A huge number of people are ditching their iPhone 17 Pro Max, but not necessarily because it’s bad
A huge number of people are ditching their iPhone 17 Pro Max, but not necessarily because it’s bad
Publish Date: 2026-02-18 14:14:00
Source Domain: www.phonearena.com
The iPhone 17 Pro Max‘s value is apparently both a blessing and a curse. | Image by PhoneArena
If you’ve been keeping an eye on independent resale markets to try to buy a used mobile device at a fair price over the last month or so, you may have noticed a curiously high (and growing) number of iPhone 17 Pro Max units available in mint or “good” condition.Believe it or not, that’s evidence of the handset’s unrivaled quality in addition to an unusual inability to connect with broad audiences for long-term use, at least according to a very intriguing (and surprising) new SellCell report.
Is the iPhone 17 Pro Max a flop?
This chart doesn’t look great for Apple, but it doesn’t look as bad as you think either. | Image by SellCell
But the hugely popular device does have a problem, and it might be related to its… exceptional value. Basically, it looks like the iPhone 17 Pro Max is too good for many owners to resist… reselling it shortly after their original purchase.
That’s right, this thing is retaining its value much better than its predecessor, which could explain (at least in part) why it’s already the most traded-in phone around, followed by the iPhone 15 Pro Max, 14 Pro Max, and 16 Pro Max.Compared to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which had lost about 32.5 percent of its original value within 145 days of its release, the 17 Pro Max’s depreciation sits at an impressive 25.4 percent after a similar time period. That means buyers of Apple’s latest (and greatest) jumbo-sized handset can easily sell their still very new devices at considerably higher prices than 16 Pro Max owners could this time last year, and indeed, a lot of folks are doing just that and trying to recoup as much of their “investment” as possible.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max even holds a pretty significant advantage over the 15 Pro Max and 14 Pro Max in the…
