Two listings for the same iPhone, same storage, same week. One had four photos with the screen off, shot on a patterned bedspread, and a description reading that it was in good condition with no issues. The other had eleven photos including a close-up of a scratch the seller pointed out himself, plus a screenshot of the battery health.
The second one sold in two days at a higher price. The one with the hidden scratch sat for three weeks.
That’s the whole mechanism, and it runs counter to instinct: buyers pay more when they can see what’s wrong. Uncertainty gets priced in as risk, and risk discounts are always bigger than the actual flaw.
Photograph the phone properly
Fifteen minutes. It’s the highest-return quarter hour in the entire selling process.
Set up first
Clean the phone. Fingerprints and dust dominate close-up photos and make a well-kept device look neglected. Microfibre cloth, and clear the port and speaker grilles.
Find soft, indirect daylight. Near a window, out of direct sun. This is the whole trick.
Turn the flash off. A flash creates a hard hotspot that blows out part of the screen and hides scratches. Buyers who’ve been burned before read flash photos as concealment, whether you meant it that way or not.
Use a plain, mid-tone background. A grey desk, a white sheet of paper, a wooden table. Not a bedspread, not a carpet, not a kitchen counter with things on it.
Wipe it again. You touched it while setting up.
The shots that matter
Twelve covers everything, and the order matters because the first is your thumbnail.
- Front, screen on, straight down, centred. Home screen or a plain wallpaper. This is the image people decide on in the search results, so make it the best one.
- Back, straight down. Full frame.
- Each of the four edges. Individually. Corners take the damage, and buyers know it.
- The screen at an angle, under light. This is the honest shot — it reveals scratches, scuffs, and any burn-in that a straight-on photo hides. Include it. Skipping it is the thing buyers assume you did.
- Close-up of every flaw, with something for scale if it’s small.
- The camera glass, close, checking for hairlines over the lenses.
- The charging port, close enough to show it’s clean.
- Settings > About, showing the model number and storage.
- Battery health screenshot.
- Parts and service history (iPhone), or a note that it’s original.
- The box and accessories, if you have them.
- The screen displaying a plain white image at full brightness — this proves no dead pixels and no burn-in in a way nothing else does.
Ten to twelve photos is the sweet spot. Four says you’re hiding something. Thirty says you don’t know what matters.
Photograph the flaws deliberately
The counterintuitive part.
A buyer who sees a clearly photographed scratch knows the worst of it. A buyer who sees no flaws in a phone that’s obviously been used for two years assumes there’s something you didn’t show, and mentally deducts more than the scratch is worth.
Point the flaws out in the caption or the description. It reads as competence, and it means nobody arrives at the meetup with a renegotiation prepared.
Write the title so it gets found
Buyers search and filter. A title full of adjectives matches nothing.
The formula that works: brand, model, storage, colour, carrier status, condition.
Something like: Samsung Galaxy S24 128GB Onyx Black — Not Carrier Locked — Excellent Condition.
What to leave out: exclamation marks, capitals, “must go,” “no time wasters,” and any word that describes your mood rather than the product. Those signal a difficult transaction before anyone has said hello.
Structure the description
Six short blocks, in this order, because it’s the order buyers’ questions arrive in.
What it is. Model, storage, colour, carrier status, and how old it is. One or two lines.
Condition, honestly. Describe the wear specifically — where it is and how visible. Vague descriptions of good condition are worth nothing because everyone writes them.
What you’ve verified. Battery health figure, whether the parts are original, whether the IMEI is clean, whether it’s been repaired and by whom. This block does more work than any other and almost nobody includes it.
What’s included. Box, cable, case, adapter. Be exact.
Why you’re selling. One line. “Upgraded to the S25” is a story with a shape; silence isn’t.
Terms. Price, whether it’s negotiable, where you’ll meet, and that the buyer is welcome to complete setup on their own account before paying. That last clause tells experienced buyers you know what you’re doing.
Keep the whole thing under about two hundred words. People scan listings; they don’t read them.
What buyers are actually checking
Worth understanding, because writing to it puts you ahead of most listings.
Any careful buyer is working from something like our fifteen-point inspection list. They’ll want the IMEI, the battery health, the model number, and confirmation that the phone isn’t locked to an account or a carrier. They’ll ask about repairs, and on an iPhone they’ll open the parts history themselves.
You can answer all of that in the listing. Doing so filters out the wrong buyers, shortens the message thread with the right ones, and makes the eventual meetup a formality rather than an inspection.
Speed matters more than polish
Most interest in a listing arrives in the first forty-eight hours. Replies within the hour convert dramatically better than replies the next day, and by day four you’re largely waiting rather than selling.
Which means: don’t spend a week perfecting the listing, and do keep notifications on for the first two days.
If nothing has happened after a week, the price is the problem. It’s almost always the price. Relisting with better photos and the same number rarely works; adjusting the number does.
Veelvoorkomende fouten om te vermijden
- Photos with the screen off. The most common tell in the entire used market, and buyers read it as a hidden crack.
- Using flash. Hides exactly what buyers want to see, and they know it.
- Stock or press images. On a private listing this is close to disqualifying.
- Describing condition in adjectives instead of specifics. “Minor wear” tells nobody anything.
- Hiding a flaw you’ll have to reveal at the meetup anyway. You’ll take less than if you’d disclosed it.
- A title written in capitals with a warning about lowballers. It signals a difficult seller and costs you messages.
- Letting the listing go stale without adjusting price. Relisting the same thing at the same number changes nothing.
Veelgestelde vragen
How many photos should a phone listing have?
Ten to twelve. Enough to cover every surface, the screen in two lighting conditions, and the key settings screenshots — without burying the important ones.
Should I mention scratches and dents?
Yes, specifically, with a photo of each. Disclosed flaws get discounted less than undisclosed ones, because undisclosed flaws make buyers wonder what else is hiding.
What’s the single most important photo?
The first one: front, screen on, straight down, on a plain background. It’s the thumbnail, and it determines whether anyone opens the listing at all.
Does including the battery health screenshot help?
Considerably. It’s the first thing most buyers ask about, and answering it up front removes a round of messages and a reason for suspicion.
How long should the description be?
Under two hundred words, in short blocks. Long descriptions get skimmed and the important details get lost in them.
My listing has been up two weeks with no interest. What now?
It’s the price, almost certainly. Compare against completed sales rather than active listings, and adjust — our pricing and timing guide covers where the number should sit.
Take the twelve-shot list, spend fifteen minutes at a window with a grey background, and photograph the scratch you were planning not to mention. That combination sells phones faster and for more than any wording trick.
When the photos are ready, create your listing on ExploreFrag — and reset the phone the morning of the handover rather than before, so you can keep answering buyer questions with a working device.
About the author
Emran Ahmed is the founder and CEO of ExploreFrag, a marketplace for buying and selling used phones and accessories across every brand. He reads listings all day and can usually predict which ones will sit unsold from the thumbnail alone, which is a strange skill to have developed. He remains convinced that the single most profitable thing a seller can do is photograph the flaw they were hoping nobody would notice.