• Unfold
  • Posts
  • eBay Sellers Charging Thousands for TikTok-Preinstalled Phones

eBay Sellers Charging Thousands for TikTok-Preinstalled Phones

With the app still unavailable on US app stores, people are betting on TikTok being a profitable added extra to secondhand handsets.

In partnership with

Hey everyone,

Just a quick heads-up: people can do anything to get hands-on with TikTok, even buying an iPhone with a highly inflated price.

What’s inside today’s newsletter:

  • 🌐 Tech Pulse: Perplexity launches Sonar, an API for AI search

  • 📁 Unfold AI Tricks: Tome.app turns your brainstorming into AI-powered storytelling and presentation magic in minutes!

  • 5 New Tools on the Block

  • 🔎 Spotlight: eBay Sellers Charging Thousands for TikTok-Preinstalled Phones

  • 🤝 Who is getting funded?

  •  To-dos

🌐 Tech Pulse

  • Perplexity launches Sonar, an API for AI search

    • Perplexity launched an API service called Sonar, allowing developers to integrate its AI search tools into their applications.

    • Sonar has two tiers: a cheaper, faster base version and a more expensive "Pro" version that provides more detailed answers and is better for complex questions.

    • Perplexity claims that Sonar Pro outperformed models from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic on a benchmark that measures factual correctness in AI chatbot answers.

  • Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

    • Google Fiber (GFiber) is expanding its services to Las Vegas, Nevada, with construction already underway and service expected to be available later this year.

    • GFiber is also introducing new simplified "lifestyle-based" plans in several states, including Alabama, Tennessee, Arizona, and North Carolina, and will soon expand these plans to most of its other locations.

    • The new plans include Core 1 Gig for $70 per month, Home 3 Gig for $100 per month, and Edge 8 Gig for $150 per month, which replace older plans.

📁 Unfold AI Tricks: Tome.app turns your brainstorming into AI-powered storytelling and presentation magic in minutes!

Overview: Struggling with creative block? Tome.app turns your brainstorming into AI-powered storytelling and presentation magic in minutes!

Duration: 10-15 minutes

Skill Level: Beginner

Steps:

1. Set Up Tome.app

  • Create an account and choose your initial creative goal (pitch deck, story outline, design concept)

  • Select a starting template or begin with a blank canvas

2. Generate Initial Content:

  • Input a brief prompt describing your project

  • Let Tome's AI generate an initial narrative or presentation structure

  • Customize AI-generated content with your unique insights

3. Refine and Personalize:

  • Edit AI-generated slides or narrative sections

  • Add your personal branding, images, or specific data points

  • Use AI suggestions to expand or improve weak sections

Pro Tip: Experiment with different prompting styles—be specific about tone, audience, and desired outcome to get the most tailored result possible.

Special Feature: Tome.app's contextual AI adapts to your input, creating increasingly refined outputs with each iteration, making collaborative ideation seamless and intuitive.

💼 From our Partners

Need a personal assistant? We do too, that’s why we use AI.

Ready to embrace a new era of task delegation?

HubSpot’s highly anticipated AI Task Delegation Playbook is your key to supercharging your productivity and saving precious time.

Learn how to integrate AI into your own processes, allowing you to optimize your time and resources, while maximizing your output with ease.

🔧 New Tools on the Block

  1. Sonar by Perplexity: Build with the best AI answer engine

  2. ScreenSpace: Make complex products clear, compelling, and unforgettable

  3. UPDF AI: Chat with Any PDF and Ask AI Anything, Summarize, Translate.

  4. Fingertip.com: AI website builder with all the tools you need

  5. swiftnotes.ai: Turn YouTube videos into AI-generated notes in seconds

Note: Want to sponsor your tool in our newsletter? CLICK HERE

🔎 Spotlight: eBay Sellers Charging Thousands for TikTok-Preinstalled Phones

Summary:

The surge in eBay listings of used smartphones with TikTok pre-installed was driven by TikTok's temporary removal from US app stores. Sellers are exploiting the situation by listing these phones at drastically inflated prices, though actual sales at these exorbitant prices are questionable. While some sales appear to have occurred, many listings with excessively high asking prices are likely re-listings, suggesting the strategy's overall effectiveness is uncertain. The article highlights users' desperate measures to maintain access to TikTok and the opportunistic responses of both sellers and competing social media platforms.

Why it matters:

  • Secondhand phones with TikTok installed are being sold on eBay for high prices, with some listings reaching as much as $50,000. These phones are being sold by sellers who did not restore the phone to factory settings but rather signed out of the associated iCloud or Google account.

  • While many phones are listed at inflated prices, it appears that they are selling closer to market value for secondhand phones with a TikTok premium. The number of listings for "TikTok phone" increased during the article's writing, suggesting a sense of urgency due to the possibility that the app could return to app stores.

Source: WIRED, Yahoo news

🤝 Who is getting funded?

  1. Vertice raises $50M for its AI-powered SaaS spend platform (TechCrunch)

  2. Anthropic reportedly secures an additional $1B from Google (TechCrunch)

  3. Databricks closes $15.3B financing at $62B valuation; Meta joins as ‘strategic investor’ (TechCrunch)

 😂 Tech Memes

To-dos

Do you have a topic in mind? We’re always open to suggestions—let us know what you want to learn next!

How was today Issue?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

If you like today’s issue, consider subscribing to us.

That’s a wrap! Catch you in tomorrow’s edition. 👋

—Harman

Reply

or to participate.