Rare metals in cell phones include Rare Earth Elements (REEs) like neodymium, terbium, and yttrium for magnets, speakers, and displays, plus other critical elements like indium (touch screens), tantalum (capacitors), and cobalt (batteries). These aren't just "rare" in quantity but also critical for specific electronic functions, making them vital components in your device.
Gallium, germanium, yttrium, lanthanum, praseodymium, europium, gadolinium, terbium and dysprosium each play a specialised role in the backlighting systems and colour display components of modern devices.
Here are a few examples:
According to a 2023 report by the US Geological Survey, a typical iPhone contains approximately 0.034 grams of gold. This amount is worth about $2 at current market prices (as of June 2024, gold trades around $60 per gram, source: USGS, 2023).
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.
Gold has maintained a high financial value, reaching over $2,000 an ounce. At these prices, a skilled recycler extracting gold from electronics can expect to receive over $10,000 worth of gold from just one ton of computer circuit boards.
These materials are critical for conductivity and durability, but they're also highly valuable when recovered through recycling. Gold, silver, palladium, and platinum are the most valuable metals in electronics.
Three-finger gestures on iPhone primarily activate accessibility features like VoiceOver (for screen reading and navigation) and Zoom (magnification), allowing scrolling, zooming, and text manipulation (copy/paste/undo) with specific taps and drags, though some text actions work without VoiceOver enabled for quick editing. Common gestures include three-finger double-tap to toggle VoiceOver speech, triple-tap for the screen curtain, and pinching/spreading with three fingers for copy/paste actions, notes this YouTube video.
Electronics and Circuitry
The content of copper in a mobile device far exceeds the amount of any other metal. Copper conducts electricity and heat and comes from the source mineral chalcopyrite. Tetrahedrite is a primary source of silver.
The Most Expensive Phones in the World: Icons of Rarity and...
Fancy smartphones use rare materials like gold, platinum, and diamonds. These materials make them strong and beautiful. The market for luxury phones is growing fast.
Meet *Francium (Fr)* – the rarest naturally occurring alkali metal and the element with the shortest half-life! 🌍 Why is Francium so rare? - It's extremely unstable and decays in seconds. - No significant amount exists naturally on Earth. - It quickly transforms into other elements through radioactive decay.
Recycling and Gold Recovery
The program recovers valuable materials like gold, which can be reused in new devices. On average, it takes 41 smartphones to recover just one gram of gold.
Of the light rare earth metals, neodymium is considered one of the most critical. It is used in everything from mobile phones and electric cars to medical equipment. Neodymium is also the main light rare earth used in the creation of permanent magnets, which are heavily used in data storage systems and wind turbines.
Many companies will buy your old cell phones (or ones that you find in the scrap for anywhere from 3-100 times the scrap value of one), but sometimes the value is just scrap, and knowing where to sell them is valuable.
*3001#12345#* on an iPhone activates the hidden Field Test Mode, a diagnostic tool for network engineers and power users to see detailed cellular data like signal strength (dBm), cell tower info, and network quality, accessible by dialing the code in the Phone app and pressing call, often after turning off Wi-Fi for accurate cellular readings.
You can double-tap or triple-tap the back of iPhone to perform actions such as taking a screenshot, turning on an accessibility feature, running a shortcut, and more. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. Choose Double Tap or Triple Tap, then choose an action.
Messages automatically uses the following screen effects for specific text strings:
Platinum is one of the rarest metals, occurring at very low concentrations in the Earth's crust. It is 30 times rarer than gold.
Among consumer electronics, computer components are the richest in gold. Circuit boards, especially motherboards, feature gold in their connectors and pins. CPUs are particularly valuable, with older processors containing 0.2 to 0.5 grams of gold each.
Remotes contain only a few cents' worth of gold that can be found on the edges of the printed circuit boards they contain. But if you do the math, you'll see that a few hundred remotes can be worth more money than you suspect.
Scrap gold prices per gram vary significantly by purity (karat) and current market rates, but generally range from around $50-$80 USD for 10K/12K, $80-$110 USD for 14K, to $100-$130+ USD for 18K, with 22K and 24K being higher; you must check current spot prices and specific buyer rates for your karat to get an exact value, as these are just examples based on recent data.
The grade of electronic waste is generally between 800 and 1500 g/t, and 0.8-1.5 g of gold can be extracted per kg of waste.