How to repair used mobiles against the wild renewal of brands | Your Technology | The country

Every year, new models of mobile phones are released. Every year, the new iPhone replaces the object of desire that was launched just 12 months ago. Every year, major brands bring their best smartphone to market to date. And they do it again 12 months later. This wild race drives us to change our phones frequently and, above all, to buy new products. The environmental costs of this consumption model are high. McMaster University, in Canada, calculates that between 85% and 95% of the emissions generated by a telephone occur during its production process, which includes mining and the extraction of raw materials, among which rare earths and precious metals are counted.

The European Environment Bureau (EEB) has calculated a more benevolent percentage, but equally discouraging: between 51% and 92% of the pollution generated by a mobile phone comes from phases other than its use. . The longer the devices are used, the more the environmental footprint is reduced. To achieve that, it is convenient to repair and reuse, something that is being done more and more.

The French company Smaaart has a factory in Montpellier, in the south of France, where it reconditions 100,000 mobiles a year before putting them up for sale. “The entire value chain is internalized in the factory,” says the company’s CEO, Jean Chistophe Estoudre, who emphasizes that the first step is collection. “We work with the telephone operators to recover the products. This is how we recover many used mobiles. But we also collect from our website. People contact us and we give them a buyback value,” he explains.

They started repairing landlines in 1986 for the former France Télécom, now called Orange. Today they do it with smartphones. “We can extend the useful life of a mobile phone up to six years”, emphasizes Estoudre. “The impact on the environment is minor. We avoid extracting raw materials from the planet and generating CO2 in the production of new mobiles. It is a new mode of consumption, which costs less money, pollutes less and creates jobs locally”, he insists. Their mobiles are between 30 and 50% cheaper than new devices.

The Phone House also has its own process for retrofit —that’s what they call it—used cell phones. In Spain, they have been fixing terminals for about nine years to put them back on the market. They do it with their own technical service made up of 60 people who work at a plant in Coslada, on the outskirts of Madrid. They are like production lines: there is a division of labor and between 300,000 and 350,000 mobiles are repaired each year. Although, yes, in many of them they work to return them fixed to their owners, not to sell them as second-hand devices.

“For many young kids, their first iPhone is a second-hand phone. The difference in price between a new iPhone and one that is a year old is 30% or 35%, but you are still getting a phone that lasts you five or six years,” says Eduardo Díaz, purchasing director of The Phone House in Spain. Díaz adds that the iPhone 7 (launched in 2016) is still being sold in its stores. Apple has always been by far the most valued brand when it comes to second hand.

But the trend of buying second-hand smartphones is growing, in general. According to the IDC consultancy, in 2020 225.4 million used mobiles were sold, both in the private sector and by companies that repair them and then sell them with a certain guarantee. The figure represented an annual growth of 9.2%. While in that same year, in the midst of the worst of the pandemic, 1,292 million new mobiles were sold (a drop of 5.9% compared to 2019), IDC forecasts that 351.6 million will be sold in 2024. used smartphones.

This process of repairing and reselling used mobiles is becoming more and more industrialized. At Smaaart’s Montpellier plant they have a clear method: “For each product that arrives, we register the IMEI, the brand, the model, the memory and the storage capacity of the mobile,” says Estoudre. “Afterwards, we erase the personal data it contains and issue a certificate to give this guarantee to the former owner.”

The physical aspect is checked, to see if the mobile is broken somewhere or has scratches, and they also verify that all the functionalities are fine: “If we identify something that does not work correctly, we change the piece and put a new one”, indicates the CEO of Smaart. In this process, up to 58 control points are checked on each phone, such as the screen, battery, camera, WiFi connectivity or NFC.

At The Phone House, when a customer comes for a new mobile, they are given the option to value their old terminal. “Then we take that old phone to our warehouse. There we carry out a review process of all the equipment, we erase the data and change the pieces that are necessary,” says Díaz, who believes that society has become aware that not everything has to be new. Between 20% and 25% of the devices they sell at The Phone House are second-hand.

This new way of consuming also moves money. For Smaaart, its activity is a profitable business, and it is about making it so in order to be viable as a company. His trades have a profit margin of 7% or 8%. And in 2021 its income grew by 55%, to 21 million euros. Now they have launched their website to sell in Spain and have plans to establish a factory in the country in the future.

Meanwhile, the amount of e-waste produced is growing rapidly. The World Electronic Waste Observatory, in which several entities belonging to the United Nations collaborated, recorded that in 2019, 53.6 million tons were generated, an average of 7.3 kg per inhabitant. In Europe, the average is 16.2 Kg per capita. By 2030, a 40% increase in total electronic waste is expected.

In its report, the European Office for the Environment calculates that, in order to amortize the environmental cost of producing a mobile, it would have to last at least 25 years. Although the optimum would be for a whopping 232 years to remain in service. At the moment, its average life is three years. The organization points out that, just by extending the useful life of all mobile phones in the EU by one year, in 2030 it would be as if a million cars had been taken off the roads.

You can follow THE COUNTRY TECHNOLOGY in Facebook Y Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.