The British television viewing public has been dominated by ‘Sell Your Unwanted Mobile’ adverts for the last few months. Mazuma, Envirofone etc are all different companies which offer to buy your old mobile phone from you. But who’s the best and what do they actually do with your old mobile?

Many of us have multiple unwanted phones lying idle around the house, in odd drawers and cupboards so it seems a great opportunity when someone wants to buy them off you! If the number of television adverts is anything to go by, this industry is big business.

What do they actually do with your old phone?

According to Mazuma Mobile the phones are “reused in developing markets such as China, Africa, Pakistan and India.” Some companies also break the phones down into it’s component parts which are then sold for reuse.

The process.

Many of these companies work in the same way. First you sign up to their website and select which phone you want to sell to them. They then send you a freepost envelope which you send back to them with your unwanted mobile phone inside. They then examine the phone and send you a cheque with the monies!

Who gives the most cash?

We’ve done a little investigating on which of the big mobile recycling companies gives you the most cash for your mobile. The companies we’ve examined are: Envirofone, Mazuma Mobile, fonebank, zonzoo and mopay. We also took a look at the current market price on ebay for our three handsets: iPhone (16GB), Nokia N95, Samsung E330. Below is a table showing our findings.

As the table shows for the N95 and E330 the prices amongst the companies where quite similar and didn’t vary much. However, the iPhone has a large range of about £30! fonebank seemed willing to pay the most cash out for both the N95 and the iPhone. What is surprising though is that many of the companies where offering more cash than the value on eBay.

The very helpful website MobileValuer.com has been created by the guys behind MoneySavingExpert.com to find the best price for your mobile phone from these different recycling companies. It compares the different companies through one search therefore saving you both time and effort in finding the best deals around. Whilst using the tool we noticed that it didn’t show us results for fonebank so we recommend using the tool in conjunction with your normal searches.