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Compare iPhone prices, offers and qualities

41 percent of Danes have an iPhone in their bag or pocket, but which is the best iPhone when looking more closely at the quality and price differences between the various models of iPhone?

The longer a mobile phone has been on the market, the cheaper it will become and the better offers you will find. Conversely, it is also true that the newest iPhones are incredibly expensive, so it is interesting thing to look more closely at the quality differences between older and newer iPhones. Are the latest iPhones really so much better than iPhones that have been on the market for two to three years longer?

Since the very first iPhone hit the market in 2007, I have tested, evaluated and reviewed all more recent iPhones. The table below presents my ratings for all iPhones currently available on the market and you can see current pricing and special offers.

Apple iPhone 12 64 GB
Test Score 72/100
Price Level $ 890 / € 820
Apple iPhone 12 128 GB
Test Score 72/100
Price Level $ 950 / € 870

Show all Phones

The table also shows the current rating, prices and offers for all iPhones that are available on the Danish market.

iPhone is a great silent pop star

When the first iPhone arrived in 2007, it set a high standard for ease of use and design, so much so that the first iPhone pretty well defined the concept of the smartphone. The very first iPhone was in no way some kind of technological miracle though. Even back then, mobile phones were available that were far better, in terms of their technical specifications.

Since the arrival of the first iPhone on the market, Apple has achieved almost religious enthusiasm about their smartphones. The popularity of the iPhone has almost reached the skies and each new iPhone launch sees Apple setting new sales records. The iPhone has become a veritable pop star, with higher sales than the combined sales of Michael Jackson, U2, Madonna and every other rock and pop star. These sales records have been achieved in spite of the fact that the differences in quality between the various models of iPhone have been relatively small.

It is also well worth mentioning that competing smartphones, particularly those from Samsung, Sony, LG and, more recently, Huawei, have been significantly better and cheaper than Apple iPhones. The many years of success achieved by the iPhone is therefore a massive commercial paradox, which should probably be ascribed to more general trends in the current western world. Reality stars have automatically received enormous amounts of media attention, whereas good hard-working folks with their feet planted firmly on the ground are able to flourish from now to eternity, without being so much as noticed.

The truth behind the success that Apple has achieved is probably that the iPhone has been great click bait that broader media platforms have made a lot of money writing about. Their success has never been about smartphone technology, but page views and the media’s homage to the altar of filthy lucre.

Steen Jørgensen, Mobile expert at Mobil.nu

The best iPhone for the price

Which is the best iPhone? This simply depends on how much you are willing to pay for actual quality. The newest iPhones cost over DKK 10,000, whereas slightly older iPhones (a couple of years old) cost less than half that.

The price differences between the various iPhone models are enormous. The differences in quality are relatively small, however, so you should ask yourself a rather simple question. Why pay DKK 10,000 for the very latest iPhone, when you can get an iPhone that is almost as good for half the price.

The best mobile iPhone for the money is, simply, the iPhone that offers the best quality for the money. Why pay up to DKK 10,000 for the most recent iPhone, when you can get away with paying half for an iPhone variant that is a couple of years old but is only slightly inferior to the very latest one.

The best iPhone for the money is, simply, the iPhone that offers the best quality for your money. The table above shows ratings for all iPhones, as well as current offers and prices. You should choose the iPhone that is best for the money, based on your quality requirements. There is no real reason to pay a huge amount of money for an iPhone that is only slightly better.

Best iPhone offers

The best offers on iPhones can change on a daily basis. Current prices and offers are part of the campaigns that are launched by the telecommunications companies and hundreds of independent webshops which constantly launch and run campaign offers for both older and the very latest iPhones.

It can therefore be difficult for buyers to find which iPhone offer is the best available right now. The table above allows you to easily compare current iPhone offers. We update prices and offers on a daily basis and make it easy for you to find the best offers of the day from telecommunications companies and many independent webshops, that typically sell iPhones with no mobile subscription.

In addition to current prices and offers, you can also read our tests and reviews of the individual models of iPhone. If you would like to take a closer look at two selected models, you can also go one step further and compare two iPhone models with each other, to see which is best.

iPhones – strengths and weaknesses

Apple iPhones have almost always been highly praised for their lavish design and ease of use, and deservedly so. Neither is there any way of ignoring the massive choice of iPhone APPs that have been available on the App Store over the years, which have been a particularly important consideration when people have considered which smartphone to buy. That the iPhone is also a natural component of the Apple eco-system have also been a huge contribution to people’s mobile phone choices, especially for all those who already use Apple products and systems for computing, TV viewing and listening to music.

The weaknesses of Apple iPhones are also fairly visible, but perhaps not immediately so. As already mentioned, design, materials and user-friendliness are tip-top. All iPhones share common issues, such as bad battery life, poor quality mobile antennas and high SAR values. Neither is it possible to add new memory cards, so the price of an iPhone is substantially more expensive than than the price of other smartphones of equivalent or even better quality.

Which is the best iPhone?

Which iPhone should you choose? You could do the same as an awful lot of people, which is to buy the latest iPhone as a matter of course. But the newest iPhone is not necessarily the best iPhone. If you take a closer look at the specifications and quality of the various iPhone models over the years, both Danish and international mobile experts are almost unanimous in their conclusions, that the differences in quality between the previous and latest generations of iPhone are seldom terribly significant.

This cannot be said about the prices though! The latest iPhone is always far more expensive than the previous model, despite the fact that the latest iPhone is seldom all that much better than the previous model.

Which is the best iPhone? I would argue that the best iPhone is the iPhone that gives the best quality for the money. In other words, you should look more closely at the differences in quality between the various models of iPhone and compare them with the price differences.

My experience over many years is that the best iPhone has typically been on the market for a couple of years. A two-year old variant of the iPhone will typically cost only half of what the latest iPhone costs and the quality improvements of the latest model are seldom sufficiently significant to justify the high price.

The above table allows you to compare the various iPhone models, on both quality and price and to find the best iPhone to suit your needs and budget.

Steen Jørgensen, Mobile expert at Mobil.nu