About recycling old smartphones

Hi everybody!

I am not really sure where this post belongs, so I’m posting on community.

Well I have read something about Fairphone recycling your old phones but I am not really sure how it goes. So I have a really old Samsung Galaxy Mini in the drawer and I was wondering what is the best option for reciclying. Despite been quite obsolete it used to work more or less properly, one of the buttons (the back button) didn’t work quite well.

I live in Spain, by the way.

P.D.: my current phone (while mi new FP2 comes) is a Samsung Galaxy Ace 3. 3 years and half or so, the external speaker does not work fine, and the power button sometimes stucks. I am thinking about keeping it as a replace phone in case the FP2 breaks in some moment. Although I could recycle it too…

Have you already read this? :slight_smile:

https://www.fairphone.com/en/recycling-program/

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No, THANK YOU, I couldn’t find it. I must be blind or something, but I cannot see a way to access there from www.fairphone.com !!

Good to know thanks!!

Just scroll down to the end of the page and in the column headed “Services” you will find the hyperlinked point “Recycling”. :wink:

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If you want to avoid the environmental burden of the shipping, you should also be able to bring your phone(s) to a local collection point.
Shops that sell electronics, often have a place to collect old electronics (depending on how this is organised in Spain, but in theory this is a European obligation). Otherwise, a local recycling center should also be able to collect old electronics.

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I would only recommend the local collection point if the phone can no longer be used. In my city, the local collection point will not distinguish between electronics that can be reused and those that can only be recycled (in some way). In other words, nothing that goes to the local collection point will be reused.

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Well, it turns out that my Galaxy Mini is way too old and bad phone to be reused :joy: so Fairphone page consideres I should use a local collection point, so there I will go…

It is true that the phone is not really of much use anymore. It got stuck on Android 2!!!

Anyway I might recycle the Ace 3, I guess maybe it can be of better use…

Thanks for all the info!!

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Not sure, which model number your Galaxy Mini has (are you sure that it’s not Galaxy S3 Mini?), but there is a very high chance that there is Cyanogen Mod / LineageOS for it.

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No, this is older than S3 Mini. Actually, taking a look in xda.developers, it seems that there are some roms for kit kat and so on, all discontinued. I might enjoy playing around with it before I send it to the local collection point!!

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Yay, Kitkat. That makes it at least en par with the Fairphone 1. :wink:

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