If you have been living in Japan for a few years, I am sure you have a few old Keitai at home. Probably you are also thinking of switching to the latest iPhone 5 or Android phone and you would like to get some money for your old phones. Read on and you will learn how to do it.
Many people do not know that you can sell your old phones on?http://auction.yahoo.co.jp/?and make some money to cover the costs of the new phone or just to buy yourself a nice dinner. The price can change range 500Yen for many year old feature phones in bad condition to 50,000Yen or more for the newest models in very good condition. There are many other market places in Japan, but I think that yahoo auction offers the best value, with very low comissions and almost a sure sale if the price is right and you are patient.
The more data you include in the description the easier it will be to sell the phone. If you clean it and take a few nice pictures you will also increase your chances and may be the price you get. Sometimes it is not easy to see the exact color on the pictures, so you should write the color name as it is written on the phone on a sticker you can see if you remove the battery. You can also write the manufacture date as it is written in the same sticker. You will notice that Japanese mobile phones have very creative color descriptions. Some examples beeing freeze white,?Isphahan Pink or Sapphire black.
By the way there is also a Buy it Now on yahoo auction Japan, so you do not need to start an auction and if the product does not sell you can renew it indefinitely until it sells.
Probably there is a lot of data and contact details in your phone so before giving it away we should delete everything. All Android and iPhone models, even old feature phones have an option to reset the device and delete all data. You should find this option inside the settings menu.
Data recovery experts, may be able to recover some data even after a full factory reset, this is because when you delete the data the space is just marked as empty so that it can be used again when necessary but the data is not deleted until you use that space and the memory cells are overwritten. So if you are the paranoid type, after a factory reset you can turn the video camera on and let it record until all the memory is filled. You can delete the video and be sure that not even the best hacker or spy agency will be able to recover any data. If they tried to recover something the only thing they would find would be a very long video of nothing.
If your old cellphone does not turn on or charge, it means the battery has been discharged pass the security level. To revive it, you may want to check this post about reviving old cellphone batteries.
So after this little advice you can scrap all the old phones in your home and make some money as you help the environment and clean your drawer.