Repurposing Old Usable Cell Phones?

zentogo wonders: "As I stroll through the local recycle shops in my little Japanese City, I see boxes of used KEITAI-- Japanese Cell Phones. Most of them only a two or three years old, with more technology and features than any affordable phone in the USA, and they actually work! See, Japanese people cycle to new technology, especially phones, very quickly, and it is almost impossible for them not to. Take my own personal example: after one year with the telecom KDDI, I was given a free phone. It had more features than my previous one, and was much lighter, so when I was offered the deal I changed on the spot! So I wonder, what can be done with all these old phones? Can they be recycled for parts or even software? Can they be adapted to another type of technology? It would seem to be a big waste of decent hardware if something interesting couldn't be done with them."

Comments

emergency 911

[Jjeff1]

At least in the US, ANY working cel phone that can get signal can be used to call 911. They are collected by a lot of battered womens shelters and similar places, then distributed to people who otherwise couldn't afford a cel phone to call authorities in an emergency.

But don't stop there, any elderly or non-mobile person (think wheel-chair) should have a cel in their pocket, all the time. As long as it's charged, they never need worry about not being able to get to a normal phone, which might be impossible in an emergency.

All my old phones have been donated and put to good use.

Re:Old phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I just pour my old mercury(I'm a high school chem. teacher -- kids always breaking those fragile thermometers) straight into the well on my property, since it's the easiest. I won't pretend that that "proper" heavy metal disposal process my municipality advocates actually does anything. I won't pretend that going through that process actually gets rid of it, nope, I just throw it straight into my drinking water. Maybe, I should start putting it into my intravenous drip. What's the difference where I put it, because it's still somewhere.

Incompatible standards

[Spudley]

Can they be adapted to another type of technology?

Probably not: they're not going to be wanted in Japan, and they're not going to be compatible anywhere else. Which just begs the same old question: Why do we insist on always making so many incompatible standards to do the same thing???

If all countries used GSM [for example], it would make re-use of all those old phones so much easier. Plus I wouldn't need to buy a special phone that supports multiple technologies just so I can take it overseas. :-/

[note - before you all flame me for suggesting GSM, it was just an example. I don't really care which technology we use; just stop with the stupidity of each continent having its own set of standards]