Adiamond-encrusted iPhonecan set you back anything from £10,000 to £10 million. If that kind of bling is a little out of your price range, dom’t worry. Every smartphone contains precious metals including gold, silver, copper, platinum and palladium. These precious metals are now looking more precious than ever, as increased smartphone demand means that we face the prospect of one day no longer being able to afford to dig them out of the ground. Suddenly your smartphone is looking a lot more valuable than you might think.
The hidden value of the metals inside our old electronics, and how we might best extract those materials is one of the hottest topics in WEEE (electronic recycling) today.
What Metals are in my Smartphone?
Mobile phones contain many valuable metals and uncommon earths. An average iPhone contains around 0.034g of gold, 0.34g of silver and 0.015g of palladium. This is in addition to 1000th of a gram of platinum. It additionally contains 25g of aluminum, and 15g of copper. It’s not just mobile phones that contain these valuable elements. Everything from telephones to PCs contain them. Guiyu in China forms is a key location that highlights the squander of these precious metals. In 2008, up to 80% of material handled there originated from abroad .
One metric ton of iPhones contains 300 times more gold than a tonne of gold ore and 6.5 times more silver than a tonne of silver ore.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Smartphones also contain a whole host of uncommon earth components. Some of these components are plentifully available, however they are difficult to mine. These include yttrium, lanthanum, terbium, neodymium, gadolinium and praseodymium. In addition to these metals, there’s also plastic and glass. Then there’s the battery. So all in all there are quite a significant number of components that we need to recycle.
More than 2 billion people on the planet now own a mobile phone. This makes for a lot of waste when they are no longer required. This number is likely to rise over the next 10 years, as more and more entry-level phones are manufactured.
Why is this such a Problem?
The fact is that 2 billion people in the world own a mobile phone. This means that potentially 2 billion people will upgrade to a new one in the next 5 years. And what happends to people’s old phones when they upgrade? Some are recycled, but a large number are put in a drawer and forgotten, or simply sent to landfill. We only correctly recycle 10% of mobile phones at the end of their useful life.
Therefore if you have a load of mobile phones from yesteryear gathering dust in your home somewhere, you could be sitting on a potential goldmine. Experts predict that we could soon be in the same predicament with precious metals used in smartphones as we currently are for oil. However the difference is that these precious metals can be recycled and reused – but only if we dispose of them properly.
Just in case you’re considering collecting people’s old mobile phones and starting your own electronic goldmine, we can confirm that it will be a waste of time. The miniscule sums of precious metals in each phone mean that the value is incredibly low. It’s only on an enormous scale that any significant amount of money could be made from the metals inside the phones. The prospect seems a lot more tempting on a large scale. For example, a million mobile phones would contain 16 tonnes of copper, 350kg of silver, 34kg of gold and 15kg of palladium.
FAQs
In fact, gold is only one of around 60 raw materials that are used in cell phones. 80 percent of it can be recycled, including silver and copper. One million cell phones contain 150 kilograms of silver and several tons of copper.
How much precious metal is in a mobile phone? ›
Smartphones are pocket-sized vaults of precious metals and rare earths. A typical iPhone is estimated to house around 0.034g of gold, 0.34g of silver, 0.015g of palladium and less than one-thousandth of a gram of platinum.
What are the metals found in your cellphone? ›
Gallium provides light emitting diode (LED) backlighting. Bauxite is the pri- mary source of this commodity. Sphalerite is the source of indium (used in the screen's conductive coating) and germanium (used in displays and LEDs). The content of copper in a mobile device far exceeds the amount of any other metal.
How much gold is in one SIM card? ›
The amount of gold in SIM cards is very small, usually measured in milligrams or even micrograms. For example, a typical SIM card may contain around 8 milligrams of gold, which is equivalent to 0.00028 ounces. This means that you would need around 3,571 SIM cards to get one ounce of gold.
How much scrap gold is in a cell phone? ›
There is actual gold in your phone, used because of its excellent conductivity and resistance to corrosion. However, the amount of gold contained in a phone is smaller than one might expect. On average, a smartphone might have around 0.034 grams of gold.
Why are old cell phones worth money? ›
1. **Vintage Appeal:** Some people appreciate the aesthetic and design of older phones, considering them as collectibles or nostalgic items. 2. **Limited Availability:** As technology evolves, older models become rarer, especially if they were not produced in large quantities.
How to remove gold from phone? ›
Since gold requires stronger chemicals to be dissolved, the nitric acid will melt all the plastic and metal parts of the circuit board without harming the gold bits. Drain the nitric acid from the mixture. Use a filter to separate the solid parts from the liquid.
Which electronics have the most gold? ›
The components with the highest content of precious metal include:
- CPUs.
- Memory.
- Circuit connectors.
- Motherboards.
- Cables and wires.
- Hard drives.
- Cell phones.
The crystals in your phone or computer are the same as the ones in a quartz watch. They provide the clock speed for the processor. The MEMS are Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. That is microscopic moving parts etched out of silicon.
What rare earth metals are in my phone? ›
There's yttrium and lanthanum and cerium and terbium. Europium, gadolinium, dysprosium, neodymium… of students memorize the periodic table of elements. But they're likely in your pocket.
What materials are recovered?
- Glass is used in the touch screen of a mobile phone. ...
- Aluminium is used in a mobile phone casing and components. ...
- A small amount of valuable metals including gold, silver, palladium, platinum and copper can be found on a mobile phone circuit board.
Live Gold Spot Price
| Live Gold Spot Price | Gold Spot Price Today |
|---|
| Gold Price per Gram | $74.01 | £58.98 |
| Gold Price per Kilo | $74,006 | £58,980 |
| Gold Price per Ounce | $2,301.84 | £1,834.48 |
| 3 May 2024, 14:00:00 (GMT-07:00) |
Yes. Gold is used in the manufacturing of SIM cards due to it being a very excellent conductor of electricity. Other than this, it is also very durable. However, each SIM card contains very little amount of gold, and you need thousands of SIM cards to be able to extract a few grams of gold.
What is the most valuable thing in a phone? ›
In the motherboard the most expensive part is the SoC, which is an assembled chip which contains CPU, RAM, and many integrated peripherals. The screen is the second most expensive part after motherboard, and in some newest phones, the screen may be actually worth more.
Can the precious metals from old phones be recovered? ›
E-waste contains several base and precious metals such as gold, silver, copper, nickel, and palladium. Having an effective method to extract these metals means they can be reused or if the metals are extracted at high purity, can be sold to offset the cost of processing and recycling E-waste.
What rare metals are in your phone? ›
Which minerals are in your mobile?
- Copper. Copper in its raw nugget form. ...
- Tellurium. A small disc of metallic tellurium. ...
- Lithium. Lithium ingots with black nitride tarnish. ...
- Cobalt. Elemental cobalt. ...
- Manganese. Manganese in various forms. ...
- Tungsten.
Mobile phones contain many valuable metals and uncommon earths. An average iPhone contains around 0.034g of gold, 0.34g of silver and 0.015g of palladium. This is in addition to 1000th of a gram of platinum. It additionally contains 25g of aluminum, and 15g of copper. It’s not just mobile phones that contain these valuable elements. Everything from telephones to PCs contain them. Guiyu in China forms is a key location that highlights the squander of these precious metals. In 2008, up to 80% of material handled there originated from abroad .