Tempted by the Pixel Fold? Google Will Buy Your iPhone at Ridiculous Trade-in Prices

While many folks still wait for the day when Apple will release its mythic foldable iPhone, Google has now thrown its hat into the ring with the Pixel Fold, representing what could be the first mainstream competitor to Samsung’s popular Galaxy Z Fold 4.

It’s a fascinating device, to be sure, even if it is somewhat unproven. The unfolded inner display measures 7.6 inches diagonally, with a resolution of 2,208 x 1,840 resolution at 380 pixels per inch. On the cover is a 5.8-inch OLED display that reaches a peak brightness of 1,550 nits.

It also packs in some impressive cameras, with a 48MP main shooter, a 10.8MP ultrawide, and a 10.8MP telephoto lens with 5X optical zoom, plus the computational photography power of Google’s Tensor G2 chip. It’s the thinnest foldable phone yet, and, unlike Samsung, Google is focusing more on the phone side rather than trying to make a tablet out of it.

Not surprisingly, the Pixel Fold doesn’t come cheap. Like Samsung’s foldable, the Pixel Fold arrives with a $1,799 price tag for its base model with 256GB of storage. So, also like its chief competitor, Google is offering some nice trade-in deals to help take the sting out of paying nearly the same price for a smartphone that you would for a MacBook Pro.

Of course, the Pixel Fold is also still an Android smartphone, but Google is making a bold move in the hope that its new foldable will entice iPhone users who may be growing tired of waiting for Apple to come around.

However, as reasonable as most of the trade-in values are, the amounts that Google is offering to pay iPhone users to switch over to the other side is almost ludicrous.

As 9to5Google reports, Google will pay $950 for an iPhone 14 Pro Max or $900 for an iPhone 14 Pro. For the 6.1-inch model, that’s only $100 less than what it costs to buy one brand new.

An iPhone 13 Pro Max will fetch the same $900 towards a Pixel Fold, while the smaller iPhone 13 Pro drops that slightly to $850. That’s still only $150 less than that model sold for when new — and $320 more than Apple will give you to trade in the same iPhone for a newer model.

It gets even crazier with the 2020 iPhone 12 Pro Max, where Google is offering an $800 trade-in value that’s nearly twice as much what Apple will pay.

However, only Apple’s Pro models seem to be attracting these lucrative prices, perhaps because Google feels those are the folks who are the target audience for the Pixel Fold. The iPhone 14 will only fetch a comparable meagre $350, and both the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini have trade-in values that are considerably lower than what Apple is offering.

As you can see from the chart below, the iPhone 12 Pro is also an outlier here among the iPhone Pro models, with a low and really oddball trade-in value of $214.80. The 2022 iPhone SE and all of Apple’s pre-2020 models all have similarly low trade-in values, with some being half of Apple’s.

Google also isn’t distinguishing by storage capacities. For instance, a 1TB iPhone 14 Pro Max, which retails for $1,599 fetches the same $950 as the base 128GB model, and that’s the same across the board.

It’s also important to remember that all of the figures above are estimated trade-in values, and can be subject to change after Google’s or Apple’s trade-in partners assess the condition of your phone.

Still, it’s obvious that Google is making a serious play for iPhone Pro users here, as these are some seriously inflated trade-in values, and are far more generous than Google is offering for any other smartphone brands. Even a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, which sells for the same price as the Pixel Fold, only nets $900 on trade-in — the same price that Google is paying for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Google isn’t even sweetening the pot for its own faithful Pixel fans. An owner of the latest Pixel 7 Pro, which retails for $899, will only get $380 in trade-in value if they decide to upgrade to a Pixel Fold, and of course the prices only go down from there.

It’s also clear this is entirely about luring iPhone Pro users into the Fold. Opt for a Pixel 7 Pro instead, and your iPhone 14 Pro Max trade-in value will drop to a mere $500, and an iPhone 13 Pro Max to only $353. Meanwhile, the iPhone 14 and iPhone 13 values remain the same. In other words, Google is willing to pay twice as much specifically to take your iPhone Pro out of your hands and replace it with a Pixel Fold.