Secondhand smartphones: How used mobile phone providers differ

The market for refurbished cell phones is growing: They're affordable, and anyone who buys one now has a wide selection to choose from. But customers shouldn't just focus on price.

ByMirjam Hauck and Michael Kläsgen

Anyone who thinks Rebuy unscrews and reassembles smartphones is quite mistaken. Rebuy may be one of the largest retailers of used smartphones in Germany and, like Swappie, Refurbed, Back Market, and Amazon Renewed, one of the most established. But here in the Berlin factory hall in Siemensstadt, this afternoon, no one is sitting hunched over a cell phone with a screwdriver and tweezers, repairing it. In fact, the number of employees is surprisingly small. And one of the most important employees isn't even a human. The robot stands at the end of a meter-long conveyor belt. With gripping arms and pincer-like hands, it takes the used cell phones off the line one by one and places them very slowly and gently into a vending machine.