviews that were less than stellar there were some reviews that said just don't do it

there were some reviews that said faulty product those were old reviews but then we found a recent

one which said the worst refurbished renewed device i've ever bought january 18 2020 in space gray

the purchaser cw with pictures and the device looked terrible so of course you know we had to

order it up and see what type of experience we're gonna have. After all, it is the best-selling

smartphone on all of amazon.com. Here it is. This is what you will receive. A plain white box

At this point, you would not know that was an Apple product. It's far from an Apple product

unboxing experience, but this thing is under $200, $179. If you look over here, you see

Apple iPhone 8 GSM unlocked space gray renewed. That's your only indication

It is a super plain white box. Ah, okay

All right. Bubble wrap is involved. Certainly no original packaging. If you decide to return your device

for personal security, follow the instructions below to remove your iCloud. Failure to do so will delay your refund

Make sure you turn off, find my iPhone, found in settings, delete the device from your Apple account

Look at where this came from. Okay, West End Enterprises, very interesting

When we were reading some of these reviews and people were saying that the devices could not be activated

because there were issues with carriers and Apple saying the device was stolen

So this might be something that happens when a customer returns a device

that it doesn't get fully reset and it still pops up in Find My iPhone

for the original owner and creating problems for the next user. You can see how that would be an issue

and that's probably why we have this particular instruction in here if we did happen to return this

Power brick is not original at all. So that's something you may not have expected

You might have expected to see an original Apple power brick or at least one that looked closer

This one, on the other hand, is a fatter power brick, but it does give you two USB ports, a 2.1 amp and a one amp USB port

So that's, I guess, better, but this is a generic looking brick and it is still your, what is it

0.5 amp DC, five volt. It's a slow charger, right? But then again, if you purchased this device

you would have had the Apple five watt charger. So, okay, fine. The cable has a Foxconn logo on it

Oh, this is a more exciting unboxing experience than I had originally imagined

Straight from Foxconn. I don't think I've ever had a cable straight from Foxconn

Of course, Foxconn, the company, manufactures Apple products for Apple, but once it leaves the factory

it would normally have an Apple logo on it But this looks like an exact version of Apple cable unlike the power brick So that weird If you got the power cable from Foxconn why don you get the power brick as well You

already dealing with Foxconn. You're already ordering from Foxconn. Anyhow, this is a typical

lightning to USB cable, which will plug into this power brick, straightforward stuff

Not too much of a surprise. Now this is the phone. The most generic unboxing experience possible

You're trying to save some cash though. That's how you ended up here. Oh, this is weird

Program T-Mobile DRP. Serial number listed here. Apple A1905, iPhone 8, gray 64 gigabytes

So I guess originally this was a T-Mobile device. It is currently being sold as unlocked at the moment

Double bubble wrap. And what kind of condition is ours gonna be in

Oh, pretty good condition. Definitely good condition. Can I spot any wear and tear

I think there was a case on this at one point. There's some little specks of dust and lint and stuff

inside of the speaker grill. I can see a little wear and tear on the charge port as well

I can see the remnants of an old fingerprint there on the fingerprint reader

Old fingerprint remnants. So it is a weird thing with the renewed title

I mean, it's basically a used phone. Now, maybe if you got a refurbished device

from Apple directly, they would replace certain parts that showed more signs of having been used

but this one is obvious to me that it has been used even if we look at the camera module here

and that's super hard to see but you can see some dust particles living around the camera module now

this happens if you use the device and it's in out of your pocket and you don't really care because

it's your own dust and grime but it's something that you're going to have to prepare yourself for

if you're purchasing a renewed device straight off amazon any scratches some tiny little corner

scratches. Again, it's going to be super difficult to pick it up right down here in this corner. I

spotted a couple. They are micro though. There, tiny little scratches in the corner there. Hopefully

you saw it. Look, if I was in the market for an iPhone, if I was in the market for a cheap iPhone

if I want to spend $179 on an iPhone, well, it's obvious where you end up. You know, you're here

on Amazon and you may be concerned that you're going to get a piece of trash. This is not a piece

to trash, it has some life left in it. I don't know if I would spend my $200

on a renewed iPhone myself, but it's better than this person had in their review

I mean, look at these pictures. This person's is legit scratched up

It wasn't even cleaned off. You can see the marks from where the previous owner's case was

And this one has some worse off kind of dents and damage to the aluminum on the outside of the phone

which I don't seem to have here. Okay, well, obviously we need to try and power it up

and see what happens. So is there going to be a charge? Definitely

Oh, it does have a bit of a charge. We might not even need to plug it in

with our third party charger that was in the package. And now I would have thought they would have polished

the fingerprint section there. 20% battery, so not much battery in there

But as you can see, here we go. Now I need to make sure I can actually get this thing

activated. That's another thing that's not in the package. No SIM tool

They assume that you've got a SIM tool. It's something to consider. All right. Let's see if touch ID is working. As I touch the old fingerprint currently

Oh man Remember the touch ID days Wow Yeah, it's, I mean, it's the same setup process on any of these, but

All right, we're in. No SIM card installed. So that's the next big test to make sure there's no weirdness as far as utilizing it on another network

It said T-Mobile on a package. Does that just mean it originated from T-Mobile

Whose phone is this? Anyway, I'm going to get a SIM tool because they don't give you one

All right, SIM tools are not a huge problem around here. We have many SIM tools

I don't care that they didn't include it, but just saying. How much does this thing cost

I don't know. What's that worth? All right, here we go, ladies and gentlemen

Pop the sim tray. Okay, here we go. Slap that baby in

And searching. Searching. There we go, Rogers

Okay, legit unlocked device. Oh, you know what? I kind of understand to a certain extent why people are buying this

It's so much like the current model iPhone SE, right? It is pretty much the same phone

minus the fact that it's nowhere near as fast or snappy or powerful

But in a weird way, Apple putting out the iPhone SE as a new product

gave new life to the old product because you could carry this around and kind of still feel relatively modern

even though the phone is quite old. Well, at least quite old in the terms of a channel like this

I know a lot of people carrying old devices. In reality, what are you looking at

You're looking at half the price, less than half the price to get an iPhone 8

compared to their new SE. So I understand that the processing power

is not going to be there. The battery life is not going to be there. but for somebody who just knows they want a new Apple phone

I don't know, maybe they have an iPhone 6 or something. I'm still surprised that it's the number one

best-selling phone on Amazon, but it pretty much is as advertised. All right, now what about the camera

I'm sure the camera's half-decent, but the curious part for me is like, is everything functioning correctly

So let me go ahead and snap a photo here. The weird part is remembering

what it's like to have one camera module. I'm sitting here thinking, okay, let's check out the..

No, there's no wide. There's no zoom. This is your standard shot

It's not half bad. Let me do a more detailed... Let me do some more detail on the dollar bill here

We have good lighting. Lots of lighting. You know what

It goes to show you even what they were doing back whenever the iPhone 8 came out

it was already, it was pretty good. It was pretty good. Half decent and there's no weird pixel stuff going on

The sensor looks okay. I got no like weird dust or lens cracks or lens problems

As far as the camera's concerned, I'll do a selfie as well. Let's see if the front facing one is working properly

It's doing some beauty stuff to me, but that's always what happens

They really try to fix me up. But beyond that, okay this one starts to look a little more dated I suppose You start to look at some beard hairs over here and it gets a bit soft on the on the zoom in on the crop you not dealing with a tremendous number of megapixels there we seen huge

improvements since this device on the on the front facing camera on other devices but it's usable i

mean you're living life you you're existing and what about the speaker sometimes people get water

and stuff trapped in this speaker and it won't perform properly. So let's test that out

Oh, yeah. Also accelerometers working gyroscope accelerometer. I mean, that's working

That's a working iPhone. Battery health. Here we go. The measure of battery capacity relative to when it was new

Lower capacity may result in fewer hours of usage between charges. As you can see here, we have 91% of the original capacity

Can you pick that up on a display right there? 91%. That's not bad on a refurbished device

Now, the question is, is that the original battery or a replacement battery

because it would be hard to imagine that a person used this phone that little

considering how old it is prior to being refurbished. Your battery is currently supporting

normal peak performance. This is nice transparency from Apple to put this in here

and optimized battery charging is also enabled. So you know what? Now, I don't know

Some people might predict there's some sort of cherry picking going on

Maybe somebody saw who it was. No, actually that couldn't have happened

because I didn't even use my own name on the package. So it couldn't be a cherry pick

Could I have gotten lucky with my particular model? No problems whatsoever

Maybe, but I do believe that inside of Amazon's renewed program, I think they put some kind of warranty on there as well

So even for those people who are upset, I think they have some level of recourse

Let's see what it says. Pre-owned product, not Apple certified, has been professionally inspected, tested, and cleaned

by an amazon qualified supplier the product will have a battery which exceeds 80 capacity

relative to new so we did well on that 91 compared to 80 i'll take it and the product is eligible for

a replacement or refund within 90 days of receipt if you are not satisfied obviously given stipulation

on the paperwork saying if you do choose to do that you got to completely remove your stuff uh

from an Apple ID perspective. So anyway, it is a weird, it's a weird choice

It's a whole new thing for me to investigate. It's always the top tier premium

There's a lot of that on the channel, but it turns out there's a ton of people

who are purchasing these refurbished, these renewed devices, and also just interacting with older devices in general

So it's kind of a nice little refresh for me. It's a little bit of exposure to a real world scenario

You ordered it off Amazon, what really happens, can you trust it

And it turns out that even with the bad reviews, which tend to rise to the top

you have a lot of good ones too. 21,000 ratings, four and a half stars on Amazon

a little bit of a warranty built in. And in my case, a product that is essentially as advertised

Yeah, you know what? It's not that bad