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iPhone 5? Here are the best uses for your old iPhone.

With Apple's announcement today of the new iPhone 5, many current iPhone owners will be retiring their handsets and upgrading. With some predicting first-week sales numbers up to 10 million units, there are a lot of older iPhones destined for dusty desk drawers. But there's no reason to put your pocket-sized computer out to pasture yet. It's still a very capable and flexible gadget.

Here are 11 things you can do with an 'obsolete' iPhone:

Beck Diefenbach/Reuters
Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple Inc, speaks about iPhone 5 pricing during Apple Inc.'s iPhone media event in San Francisco, Calif., Sept. 12, 2012.

1. Sell it!

Beck Diefenbach/Reuters
Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple Inc, speaks about iPhone 5 pricing during Apple Inc.'s iPhone media event in San Francisco, Calif., Sept. 12, 2012.

  • By Jake Turcotte Staff

Apple's new iPhone looks to be an across-the-board upgrade, improving upon last year's 4S in several ways. Apple has enlarged the "retina" screen we first saw in the iPhone 4, if only slightly. The iPhone 5 now sports a 4-inch screen that's taller but not wider than previous iPhones. The new shape is 16:9, similar to an HDTV. Apple has also included a faster LTE antenna and a processor that it claims is twice as fast, both of which should make the iPhone 5 feel significantly snappier than its older brothers. Rounding out the deal is a longer-lasting battery and a slimmer design (though no camera upgrade this round).

So, what to do with your old phone?

There are a few ways to make some money on an aging iPhone, possibly more than enough to cover the unsubsidized portion of the purchase price of a new phone. A 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S, last year's model, can fetch more than $550 dollars on Ebay at the time of writing, and used-electronics buyer Gazelle will pay you up to $400 for a 4S in "flawless" condition. Craigslist might be another option for sellers looking to make deals locally.

Sellers can also trade in their used iPhones at games retailer GameStop, who is offering up to $400 for the top-of-the-line iPhone 4S.

At first, it might seem odd that buyers are willing to pay so much for your used phone. After all, you can pick up a brand-new iPhone 5 for $199. Why would anyone pay $500 for an old one? The answer: because there's no contract attached. Buying an unlocked, unsubsidized, bare-bones iPhone 5 will likely cost $650.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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