All the way back in 2017, Samsung announced a new program called “Galaxy Upcycling.” It was a program in which its engineers were working on ways to repurpose old Samsung smartphones for new IoT purposes, hoping to help lessen Samsung’s contribution to e-waste around the globe.
There hasn’t been a lot of news around the program since its unveiling, but at CES 2021, Samsung unveiled an exciting new addition to it in the form of “Galaxy Upcycling at Home.”
The idea around Upcycling at Home is pretty simple. If you have a used Galaxy phone that’s no longer your primary device, it’ll get a software update that allows it to be used for other at-home purposes. Samsung gave a few examples during its CES presentation, including:
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- As a childcare tool to listen for a crying baby
- Pet care solution (such as turning on the lights when it gets dark and your pet is home alone)
- For at-home security purposes using Samsung Knox
We currently don’t have an ETA as to when Upcycling at Home features will be available for you to use, but the potential of the program is really exciting. There are ways to repurpose old Android devices already without a proprietary system from Samsung (such as using your Android phone as a webcam for Zoom), but those often require a lot of time and patience. If Samsung can make that whole process a bit more seamless and user-friendly, people are bound to be more likely to actually take part in upcycling.
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