Thinking of flipping IPhones please help

[carmadman]

I've been thinking of buying IPhones with cracked screens and then fixing them for a profit but don't know where to start.

• What phones should I flip (I was thinking maybe IPhone 8)
• Where should I buy them from
• What price should I sell them and buy them at 

Thanks  

[Levent]

The questions you asked made me thing believe you have no clue what you are doing. 

3 minutes ago, carmadman said:

What phones should I flip (I was thinking maybe IPhone 8)

The one that you can sell.

3 minutes ago, carmadman said:

• Where should I buy them from

Local marketplaces, ebay etc.

3 minutes ago, carmadman said:

• What price should I sell them and buy them at 

Broken phone cost + repair cost + your time + percentage of the cut the marketplace takes (like ebay) = your sale price. 

[Ty2525]

19 minutes ago, carmadman said:

I've been thinking of buying IPhones with cracked screens and then fixing them for a profit but don't know where to start.

• What phones should I flip (I was thinking maybe IPhone
• Where should I buy them from
• What price should I sell them and buy them at 

Thanks  

As Levent said, pretty much any phone you can buy for a decent price with a simple repair (unless you want to start replacing dot projectors on face id modules or something equally as difficult) iPhones hold their value really well so it wouldn't be the worse idea to keep your mind open to which phone you want to flip. Phones with issues with their screens/batteries tend to be cheap, easy, repairs, but usually hard to find unless you have them locally. I personally don't have many suppliers that I use regular enough to recommend, but there are known good venders of aftermarket screens and batteries for sub $50 for pretty much any phone from Apple. If you're interested, I will ask my buddies in the repair industry and see if I can't get you a list of venders. This is important because it is unlikely you will find a broken screen iPhone or anything less than ~60% of it's value unless it got ran over by a train. Meaning, in order to maximize your profit, you will want to buy from these venders, not consumer venders like iFixit or cheap ones that sell really cheap, bad screens. Good luck!

[RageTester]

Better flip pancakes. iphone is a premium product. I don't think people buy used iPhones.

If you want to seriously change your life, think about investing, for example read about Bitcoin. There are even ways to earn some cryptocurrencies simply playing games.

I used to do poker freerolls, cuz those were easy to combine with other online activities, but now even CS:GO is supported with ZEBEDEE infuse servers. Pro esports are out of my reach, but I manage to win something on the smaller tournaments. In fact enough to cover my online shopping expenses.

Some people get rich just blogging(for example on Steemit) about things they enjoy, but everything takes patience and dedication.

[carmadman]

4 minutes ago, Ty2525 said:

As Levent said, pretty much any phone you can buy for a decent price with a simple repair (unless you want to start replacing dot projectors on face id modules or something equally as difficult) iPhones hold their value really well so it wouldn't be the worse idea to keep your mind open to which phone you want to flip. Phones with issues with their screens/batteries tend to be cheap, easy, repairs, but usually hard to find unless you have them locally. I personally don't have many suppliers that I use regular enough to recommend, but there are known good venders of aftermarket screens and batteries for sub $50 for pretty much any phone from Apple. If you're interested, I will ask my buddies in the repair industry and see if I can't get you a list of venders. This is important because it is unlikely you will find a broken screen iPhone or anything less than ~60% of it's value unless it got ran over by a train. Meaning, in order to maximize your profit, you will want to buy from these venders, not consumer venders like iFixit or cheap ones that sell really cheap, bad screens. Good luck!

yes please can i have a list of venders

[Kisai]

34 minutes ago, carmadman said:

I've been thinking of buying IPhones with cracked screens and then fixing them for a profit but don't know where to start.

• What phones should I flip (I was thinking maybe IPhone 8)
• Where should I buy them from
• What price should I sell them and buy them at 

Thanks  

iPhone XS or later are valuable on the secondary market because they can be used as AR/VR face trackers, which are superior to all other options (like realsense or repurposed kinect's.)

 

So even if the 4G radio is broken, as long as the Wifi works, it's still useful.

 

For the X, those can be repaired as well, but they get super-hot for this purpose.

 

Everything older than an X but newer than a 6S is still useful, but will probably not be worth fixing.

 

[BondiBlue]

10 minutes ago, RageTester said:

Better flip pancakes. iphone is a premium product. I don't think people buy used iPhones.

What are you on about? People most certainly buy used iPhones. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Expect to buy a display programer to get the true tone functions.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

11 minutes ago, RageTester said:

 

Better flip pancakes. iphone is a premium product. I don't think people buy used iPhones.

 

iPhones are a premium item, a status symbole.
People will buy a used one to get them. If I were a betting man I'd bet iPhones are better in the used market because they're a premium.

[Ty2525]

2 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Expect to buy a display programer to get the true tone functions.

This is true, however, you can very easily sell iPhones without true tone if you wanted to. I am getting a listed of venders, it might take a bit. 

[carmadman]

1 minute ago, Ty2525 said:

This is true, however, you can very easily sell iPhones without true tone if you wanted to. I am getting a listed of venders, it might take a bit. 

ok great, just put it on this forum when you are ready

[Ty2525]

4 minutes ago, carmadman said:

ok great, just put it on this forum when you are ready

I imagine you live in the U.S?

[Helpful Tech Witch]

22 minutes ago, Ty2525 said:

This is true, however, you can very easily sell iPhones without true tone if you wanted to. I am getting a listed of venders, it might take a bit. 

Yeah, but still, it would be a plus to sell a fully functioning iPhone.

[mariushm]

Repairing phones is not really that easy. You need to buy equipment, you need to buy materials like the glue that you use to glue the new screen to the phone, and the tools to take a phone apart without damaging the frame..,

Then you also need a reliable source of new LCD screens for the iPhone, you may order them from China and they'll be confiscated at customs. Or you order them and they don't work with your iphone.

Some of the newer stuff is serialized, the phone will refuse a new lcd screen / display because the serial numbers mismatch...

 

I don't think it's a good niche to start in at this point, especially if you didn't do any research at all.

By the time you'd learn and buy the equipment (hot air tools, soldering iron, make a stock of replacement parts, then buy faulty phones) you may be at the point where new phones can no longer be serviced.

You may also end up buying faulty phones that already passed through 2-3 people that tried to repair them and failed.

 

 

 

[Ty2525]

9 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Repairing phones is not really that easy. You need to buy equipment, you need to buy materials like the glue that you use to glue the new screen to the phone, and the tools to take a phone apart without damaging the frame..,

Then you also need a reliable source of new LCD screens for the iPhone, you may order them from China and they'll be confiscated at customs. Or you order them and they don't work with your iphone.

Some of the newer stuff is serialized, the phone will refuse a new lcd screen / display because the serial numbers mismatch...

 

I don't think it's a good niche to start in at this point, especially if you didn't do any research at all.

By the time you'd learn and buy the equipment (hot air tools, soldering iron, make a stock of replacement parts, then buy faulty phones) you may be at the point where new phones can no longer be serviced.

You may also end up buying faulty phones that already passed through 2-3 people that tried to repair them and failed.

 

 

 

This is a very subjective response. You don't need to solder to replace batteries. You also don't even need hot air tools. Hot mats work equally as well, with just less control. You can also buy bulk screen adhesive for really cheap. Repairing phones is not hard at all

 

-Someone who has fixed 100+ phones.

[Jtalk4456]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Repairing phones is not really that easy. You need to buy equipment, you need to buy materials like the glue that you use to glue the new screen to the phone, and the tools to take a phone apart without damaging the frame..,

Then you also need a reliable source of new LCD screens for the iPhone, you may order them from China and they'll be confiscated at customs. Or you order them and they don't work with your iphone.

Some of the newer stuff is serialized, the phone will refuse a new lcd screen / display because the serial numbers mismatch...

 

I don't think it's a good niche to start in at this point, especially if you didn't do any research at all.

By the time you'd learn and buy the equipment (hot air tools, soldering iron, make a stock of replacement parts, then buy faulty phones) you may be at the point where new phones can no longer be serviced.

You may also end up buying faulty phones that already passed through 2-3 people that tried to repair them and failed.

Hate to be a dream killer here, but I completely agree. Also you don't seem to have accounted for having customers actually buy. You can grab the parts take all the time and effort and fix them, but you might not be able to sell them and have sunk your money in with no return for long periods of timeNo offense to you, but my guess is you saw prices of used phones and prices of broken phones and did some math to realize someone is making some money. You figured you'd cash in, and like many of us you're proficient enough with tools and watching youtube videos, you could probably work it out pretty decently. Problem is you're not counting in risk. Most of the someone's who take on this kind of thing are heavily business focused. Chain repair shops who have been in the industry a while, have deals with LCD providers, hire cheap labor and provide some minimal training, etc. Jumping into this because you could theoretically do the work doesn't mean you could necessarily make any money off it. 
If I'm wrong and you actually have a legit passion for this type of work, then go work for a repair shop for a bit. Get paid to learn a whole lot about the business, pay attention to what metrics the bosses are paying attention to. Really delve in. Either you'll find you couldn't care less about really making this a business and you just like tinkering or you'll get super into it and either branch into your own work with a ton of knowledge and experience or rise up the ranks in whatever place you're doing repairs at.

[Middcore]

If your idea of where to begin your research on this plan was to post this thread on the LTT forum, then I don't think this is a good plan for you.

[Jtalk4456]

9 minutes ago, Ty2525 said:

This is a very subjective response. You don't need to solder to replace batteries. You also don't even need hot air tools. Hot mats work equally as well, with just less control. You can also buy bulk screen adhesive for really cheap. Repairing phones is not hard at all

 

-Someone who has fixed 100+ phones.

I agree it's not as hard or tool dependent as they were saying but the part about risk in buying and receiving stock of parts is 100% a concern when someone is new to the job. 

[carmadman]

1 hour ago, Ty2525 said:

I imagine you live in the U.S?

i live in the uk

[Ty2525]

Time to address some of these concerns:

 

1. You don't need to work in the industry to make money buying/fixing phones

2. The used/repaired iPhone market is very strong and has been for years

3. You don't need to worry about customs taking packages, this only happens when fake apple logos are included on products. 

4. You don't need to have connections with venders to get good prices, real large scale venders sell their products for easily half if not less than a vender like iFixit no matter the quantity ordered. 

5. repairing phones in general is not that difficult, and assuming you understand the very real "risks" if you want to call them that, then getting into repairing phones is not nor should be a daunting task. 

 

I live in the U.S so my U.K vender list is pretty sad, but here you go. Couple of Trusted Venders for the U.K: https://www.iparts-4u.co.uk/   and I forgot the other, sorry lol. 

[carmadman]

7 minutes ago, Ty2525 said:

Time to address some of these concerns:

 

1. You don't need to work in the industry to make money buying/fixing phones

2. The used/repaired iPhone market is very strong and has been for years

3. You don't need to worry about customs taking packages, this only happens when fake apple logos are included on products. 

4. You don't need to have connections with venders to get good prices, real large scale venders sell their products for easily half if not less than a vender like iFixit no matter the quantity ordered. 

5. repairing phones in general is not that difficult, and assuming you understand the very real "risks" if you want to call them that, then getting into repairing phones is not nor should be a daunting task. 

 

I live in the U.S so my U.K vender list is pretty sad, but here you go. Couple of Trusted Venders for the U.K: https://www.iparts-4u.co.uk/   and I forgot the other, sorry lol. 

thanks man  

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Phones and Tablets