9 ms·

Five billion phones are dead in drawers – carriers want to mine them

79 points by CoBE10 3y ago

LinuxBender 3y ago
For the purpose of phone recycling it's probably time to find a USB bootable image for phones that can wipe their storage to avoid even more data leakage. The USB would probably have to power the device too assuming bad batteries.
prepend 3y ago
I have a lot of phones sitting around. I don’t recycle them because there’s usually no benefit to me and there’s a risk that someone would mine my data still on the device. They don’t start so there’s no way to boot and wipe. And they are hard to disassemble and remove the storage. So I do the calculation of getting like $2 off a new phone or the extremely low, but non-zero, probability of all my photos ending up somewhere not cool. To help with this, right to repair also makes things more recyclable.
- MaKey 3y ago
  > To help with this, right to repair also makes things more recyclable. Storage encryption, which most modern phones should utilize, also helps.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Most carriers should be able to put together an independently audited process to ensure your old data cannot be mined. Locked boxes, chain of custody, secure transfer, cameras and two people in the room... until the phone is physically destored. Though it would be nice if they had a get the old data off that dead phone and return to you process. (Which reminds me, I need to setup backups on my latest phone
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Locked boxes, chain of custody, secure transfer, cameras and two people in the room It's difficult to see this being profitable. Or even possible, given the meagre training most carriers' employees at physical stores seem to have. Easier: a device that shreds the phone onsite, in front of the customer.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      There are various document destroying firms with shredder-on-a-truck that probably already offer that service, for businesses. Not economical for a single device though.
      - throwanem 3y ago
        Hard to see how it's very economical even for many devices, given you have to take each one far enough apart to remove the battery or else throwing it in the shredder sets your truck on fire. A better play might be to liaise with phone repair shops both carrier-owned and independent, since they already do this as a matter of course, and it's quicker if you don't care what damage you do in the process. Lot of cats to herd, though, that would be.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > you have to take each one far enough apart to remove the battery or else throwing it in the shredder sets your truck on fire Lithium-ion batteries can be safely shredded. You need to ensure they're discharged and/or shredded in an inert atmosphere [1]. [1] https://www.recovery-worldwide.com/en/artikel/efficient-and-safe-recycling-of-lithium-ion-batteries-and-accumulators-3566105.html https://www.recovery-worldwide.com/en/artikel/efficient-and-...
        throwanem 3y ago
        Oh, well, I can't see any way that could go wrong!
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      > given the meagre training most carriers' employees at physical stores seem to have Training is one thing, but the primary issue is wages and career prospects. Nobody working in a customer-facing role at a mobile carrier is paid enough to give a shit to do proper data protection - in fact they might be paid more by a malicious actor (bribery) to intentionally compromise data protection, just like it happens with fraudulent SIM swaps.
  - martin8412 3y ago
    Aren't a lot of carrier stores in reality franchises?
  - chongli 3y ago
    How about a portable shredder right in the store, with a nice big glass window on it? Bring your phones in and let your kid drop them in the shredder and watch the snap-crackle-pop, and get paid a nominal amount for each one!
    - sofixa 3y ago
      There are lots of parts that can and should be recycled (at the very least the battery), so that sounds like a waste.
      - chongli 3y ago
        They could have tools there to quickly pop out the battery so you can recycle it separately from the rest of the phone.
        sgtnoodle 3y ago
        They would need to pay a technician to do that. Having the typical consumer do that would definitely result in injury and fire.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        Only because of how they're installed. This is yet another reason why we should go back to having user-replaceable batteries.
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
        Serious question, but how do they intentionally recycle phones/batteries/ ewaste? My first guess would that everything goes through a shredder. Precious metals and plastics are then separated because any kind of disassembly at scale would be infeasible.
        opwieurposiu 3y ago
        High value items are disassembled by robot, like in the case of iPhones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC81peMLEfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC81peMLEfo Medium value stuff is shredded into a big pile and then they leach the gold off it with cyanide. It has a much higher concentration of gold then raw gold ore. Low value stuff is shipped to poor countries where the copper is extracted by burning and picking through the ash. Very toxic process.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    Nudes are already being stolen from customer phones during phone repairs. Don’t hand in your phone when there is any chance that data can be recovered. If your phone can boot, wipe it. If your phone cannot boot, remove the battery and then smash everything else into tiny little pieces with a hammer.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      It would be nice if “contains data” chips were mandated to be bright pink, then you could know what parts to destroy. Open phone, snap off the pink, recycle the rest.
  - prepend 3y ago
    > Most carriers should be able to put together an independently audited process to ensure your old data cannot be mined. I don’t trust any carrier to do this honestly or competently. And I don’t have the time to audit their process. I also don’t care enough to do a secure wipe but would gladly take out the storage card and destroy it. That way I’m certain. It’s not that it’s not possible. It’s that I don’t think it’s worth the work for a negligible benefit.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  My mother died this year and one thing I have kept is her phone to remember her: a little time capsule of her last messages, her photos, etc. I keep it near the charger and keep the charge from dropping too low. I've thought about how long I intend to do this, or, even if I let the battery stay disconnected, how long I will keep the phone. I suspect I'll keep the phone until I die myself but wonder if it would end up being some odd sort of family heirloom/relic 100 years from now. (FWIW, I have captured to other devices her photos and such so that I am not reliant on the physical device for these memories.)
  - throw1234651234 3y ago
    I am guessing I am telling you the obvious when I tell you to backup all meaningful pictures and videos into whatever your long-term storage solution is (aka SSD or Cloud) before the phone inevitably dies and becomes inaccessible, especially if the phone memory is encrypted with some weird proprietary algo where you will never get the data off of it even if you know the password. I found some old computers a while back, from the early 2000s. None of them booted. I couldn't get anything off even after pulling the HDs and connecting to them directly - everything was corrupted despite sitting in a fairly dry, clean, climate-controlled space.
    - derwiki 3y ago
      My dad still has a 2001 era Inspiron that he keeps because of Microsoft Works. I am shocked that it still boots! Won’t connect to the internet for some reason, but it did connect to the LAN and WS_FTP helped me move old files to my laptop.
      - tetris11 3y ago
        > Won’t connect to the internet for some reason Likely: time/date, and you will need to compile modern ssl and gnu tls. I've found that even if I'm doing a pure http request (no https), I can't fetch anything without a modern ssl/tls library. At least that's how it was on an old kindle
- moomin 3y ago
  I have so many broken devices with enough information on them to compromise my entire life. Yeah, I’m not selling those.
  - boring_twenties 3y ago
    What kind of devices do you have that are unencrypted? Both Android and iOS have been encrypted by default for what must be a decade by now?
    - prepend 3y ago
      What’s encrypted and safe now may not be in 20 years. I have an original iPhone in my drawer. It was decent 15 years ago, but not safe now.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        This is an important point about encryption that a lot of people miss: it's not forever. All encryption is broken eventually. The purpose of encryption is not to keep secrets eternally. The purpose of it is to keep secrets long enough that by the time they're revealed, they aren't worth anything.
      - boring_twenties 3y ago
        Wait, what encryption would iOS have used 15 years ago that's now unsafe? AFAIK Android has always used dm-crypt (should be familiar to any Linux user) with AES, which I'm pretty sure is still safe. Back then I think maybe it used CBC mode, whereas now it defaults to XTR, but again AFAIK, CBC is still safe, it's just that XTR performs better for block devices or something. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
      - Gigachad 3y ago
        What data are you holding that is still extremely sensitive after 20 years? I can maybe see someone repairing phones to boot them and grab unencrypted data. But no one is holding on to them for 20 years to decrypt them.
- hfkwer 3y ago
  > there’s usually no benefit to me Apart from slowing down ever so slightly the oncoming scarcity of resources.
  - prepend 3y ago
    Not a significant benefit to me. I put that labor toward more productive things to better help with scarcity of resources.
- jonnycomputer 3y ago
  Same concern, at least with older phones. I think any newer phones (last 5 years or so) are encrypted by default. Anyone with real expertise in this, please chime in. Updte: hmm. Not full disk encryption. Does this mean that its up to the app to encrypt? https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/encryption https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/encryption
- ezfe 3y ago
  Since they don’t boot, I kinda understand. But why did they get to this point? Did you replace them because they didn’t turn on
  - angry_moose 3y ago
    I've got a couple old Androids (MotoX and something else ~2015ish) that won't boot due to dead batteries. There's an endless loop of: - Charge to ~.25% - Phone automatically powers on - The boot process takes more power than the charger can provide, so it drains the battery - Automatically powers off because battery is back to 0% I've had them on the charger for a few hours and watched this process repeat over and over. Short of disassembling and swapping the batteries I've tried everything I can think of to get them to power up
    - avar 3y ago
      I've never had a phone that refused to boot up with the battery fully removed and the USB charger plugged in.
    - throwawayqc 3y ago
      You could try: - booting into recovery -- find out which key combo might trigger that at power-on - booting into an OEM download mode -- "" - probably a cable insert + key combo - triggering the Qualcomm download mode -- "" That would load a different boot setup (maybe kernel, or just ramdisk, and whatever tools they added on top from that particular OEM), and that may allow you to charge. That can work sometimes.
      - angry_moose 3y ago
        Yeah, those fall in the "I've tried everything I can think of" category. They don't help, the devices die too quickly to make it into any alternate boot modes.
- yonatan8070 3y ago
  I may be overly optimistic, but who are you expecting to dig your dead phone out of the garbage, take the flash storage out and read it for your personal photos? If the phone belonged to the president or something that's a potential threat, but for a random individual's data?
  - ballenf 3y ago
    The bigger threat, imo, is a device that is still authenticated or trusted by some service I've forgotten about. A bank, email provider, Apple, etc. Yes, it's "easy" to fix any single one of these but hard to remember them all.
  - toast0 3y ago
    If the alternatives are store forever, throw in the trash, or give to a carrier... Nobody is getting the data off at my house. I assume nobody will go through the dump looking for old phones, but someone did go through the dump and found the ET cartridges, so there's prescedent. Also, I feel a little bad about putting phones directly in the dump. If it goes to a carrier program, there's a good chance it goes into a repair process where the battery is replaced and maybe it works again. If it works again, I expect it to get the least intensive wipe required so that the user can get into the home screen, and then sold. That might mean the new user can get access to my data. Story time: my spouse had an Amazon Fire phone for quite some time; when she was done with it, my dad needed a phone, but FireOS was a really poor choice, so I flashed it with a 3rd party Android build. Several years later, he ran it all the way out of battery, and when he got it charged up, somehow it booted up into FireOS instead and had my spouse's accounts and what not. Whoops. No big deal, we got him a new phone and got the Fire Phone back (and I tried to wipe it again, but better) and now it lives in a drawer and won't power on.
    - prepend 3y ago
      I agree with true scenario you describe. Story time: I was a contractor a few decades ago and I got a “new pc.” Theoretically it was imaged with a developer setup. Reality is the local user accounts were removed and a new account created for me. The previous user was an HR analyst who kept all their data in c:\employee_salary and didn’t get wiped. So it had layoff analysis of every employee, their salary, their layoff priority. Comically, sadly, the HR analyst was layed off despite being listed as high priority. I tried reporting the data and my contractor manager squashed it for fear that I would be rolled off the project. My lesson is that unless I destroy the data, assume others will see it.
- avar 3y ago
  A tip for you and anyone else doing this: do yourself a favor and get a heat gun or other tools required to at remove and recycle the battery, before your house burns down. I've had various old phones, laptops speakers etc. that became bloated in storage because an internal lithium ion cell was halfway ruptured. And once you do that it's usually trivial to pop out and destroy the motherboard or storage device, especially as you don't care about doing so destructively. Then you can recycle the rest.
  - toast0 3y ago
    If the battery bloats up, it often helps undo the glue. Win-win
  - rektide 3y ago
    I'd be interested to find out how many of these bloated batteries still have any charge. Internal discharge feels like a pretty nice accidental safety feature, albeit at the price of also killing a lot of old devices. But yeah, preemptively removing batteries for safety is a good move.
    - avar 3y ago
      It's less dangerous, but some of the flammability is inherent in the chemicals withing the battery, and how they'll react to oxygen or water. Let's say that you were able to magically disassemble a cellphone battery into its constituent elements and compounds, made rods out of each, and then sealed each rod in a zip-lock bag in a vacuum chamber. The resulting collection of zip-lock bags is still something you wouldn't want to keep on a shelf somewhere, e.g. https://youtu.be/Vxqe_ZOwsHs https://youtu.be/Vxqe_ZOwsHs shows how elemental lithium reacts.
- rektide 3y ago
  Most of my old phones still boot but have cracked screen & either are unreadable and/or more frequently non-working touchscreens. Thankfully with Android I can just plug in a mouse! On my Samsung phones I can plug in a full display + mouse. It's a bit of a risk leaving thr gate open like this, but occasionally I've also setup dying phones to auto switch to ADB, so when they do go, I can still access them. The main barrier I have is that some phones have bad usb micro ports. With that, I'm hosed. Thankfully haven't seen a single usb-c device with a bad port; loving it. Ideally we should be able to trust on-disk encryption on our phones. Alas with pin codes, there's not enough entropy to do a for real job of encrypting, but it'll ward off casual snooping. I'm honestly not sure when the changeover was where users ought to be able to expect this fundamental builtin protection.
rbut 3y ago
I keep my last phone in my draw in the chance that I lose my current phone I can use it as a backup. By the time I replace my backup phone with my new old phone the battery is long gone and I'd get nothing if I sell it. So yes, phones continue to accumulate in my drawer.
- nfriedly 3y ago
  For what it's worth, replacement batteries can often be had for $20-30, maybe a bit more with tools included. For example: https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-2-battery-genuine https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-2-battery-genui... Of course it's a bit more involved for a device that wasn't intended to have a user-replaceable battery, but it's almost always possible. Alternatively, even with a dead battery, you can probably plug it into the wall to boot it up and wipe all your data, and then sell it for maybe $30 to $40 on eBay. There's lots of folks out there who will buy phones cheap and either refurbish them themselves, or else just use them tethered for software development, IoT projects, etc.
  - ChoGGi 3y ago
    Yep, my dad kept his Nexus going till last year when he went to the states (had to switch to 4g). I don't think there was much left of the original by then...
Aardwolf 3y ago
What a shame that there's no standardized battery format (similar to AA, AAA etc..., but thin like for in phones) so that at least the batteries of those unused phones could be re-used elsewhere or replaced if the battery is EOL. But this would also be useful just to allow removing them to prevent the fire risk of old phones. Same would actually be useful with the screens, just have a few standardized physical rectangular screen sizes and make them swappable between phones so if one breaks you can re-use the one from your previous phone... (supporting different resolutions should be trivial for the OS)
- graftak 3y ago
  Closest you’re probably gonna find is a Fairphone phone, it has user replaceable modules quite similar to what Framework does for laptops.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    Pinephone's battery is compatible with the one from J7 Samsung phone from 2015: https://beta.pine64.org/documentation/PinePhone/Battery/ https://beta.pine64.org/documentation/PinePhone/Battery/.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Standardization has the downside of pausing development. Eg higher resolution screens that are being experimented on for VR but need a market to support. A standard sized battery would also affect on the screen sizes to choose from for designers.
  - Aardwolf 3y ago
    Not by that much, look at a phone battery soldered to a phone PCB today, it'll fit in most form factors. If there are a couple of different standardized sizes, it could fit anything, and also allow combinations of multiple. Look at PC monitors: you can attach all kinds of monitors with different resolutions to PC's, and there exist some pretty exotic ones with eye trackers etc... too, and of course also various VR headsets can be connected too.
LeSaucy 3y ago
I am hoping the new ios 17 features which let you turn them into static devices with time/calendar/messages will bring some life back to old devices.
SN76477 3y ago
I have a stack of devices that need to get wiped. It sounds like a dumb way to spend a day off so it doesn't get done.
- RajT88 3y ago
  I'm in the same boat. Although I'm not that worried about what's on the phones being sensitive. I have a good sense for what's there, since I'm diligent about dumping the contents of my old phone onto my NAS when I get a new one.
vegetablepotpie 3y ago
For consumers to turn in their old mobile devices, a successful effort will need: - A clear benefit from turning the device in (money, phone will be used to build electric cars). - A clear instructions on how to do a factory reset on all devices to promote data privacy - A consistent, well advertised, clearly marked place to turn devices in - confidence that turning in the device will lead to the outcomes advertised. If you advertise money, and consumers end up getting a rebate form for a check that never come in the mail, or if they see a news report that their phones were thrown in the garbage and not actually recycled, no one will turn in their phone again.
- teeray 3y ago
  It would be nice if recyclers assumed some liability for data loss (encouraging them to destroy sensitive information on recycled electronics). I’m not sure if that’s currently a thing, but it seems reasonable to protect the customer’s information on the phone. There also needs to be some legal express lane for consumers to collect on that to ensure the stick is sufficiently motivating.
- _urvc 3y ago
  I wish the pledge systems for bottles would also be applied to technical devices. So far the only company I know of is Shiftphone.
- meragrin_ 3y ago
  > - A clear instructions on how to do a factory reset on all devices to promote data privacy This should be unnecessary and is likely a large part of why people don't. There are loads of reasons it is not possible to wipe a device. I have one which reboots before any point it will accept input.
  - bamfly 3y ago
    I've rarely (... never?) retired a phone that was still usable enough to wipe it. Most could be repaired to a usable state, but at like 50% the cost of a new phone, so I just get a new one instead (since by then there are usually a bunch of other parts just waiting to go bad). Definitely not gonna spend that money so I can wipe them in order to recycle them.
jmclnx 3y ago
One idea, at least for androids, put BOINC on them, plug it in and help science a little: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php?platform=android https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php?platform=android
pjc50 3y ago
I note that in WEEE countries (still seemingly including the UK), anywhere you can buy a phone is obliged to accept the old one for recycling, if you want https://www.gov.uk/electricalwaste-producer-supplier-responsibilities/take-back-waste-in-store https://www.gov.uk/electricalwaste-producer-supplier-respons... (and, if I'm reading that correctly, all those disposable vapes that should not be in landfill)
- bandrami 3y ago
  Nothing has surprised me more about the popularity of vaping than the fact that so many people are willing to hold a bomb in their mouth.
  - martin8412 3y ago
    Is that vastly different from holding a bomb to your ear?
    - bandrami 3y ago
      I don't think any phone uses an 18650?
      - pjc50 3y ago
        An 18650 is basically a phone battery that's been rolled into a cylinder and canned.
        CyberDildonics 3y ago
        An 18650 will be some variant of a lithium ion battery while phone batteries are lithium polymer. The chemistry might be similar but they aren't the same type of battery.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Better than a small paper tube on fire, I guess? (lithium battery explosions are a lot rarer than accidental cigarette/clothing/hair fires used to be)
raesene9 3y ago
I keep my last phone, to stay at home with several bank account and other critical apps on it, that I don't need when I'm traveling. Reduces the impact of my main phone being stolen/lost whilst on the road.
bandrami 3y ago
Back in the Marines once per fiscal year the admin people would give us sledgehammers and a truckbed full of computers, printers, and Blackberries they were retiring. That was usually the best day of the year. We had to make sure to really pound the hell out of the keyboards so that dumpster diving spies couldn't use wear patterns to guess character frequency in passwords (this apparently did happen at one point).
- greatpatton 3y ago
  Are you really typing your password more often than anything else on your keyboard? Except if your password contains very unusual character I think it would very difficult to extract that info from normal wear. If your password contains an e or an a good luck to guess that from the wear.
  - krageon 3y ago
    If you get a set of 10 likely characters instead of 40+, that's a big win and also a big threat.
    - lucaspfeifer 3y ago
      Two alternatives: A. Make a stronger password, time to crack it increases exponentially. B. Change password regularly, including after getting new equipment.
      - vegetablepotpie 3y ago
        Many organizations go with B already. Usually with some arbitrary password update period, with more sensitive information requiring shorter periods. The user response is to choose a new password that is similar to the previous password to avoid loosing access due to forgetting. This means that an attackers best way to find the users current password, is to know their old password. NIST has recognized this, and advises against these policies: “Reset—Required only if the password is compromised or forgotten.” [1]. Best mitigation I see for systems that exclusively take password input is to use a user pin plus a PKI card or RSA key. [1] https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/issues/2019/volume-1/nists-new-password-rule-book-updated-guidelines-offer-benefits-and-risk https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/issues/2019/vo...
mrtksn 3y ago
I use my old 7 years old iPhone as a pet cam. Set it to auto answer after 3 seconds, and put it somewhere where you can see your pets. Call it over Facetime whenever you want to check them out. iPhones are very long lasting devices, pretty useful even after many years but would have been even better if Apple let you unlock these things. Facetime can autoanswer only on the selfie camera and I would prefer a solution which would do this on the main camera but unfortunately that's not possible under current access level to the device. It can be more useful to re-purpose those device instead of mining them for metals?
- smallerfish 3y ago
  > It can be more useful to re-purpose those device instead of mining them for metals? This guy made a 4k projector out of one. Particularly intriguing is that he hardwired power, replacing the battery - doesn't seem _that_ hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfvTjQ9MCwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfvTjQ9MCwY The OS/software side is messiest side for me. Obviously running an old Android that's connected to the internet is potentially a bad idea, but the install of open source backfill replacements isn't great either. I've bricked phones in the past following (fairly complex) instructions carefully, and the need to trust 3rd party binary builds and/or tools isn't fantastic. If Right To Repair can mandate that phones be open enough to easily replace the firmware (sufficiently easy so that, say, your Mom could do it) then maybe reuse of phones becomes a more viable proposition.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    People used to do that with old school-house overhead projectors and shucked LCD monitors back when vga projectors were $$$.
cj 3y ago
I've found the best way to recycle iPhones is to find a family/friend who has an older phone than me, and gift it to them as a new phone! Sometimes this triggers a chain reaction where the person I gifted the phone ends up gifting the phone they're replacing to someone else (usually someone switching from Android, or someone with an even older iPhone). Technically each pass down of the used phone is causing another phone to come out of service (and/or gifted again), but from an environmental standpoint this helps reduce demand for new phones since the people who received the gifted phones probably won't buy a new one for at least a couple additional years.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  This would work so much better if replacement batteries were widely available and replacement just required a screwdriver, rather than heat guns, suction cup tools, and pry tools (https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+12+Battery+Replacement/140588 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+12+Battery+Replacement/1...)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
iLoveOncall 3y ago
That's less than $1 of gold per phone, there's no way it's even close to being worth extracting.
- jstanley 3y ago
  $1 of gold per phone would mean there's $5 billion interested in getting the gold back out, and if it's easier to get it out of the phones than out of the ground, it seems like a no-brainer.
  - PUSH_AX 3y ago
    Kind of interesting to think about, it's impossible to net $5b from this endeavour as you have to imagine it will cost between 1c and 99c in manpower/electricity/expenses per phone to do the extracting. But the question is how much.
    - iLoveOncall 3y ago
      Extracting the gold is only one part, you also need to collect the phones, ship them to the plant where the gold is extracted, probably purify it or something like this, and then ship it back out to sell it. There is literally no way that it is worth it at $1 of gold per phone. Not even close.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
I wish there were a way to put them all in a cluster and use them for serving media and other things. We are surrounded by fairly powerful general-purpose aarch64 computers that are rendered useless by draconian userspace barriers.
- robbintt 3y ago
  Don't forget wattage requirements. Compute per watt is by far the most important factor. I would be curious if resoldering many phone CPU chips to make some sort of computer is power competitive with relatively modern cPUs.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    We are talking about reusing for old phones here- does it really need to be power competitive? When we talk about compute per watt we are really talking about cost. What is the cost of something modern and power competitive compared to reusing a phone that was already purchased, in a setup that mostly idles?
intrasight 3y ago
Please don't recycle your phones. Don't deny future archeologists this gold mine (pun intended) of cultural data. Nudes and all - this stuff will be of immense value at some future time ;)
lallysingh 3y ago
I don't see why this is hard. Upon manufacture, paint the chips that hold use data red. If you want to get fancy, put them in a thin socket. You might be able to make it thin and cheap if it's one-use-only. Pull the chips and the device is safe to recycle.
JohnFen 3y ago
They can't have mine. I store them forever rather than recycle them for a reason.

79 points by CoBE10 3y ago

For the purpose of phone recycling it's probably time to find a USB bootable image for phones that can wipe their storage to avoid even more data leakage. The USB would probably have to power the device too assuming bad batteries.

prepend 3y ago

I have a lot of phones sitting around. I don’t recycle them because there’s usually no benefit to me and there’s a risk that someone would mine my data still on the device. They don’t start so there’s no way to boot and wipe. And they are hard to disassemble and remove the storage. So I do the calculation of getting like $2 off a new phone or the extremely low, but non-zero, probability of all my photos ending up somewhere not cool. To help with this, right to repair also makes things more recyclable.

MaKey 3y ago
> To help with this, right to repair also makes things more recyclable. Storage encryption, which most modern phones should utilize, also helps.
bluGill 3y ago
Most carriers should be able to put together an independently audited process to ensure your old data cannot be mined. Locked boxes, chain of custody, secure transfer, cameras and two people in the room... until the phone is physically destored. Though it would be nice if they had a get the old data off that dead phone and return to you process. (Which reminds me, I need to setup backups on my latest phone
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Locked boxes, chain of custody, secure transfer, cameras and two people in the room It's difficult to see this being profitable. Or even possible, given the meagre training most carriers' employees at physical stores seem to have. Easier: a device that shreds the phone onsite, in front of the customer.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    There are various document destroying firms with shredder-on-a-truck that probably already offer that service, for businesses. Not economical for a single device though.
    - throwanem 3y ago
      Hard to see how it's very economical even for many devices, given you have to take each one far enough apart to remove the battery or else throwing it in the shredder sets your truck on fire. A better play might be to liaise with phone repair shops both carrier-owned and independent, since they already do this as a matter of course, and it's quicker if you don't care what damage you do in the process. Lot of cats to herd, though, that would be.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > you have to take each one far enough apart to remove the battery or else throwing it in the shredder sets your truck on fire Lithium-ion batteries can be safely shredded. You need to ensure they're discharged and/or shredded in an inert atmosphere [1]. [1] https://www.recovery-worldwide.com/en/artikel/efficient-and-safe-recycling-of-lithium-ion-batteries-and-accumulators-3566105.html https://www.recovery-worldwide.com/en/artikel/efficient-and-...
        throwanem 3y ago
        Oh, well, I can't see any way that could go wrong!
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    > given the meagre training most carriers' employees at physical stores seem to have Training is one thing, but the primary issue is wages and career prospects. Nobody working in a customer-facing role at a mobile carrier is paid enough to give a shit to do proper data protection - in fact they might be paid more by a malicious actor (bribery) to intentionally compromise data protection, just like it happens with fraudulent SIM swaps.
- martin8412 3y ago
  Aren't a lot of carrier stores in reality franchises?
- chongli 3y ago
  How about a portable shredder right in the store, with a nice big glass window on it? Bring your phones in and let your kid drop them in the shredder and watch the snap-crackle-pop, and get paid a nominal amount for each one!
  - sofixa 3y ago
    There are lots of parts that can and should be recycled (at the very least the battery), so that sounds like a waste.
    - chongli 3y ago
      They could have tools there to quickly pop out the battery so you can recycle it separately from the rest of the phone.
      - sgtnoodle 3y ago
        They would need to pay a technician to do that. Having the typical consumer do that would definitely result in injury and fire.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        Only because of how they're installed. This is yet another reason why we should go back to having user-replaceable batteries.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
      Serious question, but how do they intentionally recycle phones/batteries/ ewaste? My first guess would that everything goes through a shredder. Precious metals and plastics are then separated because any kind of disassembly at scale would be infeasible.
      - opwieurposiu 3y ago
        High value items are disassembled by robot, like in the case of iPhones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC81peMLEfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC81peMLEfo Medium value stuff is shredded into a big pile and then they leach the gold off it with cyanide. It has a much higher concentration of gold then raw gold ore. Low value stuff is shipped to poor countries where the copper is extracted by burning and picking through the ash. Very toxic process.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  Nudes are already being stolen from customer phones during phone repairs. Don’t hand in your phone when there is any chance that data can be recovered. If your phone can boot, wipe it. If your phone cannot boot, remove the battery and then smash everything else into tiny little pieces with a hammer.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It would be nice if “contains data” chips were mandated to be bright pink, then you could know what parts to destroy. Open phone, snap off the pink, recycle the rest.
- prepend 3y ago
  > Most carriers should be able to put together an independently audited process to ensure your old data cannot be mined. I don’t trust any carrier to do this honestly or competently. And I don’t have the time to audit their process. I also don’t care enough to do a secure wipe but would gladly take out the storage card and destroy it. That way I’m certain. It’s not that it’s not possible. It’s that I don’t think it’s worth the work for a negligible benefit.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
My mother died this year and one thing I have kept is her phone to remember her: a little time capsule of her last messages, her photos, etc. I keep it near the charger and keep the charge from dropping too low. I've thought about how long I intend to do this, or, even if I let the battery stay disconnected, how long I will keep the phone. I suspect I'll keep the phone until I die myself but wonder if it would end up being some odd sort of family heirloom/relic 100 years from now. (FWIW, I have captured to other devices her photos and such so that I am not reliant on the physical device for these memories.)
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  I am guessing I am telling you the obvious when I tell you to backup all meaningful pictures and videos into whatever your long-term storage solution is (aka SSD or Cloud) before the phone inevitably dies and becomes inaccessible, especially if the phone memory is encrypted with some weird proprietary algo where you will never get the data off of it even if you know the password. I found some old computers a while back, from the early 2000s. None of them booted. I couldn't get anything off even after pulling the HDs and connecting to them directly - everything was corrupted despite sitting in a fairly dry, clean, climate-controlled space.
  - derwiki 3y ago
    My dad still has a 2001 era Inspiron that he keeps because of Microsoft Works. I am shocked that it still boots! Won’t connect to the internet for some reason, but it did connect to the LAN and WS_FTP helped me move old files to my laptop.
    - tetris11 3y ago
      > Won’t connect to the internet for some reason Likely: time/date, and you will need to compile modern ssl and gnu tls. I've found that even if I'm doing a pure http request (no https), I can't fetch anything without a modern ssl/tls library. At least that's how it was on an old kindle
moomin 3y ago
I have so many broken devices with enough information on them to compromise my entire life. Yeah, I’m not selling those.
- boring_twenties 3y ago
  What kind of devices do you have that are unencrypted? Both Android and iOS have been encrypted by default for what must be a decade by now?
  - prepend 3y ago
    What’s encrypted and safe now may not be in 20 years. I have an original iPhone in my drawer. It was decent 15 years ago, but not safe now.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      This is an important point about encryption that a lot of people miss: it's not forever. All encryption is broken eventually. The purpose of encryption is not to keep secrets eternally. The purpose of it is to keep secrets long enough that by the time they're revealed, they aren't worth anything.
    - boring_twenties 3y ago
      Wait, what encryption would iOS have used 15 years ago that's now unsafe? AFAIK Android has always used dm-crypt (should be familiar to any Linux user) with AES, which I'm pretty sure is still safe. Back then I think maybe it used CBC mode, whereas now it defaults to XTR, but again AFAIK, CBC is still safe, it's just that XTR performs better for block devices or something. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      What data are you holding that is still extremely sensitive after 20 years? I can maybe see someone repairing phones to boot them and grab unencrypted data. But no one is holding on to them for 20 years to decrypt them.
hfkwer 3y ago
> there’s usually no benefit to me Apart from slowing down ever so slightly the oncoming scarcity of resources.
- prepend 3y ago
  Not a significant benefit to me. I put that labor toward more productive things to better help with scarcity of resources.
jonnycomputer 3y ago
Same concern, at least with older phones. I think any newer phones (last 5 years or so) are encrypted by default. Anyone with real expertise in this, please chime in. Updte: hmm. Not full disk encryption. Does this mean that its up to the app to encrypt? https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/encryption https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/encryption
ezfe 3y ago
Since they don’t boot, I kinda understand. But why did they get to this point? Did you replace them because they didn’t turn on
- angry_moose 3y ago
  I've got a couple old Androids (MotoX and something else ~2015ish) that won't boot due to dead batteries. There's an endless loop of: - Charge to ~.25% - Phone automatically powers on - The boot process takes more power than the charger can provide, so it drains the battery - Automatically powers off because battery is back to 0% I've had them on the charger for a few hours and watched this process repeat over and over. Short of disassembling and swapping the batteries I've tried everything I can think of to get them to power up
  - avar 3y ago
    I've never had a phone that refused to boot up with the battery fully removed and the USB charger plugged in.
  - throwawayqc 3y ago
    You could try: - booting into recovery -- find out which key combo might trigger that at power-on - booting into an OEM download mode -- "" - probably a cable insert + key combo - triggering the Qualcomm download mode -- "" That would load a different boot setup (maybe kernel, or just ramdisk, and whatever tools they added on top from that particular OEM), and that may allow you to charge. That can work sometimes.
    - angry_moose 3y ago
      Yeah, those fall in the "I've tried everything I can think of" category. They don't help, the devices die too quickly to make it into any alternate boot modes.
yonatan8070 3y ago
I may be overly optimistic, but who are you expecting to dig your dead phone out of the garbage, take the flash storage out and read it for your personal photos? If the phone belonged to the president or something that's a potential threat, but for a random individual's data?
- ballenf 3y ago
  The bigger threat, imo, is a device that is still authenticated or trusted by some service I've forgotten about. A bank, email provider, Apple, etc. Yes, it's "easy" to fix any single one of these but hard to remember them all.
- toast0 3y ago
  If the alternatives are store forever, throw in the trash, or give to a carrier... Nobody is getting the data off at my house. I assume nobody will go through the dump looking for old phones, but someone did go through the dump and found the ET cartridges, so there's prescedent. Also, I feel a little bad about putting phones directly in the dump. If it goes to a carrier program, there's a good chance it goes into a repair process where the battery is replaced and maybe it works again. If it works again, I expect it to get the least intensive wipe required so that the user can get into the home screen, and then sold. That might mean the new user can get access to my data. Story time: my spouse had an Amazon Fire phone for quite some time; when she was done with it, my dad needed a phone, but FireOS was a really poor choice, so I flashed it with a 3rd party Android build. Several years later, he ran it all the way out of battery, and when he got it charged up, somehow it booted up into FireOS instead and had my spouse's accounts and what not. Whoops. No big deal, we got him a new phone and got the Fire Phone back (and I tried to wipe it again, but better) and now it lives in a drawer and won't power on.
  - prepend 3y ago
    I agree with true scenario you describe. Story time: I was a contractor a few decades ago and I got a “new pc.” Theoretically it was imaged with a developer setup. Reality is the local user accounts were removed and a new account created for me. The previous user was an HR analyst who kept all their data in c:\employee_salary and didn’t get wiped. So it had layoff analysis of every employee, their salary, their layoff priority. Comically, sadly, the HR analyst was layed off despite being listed as high priority. I tried reporting the data and my contractor manager squashed it for fear that I would be rolled off the project. My lesson is that unless I destroy the data, assume others will see it.
avar 3y ago
A tip for you and anyone else doing this: do yourself a favor and get a heat gun or other tools required to at remove and recycle the battery, before your house burns down. I've had various old phones, laptops speakers etc. that became bloated in storage because an internal lithium ion cell was halfway ruptured. And once you do that it's usually trivial to pop out and destroy the motherboard or storage device, especially as you don't care about doing so destructively. Then you can recycle the rest.
- toast0 3y ago
  If the battery bloats up, it often helps undo the glue. Win-win
- rektide 3y ago
  I'd be interested to find out how many of these bloated batteries still have any charge. Internal discharge feels like a pretty nice accidental safety feature, albeit at the price of also killing a lot of old devices. But yeah, preemptively removing batteries for safety is a good move.
  - avar 3y ago
    It's less dangerous, but some of the flammability is inherent in the chemicals withing the battery, and how they'll react to oxygen or water. Let's say that you were able to magically disassemble a cellphone battery into its constituent elements and compounds, made rods out of each, and then sealed each rod in a zip-lock bag in a vacuum chamber. The resulting collection of zip-lock bags is still something you wouldn't want to keep on a shelf somewhere, e.g. https://youtu.be/Vxqe_ZOwsHs https://youtu.be/Vxqe_ZOwsHs shows how elemental lithium reacts.
rektide 3y ago
Most of my old phones still boot but have cracked screen & either are unreadable and/or more frequently non-working touchscreens. Thankfully with Android I can just plug in a mouse! On my Samsung phones I can plug in a full display + mouse. It's a bit of a risk leaving thr gate open like this, but occasionally I've also setup dying phones to auto switch to ADB, so when they do go, I can still access them. The main barrier I have is that some phones have bad usb micro ports. With that, I'm hosed. Thankfully haven't seen a single usb-c device with a bad port; loving it. Ideally we should be able to trust on-disk encryption on our phones. Alas with pin codes, there's not enough entropy to do a for real job of encrypting, but it'll ward off casual snooping. I'm honestly not sure when the changeover was where users ought to be able to expect this fundamental builtin protection.

rbut 3y ago

I keep my last phone in my draw in the chance that I lose my current phone I can use it as a backup. By the time I replace my backup phone with my new old phone the battery is long gone and I'd get nothing if I sell it. So yes, phones continue to accumulate in my drawer.

nfriedly 3y ago
For what it's worth, replacement batteries can often be had for $20-30, maybe a bit more with tools included. For example: https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-2-battery-genuine https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-2-battery-genui... Of course it's a bit more involved for a device that wasn't intended to have a user-replaceable battery, but it's almost always possible. Alternatively, even with a dead battery, you can probably plug it into the wall to boot it up and wipe all your data, and then sell it for maybe $30 to $40 on eBay. There's lots of folks out there who will buy phones cheap and either refurbish them themselves, or else just use them tethered for software development, IoT projects, etc.
- ChoGGi 3y ago
  Yep, my dad kept his Nexus going till last year when he went to the states (had to switch to 4g). I don't think there was much left of the original by then...

Aardwolf 3y ago

What a shame that there's no standardized battery format (similar to AA, AAA etc..., but thin like for in phones) so that at least the batteries of those unused phones could be re-used elsewhere or replaced if the battery is EOL. But this would also be useful just to allow removing them to prevent the fire risk of old phones. Same would actually be useful with the screens, just have a few standardized physical rectangular screen sizes and make them swappable between phones so if one breaks you can re-use the one from your previous phone... (supporting different resolutions should be trivial for the OS)

graftak 3y ago
Closest you’re probably gonna find is a Fairphone phone, it has user replaceable modules quite similar to what Framework does for laptops.
- fsflover 3y ago
  Pinephone's battery is compatible with the one from J7 Samsung phone from 2015: https://beta.pine64.org/documentation/PinePhone/Battery/ https://beta.pine64.org/documentation/PinePhone/Battery/.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Standardization has the downside of pausing development. Eg higher resolution screens that are being experimented on for VR but need a market to support. A standard sized battery would also affect on the screen sizes to choose from for designers.
- Aardwolf 3y ago
  Not by that much, look at a phone battery soldered to a phone PCB today, it'll fit in most form factors. If there are a couple of different standardized sizes, it could fit anything, and also allow combinations of multiple. Look at PC monitors: you can attach all kinds of monitors with different resolutions to PC's, and there exist some pretty exotic ones with eye trackers etc... too, and of course also various VR headsets can be connected too.

LeSaucy 3y ago

I am hoping the new ios 17 features which let you turn them into static devices with time/calendar/messages will bring some life back to old devices.

SN76477 3y ago

I have a stack of devices that need to get wiped. It sounds like a dumb way to spend a day off so it doesn't get done.

RajT88 3y ago
I'm in the same boat. Although I'm not that worried about what's on the phones being sensitive. I have a good sense for what's there, since I'm diligent about dumping the contents of my old phone onto my NAS when I get a new one.

vegetablepotpie 3y ago

For consumers to turn in their old mobile devices, a successful effort will need: - A clear benefit from turning the device in (money, phone will be used to build electric cars). - A clear instructions on how to do a factory reset on all devices to promote data privacy - A consistent, well advertised, clearly marked place to turn devices in - confidence that turning in the device will lead to the outcomes advertised. If you advertise money, and consumers end up getting a rebate form for a check that never come in the mail, or if they see a news report that their phones were thrown in the garbage and not actually recycled, no one will turn in their phone again.

teeray 3y ago
It would be nice if recyclers assumed some liability for data loss (encouraging them to destroy sensitive information on recycled electronics). I’m not sure if that’s currently a thing, but it seems reasonable to protect the customer’s information on the phone. There also needs to be some legal express lane for consumers to collect on that to ensure the stick is sufficiently motivating.
_urvc 3y ago
I wish the pledge systems for bottles would also be applied to technical devices. So far the only company I know of is Shiftphone.
meragrin_ 3y ago
> - A clear instructions on how to do a factory reset on all devices to promote data privacy This should be unnecessary and is likely a large part of why people don't. There are loads of reasons it is not possible to wipe a device. I have one which reboots before any point it will accept input.
- bamfly 3y ago
  I've rarely (... never?) retired a phone that was still usable enough to wipe it. Most could be repaired to a usable state, but at like 50% the cost of a new phone, so I just get a new one instead (since by then there are usually a bunch of other parts just waiting to go bad). Definitely not gonna spend that money so I can wipe them in order to recycle them.

jmclnx 3y ago

One idea, at least for androids, put BOINC on them, plug it in and help science a little: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php?platform=android https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php?platform=android

pjc50 3y ago

I note that in WEEE countries (still seemingly including the UK), anywhere you can buy a phone is obliged to accept the old one for recycling, if you want https://www.gov.uk/electricalwaste-producer-supplier-responsibilities/take-back-waste-in-store https://www.gov.uk/electricalwaste-producer-supplier-respons... (and, if I'm reading that correctly, all those disposable vapes that should not be in landfill)

bandrami 3y ago
Nothing has surprised me more about the popularity of vaping than the fact that so many people are willing to hold a bomb in their mouth.
- martin8412 3y ago
  Is that vastly different from holding a bomb to your ear?
  - bandrami 3y ago
    I don't think any phone uses an 18650?
    - pjc50 3y ago
      An 18650 is basically a phone battery that's been rolled into a cylinder and canned.
      - CyberDildonics 3y ago
        An 18650 will be some variant of a lithium ion battery while phone batteries are lithium polymer. The chemistry might be similar but they aren't the same type of battery.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Better than a small paper tube on fire, I guess? (lithium battery explosions are a lot rarer than accidental cigarette/clothing/hair fires used to be)

raesene9 3y ago

I keep my last phone, to stay at home with several bank account and other critical apps on it, that I don't need when I'm traveling. Reduces the impact of my main phone being stolen/lost whilst on the road.

bandrami 3y ago

Back in the Marines once per fiscal year the admin people would give us sledgehammers and a truckbed full of computers, printers, and Blackberries they were retiring. That was usually the best day of the year. We had to make sure to really pound the hell out of the keyboards so that dumpster diving spies couldn't use wear patterns to guess character frequency in passwords (this apparently did happen at one point).

greatpatton 3y ago
Are you really typing your password more often than anything else on your keyboard? Except if your password contains very unusual character I think it would very difficult to extract that info from normal wear. If your password contains an e or an a good luck to guess that from the wear.
- krageon 3y ago
  If you get a set of 10 likely characters instead of 40+, that's a big win and also a big threat.
  - lucaspfeifer 3y ago
    Two alternatives: A. Make a stronger password, time to crack it increases exponentially. B. Change password regularly, including after getting new equipment.
    - vegetablepotpie 3y ago
      Many organizations go with B already. Usually with some arbitrary password update period, with more sensitive information requiring shorter periods. The user response is to choose a new password that is similar to the previous password to avoid loosing access due to forgetting. This means that an attackers best way to find the users current password, is to know their old password. NIST has recognized this, and advises against these policies: “Reset—Required only if the password is compromised or forgotten.” [1]. Best mitigation I see for systems that exclusively take password input is to use a user pin plus a PKI card or RSA key. [1] https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/issues/2019/volume-1/nists-new-password-rule-book-updated-guidelines-offer-benefits-and-risk https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/issues/2019/vo...

mrtksn 3y ago

I use my old 7 years old iPhone as a pet cam. Set it to auto answer after 3 seconds, and put it somewhere where you can see your pets. Call it over Facetime whenever you want to check them out. iPhones are very long lasting devices, pretty useful even after many years but would have been even better if Apple let you unlock these things. Facetime can autoanswer only on the selfie camera and I would prefer a solution which would do this on the main camera but unfortunately that's not possible under current access level to the device. It can be more useful to re-purpose those device instead of mining them for metals?

smallerfish 3y ago
> It can be more useful to re-purpose those device instead of mining them for metals? This guy made a 4k projector out of one. Particularly intriguing is that he hardwired power, replacing the battery - doesn't seem _that_ hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfvTjQ9MCwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfvTjQ9MCwY The OS/software side is messiest side for me. Obviously running an old Android that's connected to the internet is potentially a bad idea, but the install of open source backfill replacements isn't great either. I've bricked phones in the past following (fairly complex) instructions carefully, and the need to trust 3rd party binary builds and/or tools isn't fantastic. If Right To Repair can mandate that phones be open enough to easily replace the firmware (sufficiently easy so that, say, your Mom could do it) then maybe reuse of phones becomes a more viable proposition.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  People used to do that with old school-house overhead projectors and shucked LCD monitors back when vga projectors were $$$.

cj 3y ago

I've found the best way to recycle iPhones is to find a family/friend who has an older phone than me, and gift it to them as a new phone! Sometimes this triggers a chain reaction where the person I gifted the phone ends up gifting the phone they're replacing to someone else (usually someone switching from Android, or someone with an even older iPhone). Technically each pass down of the used phone is causing another phone to come out of service (and/or gifted again), but from an environmental standpoint this helps reduce demand for new phones since the people who received the gifted phones probably won't buy a new one for at least a couple additional years.

bluescrn 3y ago
This would work so much better if replacement batteries were widely available and replacement just required a screwdriver, rather than heat guns, suction cup tools, and pry tools (https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+12+Battery+Replacement/140588 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+12+Battery+Replacement/1...)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

iLoveOncall 3y ago

That's less than $1 of gold per phone, there's no way it's even close to being worth extracting.

jstanley 3y ago
$1 of gold per phone would mean there's $5 billion interested in getting the gold back out, and if it's easier to get it out of the phones than out of the ground, it seems like a no-brainer.
- PUSH_AX 3y ago
  Kind of interesting to think about, it's impossible to net $5b from this endeavour as you have to imagine it will cost between 1c and 99c in manpower/electricity/expenses per phone to do the extracting. But the question is how much.
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    Extracting the gold is only one part, you also need to collect the phones, ship them to the plant where the gold is extracted, probably purify it or something like this, and then ship it back out to sell it. There is literally no way that it is worth it at $1 of gold per phone. Not even close.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

I wish there were a way to put them all in a cluster and use them for serving media and other things. We are surrounded by fairly powerful general-purpose aarch64 computers that are rendered useless by draconian userspace barriers.

robbintt 3y ago
Don't forget wattage requirements. Compute per watt is by far the most important factor. I would be curious if resoldering many phone CPU chips to make some sort of computer is power competitive with relatively modern cPUs.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  We are talking about reusing for old phones here- does it really need to be power competitive? When we talk about compute per watt we are really talking about cost. What is the cost of something modern and power competitive compared to reusing a phone that was already purchased, in a setup that mostly idles?

intrasight 3y ago

Please don't recycle your phones. Don't deny future archeologists this gold mine (pun intended) of cultural data. Nudes and all - this stuff will be of immense value at some future time ;)

lallysingh 3y ago

I don't see why this is hard. Upon manufacture, paint the chips that hold use data red. If you want to get fancy, put them in a thin socket. You might be able to make it thin and cheap if it's one-use-only. Pull the chips and the device is safe to recycle.

JohnFen 3y ago

They can't have mine. I store them forever rather than recycle them for a reason.