iPhones
Buy and sell iPhones in Costa Rica.
Many iPhones in Costa Rica came home in a suitcase from the United States, where the same phone costs a good deal less new, and every US model from the iPhone 14 onwards arrives with no SIM tray at all. A new one gets you a fresh battery, a clean parts record and, on most models sold here, a nano-SIM slot. A used one, from an older SE with a Home button to a recent Pro Max, trades some of that for the price, and the two things that show whether that is fair, battery health and parts history, are screenshots a seller can send ahead.
Pro, Air, Duo, e and the base iPhone:
The tiers split mostly by camera and battery. The Pro and Pro Max add a telephoto lens, and the Pro Max is the one people buy for battery life. The Air gives up the second camera and some battery to be startlingly thin. The e models, and the SE before them, are the cheapest way into iOS, with a single rear camera, and the Duo is Apple’s first foldable, opening out to the largest screen an iPhone has had. From the iPhone 15 the port is USB-C rather than Lightning, which decides the chargers and cables in phone accessories that will fit, and Apple Intelligence needs an iPhone 15 Pro or any model from the 16 on. Storage is fixed for good, because no iPhone takes a memory card: 128 GB is enough if your photos live in iCloud, and anyone who films a lot of 4K video wants 256 GB. Coming from one of the Android phones, Move to iOS brings your WhatsApp chats along.
Imported iPhones and the missing SIM tray:
The price explains it. New in Costa Rica, a base iPhone is around ₡500,000 and a Pro starts near ₡750,000, clearly more than the same phone costs in the United States, so plenty arrive in a suitcase. Every iPhone sold in the US from the 14 onwards is eSIM-only, from the 17 generation most units from Canada, Mexico and Japan are too, and the Air and the Duo have no tray anywhere. Other models sold new in Costa Rica keep the nano-SIM slot. An eSIM-only iPhone works fine here: Kölbi, Claro and Liberty all issue eSIM lines, and from the iPhone 13 on a phone can hold two of them at once. It does narrow the field when you sell, since some buyers want a chip they can swap between phones. In Settings › General › About, tap the model number until a code appears; one ending in LL/A is a US phone.
Battery health and the parts history of a used iPhone:
Both sit in Settings, and a seller who will not show them is telling you something. Under Battery, a maximum capacity below 80% means a replacement is due; on the iPhone 15 and later the cycle count shows too. Costa Rica has no Apple Store, so screens and batteries get swapped at authorised centres and independent counters alike, and plenty of used ones have had a part changed. Parts and Service History, under General › About, shows whether each replacement was a genuine Apple part. One marked Unknown is usually non-genuine, which can mean a duller display, no True Tone, or Face ID that quit after a careless screen job. Those two screens move a used iPhone’s price more than its age does. Original parts and a battery near 90% put a phone at the top of what its generation fetches; a battery under 80% or a non-genuine screen should knock at least the cost of the repair off the price. Last, Activation Lock: have the seller switch off Find My and erase the phone in front of you. One that restarts asking for someone else’s Apple Account stays tied to them.
An iPhone listing built on its own screenshots:
Put the exact model and storage in the title, iPhone 15 Pro 256 GB rather than just iPhone, and say up front whether it has a SIM tray or is eSIM-only. Add the battery and parts-history screenshots, and photograph the lit screen, the back glass, the lenses and the corners of the frame, where drops show. Move your eSIM line to your new phone before you erase this one, and sign out of your Apple Account so it starts at the setup screen. Say where you can meet, because a buyer coming from San Ramón or Turrialba will ask before making the trip. Then say whether the phone was bought new in Costa Rica or brought in from abroad: a locally sold one with its tray is the version some buyers here will travel further for.