[red369]

In the US, Apple still release refurbished iPhone 13 Minis every now and again. In case you haven't heard, I believe they are new battery, new screen, new case. Basically a new phone, but with a plain white box. There are sites that allow you to receive notifications when they are available again. Apple may have finally stopped selling the 13 Mini - I don't follow it anymore. For a while, I keen enough to get one, I was going to use a freight-forwarder to ship one from the US, but they didn't come up while I was waiting and when my phone died, I was in a hurry so I bough a used iPhone 13 mini instead of waiting.

6 months ago, I submitted to HN thinking it would be helpful to the people holding out for one. The submission was flagged, so I haven't tried again - I suppose it just seemed like advertising. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43337518

If you're outside the US, it's a lot harder to get hold of those Apple refurbished phones. Actually, I heard something I found interesting when I was buying a different phone in one of the shops that refurbish themselves. They had an Apple-refurbished iPhone 11 - basically a new iPhone 11, around a year ago! The person at the shop said that when the devices get really old, Apple start selling their refurbished phones to those kind of shops, instead of selling them on their own website.

They thought it would be a year or two before iPhone 13s turned up that route. I don't know much about how accurate any of that was, but I've always wanted to buy a refurbished phone from Apple so I found it interesting.