Apple made two changes on September 9 that both point the same direction for anyone trading up: it raised the price of every iPhone it kept in the lineup by $100, and it lowered what it will credit for an old iPhone traded in toward the new one. With iPhone 18 Pro pre-orders open since 12:00 UTC today, Saturday September 12, both changes are now part of the same checkout.
Neither change was announced as a headline. Apple did not publish a press release calling out the price increase or the trade-in reduction, and the two moving in the same direction on the same day is the story worth a reader’s attention, because it is the opposite of what launch week usually delivers.
Key facts
| Item | What changed on September 9 |
|---|---|
| iPhone 17e | $599 to $699, Apple’s Store price, up $100 |
| iPhone 16 | $699 to $799, up $100 |
| iPhone 17 | $799 to $899, up $100 |
| iPhone Air | $999 to $1,099, up $100 |
| iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max | Discontinued. Apple no longer sells either |
| Apple’s published trade-in range | $175 to $885 in the US, up to £455 in the UK, for eligible iPhones |
| Trade-in values recorded across models | Fell on the same day, in some cases by as much as $120 |
The price side of September 9
Apple’s own Store now lists iPhone 17e, iPhone 16, iPhone 17 and iPhone Air each $100 above what Apple listed for them before the event. iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max were discontinued outright, and iPhone 16 Plus was removed from the lineup. The old rule of thumb, that the model just replaced gets cheaper the day the new one arrives, did not hold this year. The current prices above are Apple’s own Store listings; the prices they replaced were what Apple listed the day before the event.
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The trade-in side moved the same direction
Apple’s own wording, from its iPhone 18 Pro announcement, is the only trade-in figure Apple states as a fact rather than an estimate: customers trading in an iPhone 13 or later can get $175 to $885 in credit in the US, instantly. Apple does not publish a per-model table alongside that sentence. Separately, values recorded for individual models on September 9 show reductions across most of the lineup, not a table Apple itself prints, but a pattern consistent with Apple’s own range shifting downward at the same time its device prices moved upward.
| Model traded in | Value recorded before Sept 9 | Value recorded after Sept 9 |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone 16 Pro | $630 | $510 |
| iPhone 16 Pro Max | $720 | $610 |
| iPhone 15 Pro Max | $530 | $455 |
| iPhone 14 Pro Max | $405 | $360 |
| iPhone 13 | $205 | $175 |
Why the two changes compound
Put the two together and the arithmetic is worse than either change looks alone. Someone trading an iPhone 16 Pro toward the same new iPhone gets $510 in credit today against the $630 that model was worth on September 8, a difference of $120 before a single dollar of the new purchase is considered. Anyone choosing to step up to iPhone 17 rather than iPhone 18 Pro faces the same lower trade-in against a Store price that is itself $100 higher than it was a week ago. Apple has not published a combined figure for either case; both numbers above come from Apple’s own current Store price and the trade-in value recorded for that specific model, added by us, not printed anywhere by Apple as a single line.
None of this changes what the A20 Pro or the new camera system actually do. It changes only what the upgrade costs, and it costs more this week than it would have a week earlier, on both sides of the transaction.
What has not been confirmed
Apple has not published a per-model trade-in table anywhere on its Trade In page; the page routes buyers to a questionnaire, and the estimator URL Apple once used returns an error. Apple has not stated a reason for either the price increase or the trade-in reduction, and it has not said whether either figure will move again before iOS 27 arrives on September 14 or iPhone 18 Pro ships on September 18. Anything beyond Apple’s own $175 to $885 US range and £455 UK figure should be read as a value recorded for a specific model, not a table Apple publishes.
Pre-orders remain open today, September 12, ahead of delivery on Friday, September 18. Anyone trading in toward a new iPhone this week is trading against the lower September 9 figures, not the ones that applied a week earlier.
