Home › Industry News › iPhone Duo vs refurbished

The iPhone Duo costs A$3,499. Here’s what the same money buys refurbished

Apple announced its first foldable on 9 September. In Australia it starts at A$3,499 and runs to A$5,899 — the most expensive phone the company has ever sold here. We checked what that money buys on the second-hand market instead.

By Bryan Sloan · Published 12 September 2026 · Editorially independent · we may earn commission on some links

Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo at its September event on the 9th, its first foldable and the biggest change to the iPhone in nearly twenty years. It has a 5.4-inch display closed and a 7.6-inch display open, dual batteries, an under-display selfie camera, a vapour chamber for cooling and the new A20 Pro chip. Pre-orders open on 16 October and it goes on sale on 23 October across more than 70 countries.

It is also eSIM-only, and in Australia it starts at A$3,499 for 256GB, rising to A$5,899 for 2TB. In the United States the same base model is US$1,999. Australians are paying roughly a 25% premium.

The rest of the range went up too

The Duo was not the only price rise. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max both launched US$100 above last year's equivalents, and Apple raised base prices across the line, with the increase growing at higher storage tiers — the 1TB Pro is around US$300 more than the previous generation's. Apple had already raised Mac and iPad prices over the northern summer.

The company's stated reason is the one we wrote about a fortnight ago: memory and storage costs have soared as AI data centres absorb the world's supply. We explained the mechanism here — high-bandwidth memory earns chipmakers several times more per wafer than the DRAM that goes into phones, so capacity moved, and everything with memory in it costs more. A foldable has two displays, two batteries and a hinge. It is the most memory- and component-heavy phone Apple has ever built, launched into the worst component market in a decade.

What A$3,499 buys refurbished

These are the cheapest verified prices on our Best Buys page, checked against each seller's live listing on 12 September 2026.

A phone, a second flagship phone, a laptop and a tablet — A$153 under the price of one Duo. Or, if you only want a phone: the Duo costs about the same as three and a half refurbished iPhone 16s, five iPhone 15s at A$664, or seven iPhone 14s at A$476.

The number nobody quotes: what it will be worth

This is where our own data is more useful than a spec sheet. We track what flagships actually sell for once they reach the second-hand market, and the curve is consistent.

The iPhone 16 launched at A$1,399 and now sells refurbished from A$928 — it has given up about a third of its value. The iPhone 14, four years old, launched at the same A$1,399 and now goes for A$476 — roughly two-thirds gone.

Apply that shape to A$3,499 and the arithmetic gets uncomfortable. A third is about A$1,170 of value lost in the first couple of years. Two-thirds is about A$2,330 by year four. The percentages are ordinary; it is the base they are applied to that makes them hurt. Depreciation is proportional, so the more expensive the phone, the more expensive the depreciation.

So is it worth it?

There is a real case for buying one. It is Apple's first foldable, it collapses a phone and a small tablet into one device, and if you have wanted that in an iPhone you have waited nearly two decades for it. Nothing in the refurbished market does what it does.

The case against is not really about the Duo. It is about what a first-generation folding mechanism means: a hinge and an inner display are moving parts with a service life, the under-display camera is unproven in daily use, and out-of-warranty repair on a foldable has historically cost considerably more than on a slab phone. Buying generation one of any folding device means paying the most for the least-proven version, and carrying the depreciation on A$3,499 while you do.

Our honest read: if you want it because it is new and folding, buy it — that is a legitimate reason and no amount of arithmetic will change it. If you are weighing it as value, the numbers are not close. Wait for the second generation, let the first wave of hinges tell you what they are going to tell you, and in the meantime a refurbished flagship at a third of the price does everything except fold.

Common questions