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Functional, non-technical cell phone re-purpose ideas?

Hi iFixit,

First-time poster here, love the iFixit model!

....Anywho, I'm a designer with UCLA's chapter of Design For America and I'm working on a project to reduce eWaste, specifically old cellphones. I wanted to see if this impressive community has any suggestions/thoughts on functional, non-technical cell phone re-purpose ideas? ("functional" meaning not using the components for something like jewelry, and "non-technical" meaning not reprogramming the device).

THANKS!

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The most useful, and likely functioning, part of an e-wasted phone is the battery. Perhaps there could be a way to harvest and wire up old Cellphone batteries to repurpose them as larger clustered batteries. 100 cellphones could make a car battery? 10 could make a rechargeable lamp for "dark" homes in poverty areas?

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Thanks for the feedback guys, keep it coming!

Alex, my team also thought the battery was probably the most easy to re-purpose as well, we'll keep exploring that. Other things we've considered are the screen, speakers and power supply.

Nicks, we're thinking our target market is those who have bought a new phone and want to get rid of their old phone, rather than people with broken phones. The latter is a valid target, but we're thinking quite a bit smaller than the former.

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Number one for me would be to donate the whole phone to organizations like http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com/ or places like this http://www.safehavenshelter.org/donation...

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I'm with oldturkey03 on this one..if the phone works why take it apart? there are people who'd love our cast offs that otherwise couldn't afford one.

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That's fair feedback on donating rather than repurposing. Our concern is that once they are used in developing countries or by underprivileged populations that the phones may not be properly recycled and end up in the landfill. It's a tricky cost-benefit analysis indeed.

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Of course, I understand what you are saying,and see your point. markus weiher has had some real good video exposure on German TV about this subject. Check with him especially, also see if you can can get his video links that are posted in this forum. Sadly enough, recycling has never really caught on here as much as it has in other countries. Would be nice to have recycling stations or drop off for all kinds of stuff, glass papers etc. comes to mind. So, to reduce the waste would be to recycle. You got plenty of parts and materials. Plastic cases can be recycled into other plastic cases or housing, LCD screens can be used for other monitoring devices, i.e. automotive status screens come to mind. Something that would display the OBD codes in the dashboard. This would require manufacturers to free up datasheets, or to spend an extensive amount of time with reverse engineering. Each LCD seems to have different driver elements etc. Batteries are a huge issue, and again someone needs to sit down and figure out (in the big picture) is it the batteries that fail, or is it the circuit boards on the batteries. Of course, there is plenty of use for electrical power, especially in nations that are not as fortunate enough as ours. Who is to say that I need 220V or 110V to illuminate my room? LCD lighting could be driven by those batteries....

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Great feedback again, these are all questions we're debating. I'll look for those videos. Appreciate the thoughts.

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Lots of phones being cast off nowadays have built-in cameras. I've been trying to think of ways to make use of one of those in a project myself.

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Yes the camera is surprisingly valuable both in terms of use and monetary value. One diagram I saw placed the cost ~10% of the phone I believe.

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You will find most shelters for battered women actively search for phones they can reprogram to only dial 911 to give to abused women as a safety device. They are very careful to completely erase any existing programing. I have given several phones to local shelters and have always found them appreciated.

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Oh very cool, I wasn't aware shelters did this. Thanks for the post.

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Depending on the size of the cell phone, you could use the outer case (mostly plastic) as a stylish business card holder. I've seen people do similar things with old iPods.

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Aaron Schwab will be eternally grateful.