A new resale value study suggests that a $2,000 foldable iPhone could lose up to $1,292 of its value in its first 12 months on the market, based on current depreciation trends for foldable devices.
The estimate comes from SellCell, which analyzed the 12-month resale performance of flagship smartphones from Apple, Samsung, Google, Motorola and OnePlus. The site found that foldable smartphones lose an average of 64.6% of their value in one year, the worst depreciation rate of any smartphone category, compared to 55.3% for traditional smartphones.
SellCell calculates that foldable phone owners lose an average of $997.69 after 12 months, compared to $605.32 for traditional smartphone owners, a gap of $392.37. Foldables only retain 35.4% of their launch value after a year, compared to 44.7% for non-foldable phones.
Apple is widely rumored to be preparing its first foldable iPhone, expected to be called “iPhone Ultra”, which is expected to launch alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max in fall 2026, with a price tag of around $2,000.
Using this assumed price, SellCell modeled what the resale value of a foldable iPhone might look like after a year if it depreciated at the average rate seen on today’s foldables, reaching around $708 after 12 months. This would represent a loss of approximately $1,292.
SellCell notes that Apple has historically outperformed its competitors in terms of resale value. The iPhone 16 range retained 51.5% of its value after 12 months, the strongest of any major manufacturer in the study, ahead of OnePlus (46.8%), Google (40.8%), Samsung (39.5%) and Motorola (24.5%). If a foldable iPhone matched the depreciation rate of the iPhone 16 line, SellCell estimates it could be worth about $1,030 after a year, or more than $300 less depreciation than a typical foldable.
The actual depreciation would likely be closer to Apple’s current numbers. The base iPhone 16 retained 51.4% of its value after a year and the 256GB iPhone 16 Pro Max retained 56.4%, although even at those rates the total loss on a $2,000 device would still amount to about $1,000 over 12 months.
