What is worth salvaging from an old smartphone?

In this video I will take apart my old Samsung Galaxy S6 in order to find out which components I can salvage for future electronics projects. I will also answer the popular question whether you can reuse the screen and camera modules. Let's get started!

Thanks to JLCPCB for sponsoring this video

Music:
2011 Lookalike by Bartlebeats
Killing Time, Kevin MacLeod

[ElectroBOOM]

I would also take all those capacitors and instructors! FILTERS BABY!

[PErik-sqrv]

Zack from JerryRigEverything: Be careful, don't go deep with the business card because you could damage important things inside.
GreatScott!:So I removed the back of the phone with a flathead screwdriver

[rebane]

Imo, if the phone still works, it's not worth it taking it apart for parts
A slow phone can be made faster by doing a factory reset or even installing optimized custom ROMs and still has a lot of uses
Need a camera near a dangerous experiment? Want to monitor your home with an IP camera? Dictaphone? Alarm clock? Backup phone in case your main one breaks? Something to run some home-server experiments off of? DIY projects that need to display something on a screen?
You essentially have a powerful computer to do anything you want that you can use as a server with lots of cool IO

[creature_of_fur]

"overtime my smartphones always got slower"
Me, watching this on a 5yo tablet: **laughs in lag**

[tanmay]

When you try JerryRigEverything, but only one way.

[joetylerdale]

I have 2 of these phones. After watching the video I am completely happy using them as cameras, browsers, and everything except being a phone. The s6 camera (main) is quite a decent camera! AND, someone on a limited budget could use this phone forever if the OS updates keep rolling in.

[Foxilein]

You forgot about the high quality LED Flash on the Mainboard D: I always keep those.

[UpcycleElectronics]

The phone's speaker usually has 2 pads under the flat flex that make it useful.
Most silicon on these boards require Kwisatz Haderach level skills to reuse.
Some of the passives are still useful though. The capacitors onboard can be high capacity and low ESR. However, they are easy to damage and even ceramics are super dangerous to reuse if any force is applied to remove them. You need a GOOD hot air gun for this.
A couple of other things, .. A lot of the components that kinda look like crystals are actually "Surface Acoustic Wave" aka "SAW" filters. These are used for filtering the desired radio frequencies. I am not into radio stuff yet but I save them for later if I can find a datasheet. While I haven't used them much I also have a bin with the tiny radio conncetors/wires, and I save the 2-part EMI shielding cans. At one point I removed most stuff and semi-sorted it. Now I just keep a storage tote with lots of boards that are partially stripped enough that they store flat. Occasionally I go through them looking for some special thing I need or an example of a circuit element I just learned about. It seems like the stuff I don't find useful right now is simply the current state of my understanding of electronics. As I learn more, I often find the things I thought were useless are much more useful than I first thought.
I have one rule when it comes to salvaging parts, "never keep more than you can store, access, recall, and/or inventory."
If you 'forgot you had (x/y/z) part, ' you're due for reassessment of your storage and hording tendencies.

Thanks for the upload.
-Jake

[executive]

the phone is far more useful as a whole device. It can be used as a bluetooth remote or touchscreen interface for example

[MultiWirth]

Replacing the battery and flashing LineageOS is the best way to go in my opinion.
It keeps thr phone up to date and will fix the slow factory installed OS.

[kayots]

I appreciate the link to the dsi to hdmi screen project. I think it can be very worthwhile to discover how to use flagship smartphone screens in arduino projects because we could honestly just start making our own custom smartphones. A battery, memory devices, basic cpu, antennas etc could all be easily fit into a decent form factor.

[bobalong]

I feel like a video on how to repurpose some of the items (camera and screen) would be an interesting and useful video or series. As you say it would be too difficult to figure out for a simple project, however if the project itself is to repurpose them then any knowledge you would gain on the topic would then be passed on to all your viewers who could then utilize the info themselves.

[tanmay]

So, Basically smartphones are not worth salvaging

[amrrasslan]

i kept telling my self that the good part is coming but that never happened :D

[RMIXMODZ]

5:22
That was most likely the vibrating module used to vibrate your phone upon notifications etc..

[glacousxx]

Hello I don't know if you'll see this sir.
But you just made the understanding of so many components and things easier for me.
And thank you for telling us about all the reasons.
Your efforts are much appreciated ❤.

[rangerde]

Selling the old phone is probably the better idea than gathering parts from it for projects. I usually never use such salvaged parts :-)

[Greviouss]

i would actually like to see you utilize a salvaged smartphone screen with a custom hdmi to dsi converter
this would be the one really useful part of most all smartphones available out there id think?

[gilchristianalvarez]

When I have a broken phone with a broken screen, I always strip out the backlight panel of the LCD Screen and use the led's as additional light for flashlights, bike light, etc.

Anyways, great video GreatScott!

[theondono]

That coin-cell like component is a LRA (Linear Ressonant Actuator). They’re the kind of vibrators used for haptic control.

Precision microdrive has great documentation and infographics on them