Can You Sell a Fake iPhone to an EcoATM? We Tried It (Sort Of)
I had a weird thought the other day, what would happen if I tried selling a fake iPhone to an EcoATM? Would it catch on? Would it give me anything at all? What about a completely useless dummy phone that doesn’t even turn on?
Let’s find out.
What Is EcoATM?
EcoATM is a self-service kiosk that allows users to recycle their old phones in exchange for instant cash. It identifies devices by connecting to them, verifying their model and condition, and offering a quote based on its assessment.
Currently, there are no EcoATM machines in Canada, so we drove to the nearest available location in the U.S. to conduct the test.
Test 1: Fake iPhone 15 Pro Max
I started with a fake iPhone 15 Pro Max... and what do you know?
The EcoATM actually thought it was a 13 Pro that doesn’t power on and offered us $70.
This shows that the EcoATM was not able to fully recognize the hardware differences in the fake device, but still made a generous offer based on what it assumed the phone to be.
Test 2: Dummy Phone
Next up: the ultimate decoy. a non-functional model that contains no internal components. We plugged that in and waited.
To its credit, the machine knew it was fake, but still tried to be polite. It offered us $1. One whole dollar. Honestly, that’s more than I expected for a paperweight.
This demonstrates that EcoATM has basic safeguards in place to detect entirely non-functional or fake devices, but may still assign minimal value to them.
Important Disclaimer
Now before anyone gets the wrong idea: We didn’t actually sell the devices. This was all just an experiment for educational and entertainment purposes. Please don’t go around trying to scam machines. That’s not what we do here.
The whole point was to test how smart EcoATM’s detection system really is and hey, turns out it’s a little smarter than we thought... but still not perfect.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve got a legit old phone you want to offload, EcoATM might actually be worth checking out. But if you're holding a fake or a dummy phone? Don’t get your hopes up. One of them might fool the machine for $70, but the other will only get you a sad little buck.
Still, this was a fun one to try. We’ve got more weird tech experiments on the way.
Remember: fake phones might fool machines, but they won’t fool us.
Stick around and see you in the next article!
