Every refurbished marketplace uses roughly the same three or four words and almost none of them define what the words mean. That is not an accident: vague grades let a seller move a scratched handset up a tier when stock is short. Grades describe appearance, not function: This is the part most people miss. On any reputable listing, every grade is fully working. Fair does not mean the camera is unreliable; it means somebody dropped it. If a grade is being used to describe a fault, that is a fault, not a grade. Excellent: Indistinguishable from new at arm’s length. Look for it at an angle under a light and you may find a hairline mark. Nothing you would notice in use. Good: Light scratches on the frame or back, visible if you look. The screen is clean. This is the grade most people should buy: it costs meaningfully less than Excellent and the difference lives inside a case. Fair: Clearly used. Deeper scratches, possibly a small dent on a corner, sometimes faint marks on the glass that vanish once the screen is on. Everything works. The saving is substantial. The two questions worth asking: What is the battery health, and has the cell been replaced? Those change how the phone feels to live with far more than a scratch does — and unlike cosmetic grade, they are measurable.