Value retention league 2023: which 2023 phones hold their value best?
All 2023 phones we track, ranked by value retention — launch price versus live used-market medians, updated as listings change.
2023 Value retention league
12 phones · ranked by value kept per year · median depreciation 32%/yr
| # | Phone | Year | Retention | Depreciation | Used (median) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Honor Magic 6 Lite review → | 2023 | 100 | −5%/yr | $197 |
| 2 | Apple iPhone 15 Pro review → | 2023 | 100 | −21%/yr | $500 |
| 3 | Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max review → | 2023 | 100 | −22%/yr | $549 |
| 4 | Apple iPhone 15 Plus review → | 2023 | 100 | −24%/yr | $399 |
| 5 | Apple iPhone 15 review → | 2023 | 100 | −24%/yr | $351 |
| 6 | Motorola Edge (2023) review → | 2023 | 95 | −26%/yr | $199 |
| 7 | Samsung Galaxy S23 FE (Snapdragon) review → | 2023 | 72 | −32%/yr | $188 |
| 8 | Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus review → | 2023 | 64 | −34%/yr | $288 |
| 9 | Samsung Galaxy S23 review → | 2023 | 52 | −37%/yr | $200 |
| 10 | Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 review → | 2023 | 37 | −41%/yr | $375 |
| 11 | Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review → | 2023 | 37 | −41%/yr | $199 |
| 12 | Google Pixel Fold review → | 2023 | 19 | −45%/yr | $295 |
The 2023 cohort in context
The 2023 generation occupies the middle ground of the used market: new enough that hardware still feels current, old enough that the steepest first-year depreciation has already happened. Isolating these phones in their own league makes the ranking a fair test of brand and model quality — when every contender carries the same age penalty, what remains is how the market actually prices each lineage. That is the signal a used buyer wants, undiluted by generation skew.
Methodology behind each row
Retention here is the annualized share of launch price a model still commands, derived from the official release price and the live median of current used listings. The depreciation slope expresses how fast that share erodes per year; it is the tiebreaker for models whose retention has effectively flattened. All of it is recomputed from fresh listing data rather than frozen at publication, so the table stays honest as the market moves.
What separates leaders from the rest at this age
Three years in, retention differences within a cohort are driven by locked-in fundamentals: the length of the remaining software-support window, the reputation of the camera and battery systems as they age, and whether the successor generation was an incremental or a radical step. Incremental successors are good news for 2023 owners — the previous generation stays desirable. Radical jumps, conversely, pull demand toward the newer model and show up here as steeper slopes. Each model's review unpacks which pattern applies.
How to act on this league
Treat the ranking as a shortlist generator: the models near the top are the ones the market has voted to keep expensive, which usually means low ownership risk if you resell later. The current used median column tells you what that vote costs today. For comparison across generations, the 2022 league and the 2024 league bracket this cohort from both sides, and the all-years league sets the long-run benchmark.