Who’s got £1,000 to spend on a new phone? It’s a lot of money to spend, especially once you’re bundled into a two-year contract.

Despite a market that is upgrading less, manufacturers have continued to put their prices up with the latest Note 20 topping out at over £1,200 and last year’s iPhone reaching £1,500. 

Those prices are completely justified for the technology within the devices, however that’s little consolation to a lot of people who want premium quality at a more convenient price point.

Up step AZNU (pronounced as-new), a refurbished handset provider who, as the name suggests, delivers a standard of quality that the manufacturers would be proud of.

Customers can pick up AZNU devices from Argos with the current selection ranging from the Samsung S7 up to the Note 9 that come with a 12-month warranty, approved accessories and 12 months of Norton 360 anti-viral software & VPN protection. 

More manufacturers are set to come on board in the new year with the end goal for AZNU devices to span wearables, tablets and games consoles as well as mobile phones. But in a conversation with What Gadget, AZNU business development manager Stephen Smith said that he hopes the AZNU brand will set a new standard for quality in the refurbished market.

 

NU Standard

“There’s a lot of interest in buying refurbished devices and there’s a lot of reasons to buy refurbished like the environmental impact and the cost. But the problem is no one knows what they’re getting out the box because it’s so confusing.

“I’ve worked with a number of the major retailers that have been trying to sell refurbished grade products, to some success, but the average person doesn’t understand what a graded or refurbished device is.

“If you go on the internet and look for a refurbished mobile phone, you’re not going to get the same out of the box experience every time. There are a lot of people out there just buying damaged phones cheap and fixing them with low quality parts. 

“Those people are not service trained, they’re just buying new screens off the internet, they’re putting batteries in that are not original and that’s why the market varies so much on price. 

“When I look for refurbished devices, it’s muddy in terms of what grade a refurb is. I’ve bought phones off the internet from certain major retailers and they’re not refurbished. They’ve got scratches on them, they’re certainly not original parts.”

 

The NU normal

Although that confusion is not ideal, Smith is hoping that AZNU will bring a sense of certainty to the refurbished market, set an expectation for quality in the market whilst also satisfying teenage demands.

“We came up with the AZNU name which, we thought, better explained what a graded or a refurb device is than the terminology that is currently confusing the market. From there, we want to target users like my daughter. 

“My daughter is at college and she always wants the latest phone or a new phone. She wants a premium model like an S series, but she doesn’t want to pay the retail price and I certainly don’t want to take out a £70 per month contract.

“So we always end up looking for sim-free devices so we can get a cheap SIM card to switch her tariff when we want. That appeals to those teenagers and as a parent, I don’t want to pay thousands of pounds for a new phone sim free when I can buy a refurbished product.”

Through their parent company, Exertis, a national electronics distributor, AZNU devices go through an established refurbishing process, collecting, wiping, testing and replacing faulty parts of each device. Thanks to this process, according to Smith, the difference out of the box is negligible. 

“If you take an AZNU product out of the box, first of all, it is as new. Our Samsung devices are completely refurbished back to new, in every case the product gets a new screen and a new back. So cosmetically, you cannot tell the difference.

“The difference is, inside the phone obviously it’s not new, it has been used for a year or two or more depending on how old the model is. But what we do is we put it through the service repair centre that Samsung has authorised. 

“From there, we put new parts in the device where they need to be put in and we put new batteries in if they need to go in. Those products are then checked to make sure everything in that phone is an original product, an original part which is what makes AZNU unique.

 

Brand NU day

Looking forward, Samsung is set to be joint by a second manufacturer and, whilst Stephen didn’t want to name them, all bets will be on a certain Californian manufacturer who’s devices have a great ability to hold their value.

But Smith didn’t want to stop there. Although AZNU’s range of products is limited to Samsung mobile devices, he also said that the door is open for more manufacturers and product types to be brought in to be sold AZNU but insisted that the quality of product was key.

“Long term, the plan would be wearables, tablets, laptops and it could be games consoles too. But for us, we are focussed on setting the bar for the refurbished market very high, and kind of setting a new benchmark for the market.

“If you buy a phone from one of the major retailers just buying graded or refurb, you’re going to get a plastic bag, you might get a white plain box with loose parts rattling around but to us it’s all part of it and that gives confidence for the parent. 

“But also my daughter wants that experience when she buys a brand spanking new phone. She wants that new phone smell, she doesn’t want to necessarily have a second hand phone, which is what it will feel like if she just buys any other refurbished phone off the shelf.

“We’ve told you, you’re going to get an as-new phone. So if you get that out of the box, and it’s not as-new experience we’ll soon learn about it. Our retail boxes are like buying a Samsung or an Apple device, in terms of the quality of the box, the parts inside the box, the experience of unboxing it. It’s all part of what we want to do.”