What to do with old phones and tablets

JonathanRyan

JonathanRyan

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I work with a local group that recycles electrical items. We collect stuff and it goes to a place that smashes it up, rips out the metals/plastics/glass etc and sends them for specialist recycling.

Sometimes we get items that seems too good to recycle - we've donated over 250 items to local charity shops where they are PAT tested and then sold. Any that fail come back to us and get recycled :)

For various reasons I've become the "tech guru" for the group and we've started pulling out good condition tablets and phones. Some of these won't work or I can't get past the PIN code (don't get me started on the evilness of Google's FRP) but often I can wipe the data, test the item and reset it to "good as new".

My question is what next....?

These are older phones (typically running Android with a snack name) and so can't be brought to modern security standards. They aren't worth any money to anybody. Who can think of a good use for them? Can I install Linux? Not worry about security and hand them to a charity for use as burners? Install some minimal OS to mack fun cameras?

Worst case I can recycle them - but with so many people in need of stuff and so much stuff people don't need I wonder if there's a better option.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I work with a local group that recycles electrical items. We collect stuff and it goes to a place that smashes it up, rips out the metals/plastics/glass etc and sends them for specialist recycling.

Sometimes we get items that seems too good to recycle - we've donated over 250 items to local charity shops where they are PAT tested and then sold. Any that fail come back to us and get recycled :)

For various reasons I've become the "tech guru" for the group and we've started pulling out good condition tablets and phones. Some of these won't work or I can't get past the PIN code (don't get me started on the evilness of Google's FRP) but often I can wipe the data, test the item and reset it to "good as new".

My question is what next....?

These are older phones (typically running Android with a snack name) and so can't be brought to modern security standards. They aren't worth any money to anybody. Who can think of a good use for them? Can I install Linux? Not worry about security and hand them to a charity for use as burners? Install some minimal OS to mack fun cameras?

Worst case I can recycle them - but with so many people in need of stuff and so much stuff people don't need I wonder if there's a better option.
Click to expand...
I wonder if any of the linked charity organisations would be a beneficial avenue to donate such items to?

 
Box Brownie said:
I wonder if any of the linked charity organisations would be a beneficial avenue to donate such items to?

Click to expand...
Possibly......

Issues we have found so far include
  1. Most charity shops don't accept electricals of any kind despite what "head office" say (as a great example - the BHF say they do and it's high on your list - but generally they don't because there is no local volunteer trained to PAT test)
  2. Places like the National Device Bank are much better geared up to a large number of similar recent devices. They accept a donation of 50 items minimum and even if we got 50 together, shipping would be expensive. As soon as they noticed they weren't Dell desktops or recent iPads they would likely get recycled.
  3. For "complex reasons" the group I'm involved with don't want people to make money out of this. They seem OK with a local charity shop profiting but there was a huge debate about taking old graphics cards to a chap who repairs old machines for people because it's his business.
I'm looking for something we can do with them and repurpose locally.
 
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Box Brownie said:
This might be of interest???

enfinium.co.uk

Local Folkestone Repair Café receives £1,300 from enfinium’s Repair Café Support Fund

Local Folkestone Repair Café receives £1,300 from enfinium’s Repair Café Support Fund
enfinium.co.uk enfinium.co.uk

All the best with what you do and the efforts you and the local group are making :)
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Thank you - I'd totally missed that article :)

We've supplied a sewing machines to that exact repair cafe for their work. The same place also have a project to get people off the streets and set people up with a "home start" package. We send them any good conditions toasters and kettles that come our way.
 
You might find you could install LineageOS on some if you were looking to keep them in use, but on the basis of time spent, you might do better stacking shelves in Tesco and donating your wages. :(
 
ancient_mariner said:
on the basis of time spent, you might do better stacking shelves in Tesco and donating your wages. :(
Click to expand...
But....where's the fun in that....? :)

As a serious point we have volunteers who feel far more comfortable donating time than money. Also some of our older volunteers physically couldn't stack shelves but many of them could learn how to run Jenkins pipelines to configure machines. I _could_ spend a few hours doing web dev (Angular can't be hard, right?) and then buy people shiny new Apples but this is more fun, easier to get involved with and protects the planet's resources.

I'll give Lineage a look - thank you. Most of my searches said something like Lineage wasn't possible and I missed it. Looks a good option - especially if we can get round FRP.

BTW, typing this from my "new" laptop. It came in yesterday and is a 15 year old Aspire that gave me flashbacks to Windows Vista. Using it to learn machine setup - it's running fast and smooth on 32 bit MX Linux while streaming music from Strawberry to a battery bluetooth speaker that was handed in a few weeks ago :D
 
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