Samsung opened up Galaxy Note 10 reservations nearly two weeks ahead of its August 7th announcement event, letting buyers secure an early preorder spot as well as some savings. We’re looking at a $50 discount for accessories purchased at the same time as the phone and up to $600 savings on the Note 10 via Samsung’s trade-in program. If you’re willing to trade an older iPhone, Galaxy, or Pixel phone for one of the new Note 10 phones, Samsung will give you a discount of between $200 and $600, depending on what phone you’re trading in. But what the trade-in program also shows is that Samsung also believes that iPhones are worth more money than Android devices, including its own hardware.
Each of Apple’s 2018 iPhones (iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max) will all get you a $600 discount, as will the iPhone X from 2017.
Over on the Android side, only the Galaxy S10 from 2019 and the Galaxy Note 9 and Google Pixel 3 phones from 2018 will give you the same return.
Surprisingly, the 2018 Galaxy S9 phones will only net you $300, half of the $600 you’d get for the iPhone X, even though Apple’s first phone with a notch launched several months before the S9 series. Similarly, the late 2017 Pixel 2 phones that hit stores at the same time with the iPhone X only gets you a $300 discount.
On the other hand, the iPhone 8 phones, also launched in 2018 alongside the iPhone X, are worth $350 regardless of size, but that’s still more than the Pixel 2 and Galaxy S9. What’s even more surprising is that the iPhone 7 phones, launched in September 2016, are also good for a $350 discount. That’s $50 more than the Note 8 and $150 more than the Galaxy S8 and first-generation Pixel phones. All these Android devices were released after the iPhone 7 series — that’s 2017 for the Samsung phones and late 2016 for the Pixel.
This brings us to the oldest iPhone that you can trade-in, the iPhone 6s series, which will deliver a $250 discount. That’s a 2015 phone right there that, according to Samsung, holds more value than the Galaxy S8 and S7 phones that were released in 2017 and 2016, respectively.
The iPhone has always outperformed Android rivals when it comes to retaining value over time, and that’s not a secret. But it’s somewhat strange to see Samsung confirm it all so blatantly. Does that mean that maybe it’s not worth buying the Galaxy Note 10 as soon as Samsung launches it?
The Galaxy Note 10 will have a sky-high price next month, but Samsung will likely offer plenty of freebies on top of these trade-in offers during the preorder period. But if you want to score a cheaper Note 10, the best thing you can do is wait a couple of months for its price to drop. Samsung phones never take long to get big price cuts, as we saw with the Galaxy S10 earlier this year.
