Samsung’s Galaxy S24 phone lineup uses components made with recycled cobalt and rare earth elements, in a first for Galaxy flagships.
The South Korean company says it sourced the recycled cobalt from lithium-ion batteries that were discarded by its partners during the battery manufacturing process. The rare earth elements were recovered from magnets discarded during manufacturing or from other products at the end of life, the company said.
Read more:Â A Fully Recycled Phone Is a Lot Harder Than it Sounds, Even for Apple and Samsung
This advances Samsung’s efforts towards its goal of incorporating recycled materials into all Galaxy products by 2025. The company aims to use recycled materials in every component of its mobile products by 2030. The higher-end Galaxy S24 Plus and Galaxy S24 Ultra will have 50% recycled cobalt, the company said.
“The demand for and supply of cobalt continue to grow, but the artisanal mining associated with these minerals has raised environmental and ethical concerns around the world,” Daniel Araujo, vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, said at a press briefing ahead of Unpacked. “Therefore, it’s paramount that we expand our use of recycled cobalt and rare earth elements across our product lineup.”
Apart from adding recycled cobalt and rare earth elements to the Galaxy S24 lineup, Samsung also said the series’ packaging now uses 100% recycled paper material, bringing Samsung closer to eliminating single-use plastics. It also pledged to offer seven generations of OS updates and security updates, which is up significantly from the four years Samsung offered for the Galaxy S23 series in 2023. This could lead S24 owners to wait longer to upgrade their phones. However, Samsung is still behind Google and Fairphone in the Pixel 8 series and Fairphone 5, respectively, which each offer an eight-year software…
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