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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

28 phones · ranked by value kept per year · median depreciation 29%/yr

# Phone Year Retention Depreciation Used (median)
1 Nokia G42 review → 2023 100 −5%/yr $173
2 Honor Magic 6 Lite review → 2023 100 −5%/yr $197
3 Nokia G310 5G review → 2023 100 −9%/yr $136
4 Xiaomi Redmi A2 review → 2023 100 −12%/yr $78
5 Nothing Phone (2) review → 2023 100 −16%/yr $350
6 Apple iPhone 15 Pro review → 2023 100 −21%/yr $500
7 Sony Xperia 5 V review → 2023 100 −21%/yr $438
8 Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max review → 2023 100 −22%/yr $568
9 Apple iPhone 15 review → 2023 100 −25%/yr $340
10 Apple iPhone 15 Plus review → 2023 98 −26%/yr $370
11 OnePlus Open review → 2023 95 −26%/yr $682
12 Motorola Edge (2023) review → 2023 95 −26%/yr $200
13 Xiaomi 14 Pro review → 2023 94 −26%/yr $404
14 OnePlus 11 review → 2023 84 −29%/yr $250
15 Samsung Galaxy A14 review → 2023 83 −29%/yr $60
16 Sony Xperia 1 V review → 2023 83 −29%/yr $496
17 OnePlus Nord N30 5G review → 2023 77 −31%/yr $99
18 Google Pixel 8 review → 2023 76 −31%/yr $230
19 Google Pixel 7a review → 2023 74 −32%/yr $160
20 Samsung Galaxy S23 FE (Snapdragon) review → 2023 71 −32%/yr $186
21 Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus review → 2023 67 −33%/yr $297
22 Motorola Moto G (2023) review → 2023 61 −35%/yr $55
23 Google Pixel 8 Pro review → 2023 60 −35%/yr $240
24 Motorola Moto G Power 5G review → 2023 56 −36%/yr $78
25 Samsung Galaxy S23 review → 2023 47 −38%/yr $188
26 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 review → 2023 34 −41%/yr $309
27 Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review → 2023 32 −42%/yr $195
28 Google Pixel Fold review → 2023 23 −44%/yr $311

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.