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When most investors put billions into a company, they tend to buy in—literally. New phone, new laptop, new earbuds. Warren Buffett? Not so much.
For years, the Oracle of Omaha held onto a $20 flip phone, even as his Apple investment soared into the tens of billions. The man who could buy a small tech company before breakfast was still using a device most people ditched before Instagram even existed.
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Let's rewind.
Back in 2016, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway started scooping up Apple shares. By 2018, he had a serious stake. At that point, he was still proudly carrying a Samsung SCH-U320 flip phone—a relic even then. While Apple's CEO Tim Cook was busy running one of the most valuable companies on Earth, he was also trying to convince his biggest shareholder to at least use the product.
"Tim Cook sent me a Christmas card again this year saying he's going to sell me an iPhone this year," Buffett said in a 2018 CNBC interview, holding up his vintage phone like it was a trophy. He even joked that Cook kept reminding him every Christmas.
Still, Buffett didn't budge.
He didn't switch to an iPhone until 2020, a year when Apple's stock price hit a record high, driving the company's valuation near $1.5 trillion. According to Markets Insider, Berkshire's Apple stake hit roughly $72 billion at the end of 2019—and by mid-2020, that number had jumped by another $11 billion, hitting $83 billion. That single stock made up over 40% of Berkshire's equity portfolio.
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That's when Buffett finally let go of his beloved burner.
"My flip phone is permanently gone," he told CNBC's Becky Quick on Squawk Box in February 2020. "I've been given several of them, including [from] Tim Cook." He officially switched to an iPhone 11, though he admitted he mostly used it "as a phone" and wasn't diving deep into apps or emoji keyboards. "You're looking at an 89-year-old guy who's barely beginning to get with it," he said.
It's worth noting: Buffett was already managing one of the largest Apple stakes in the world before ever making a single FaceTime call.