Salvaging parts from old mobile phones - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Mint.
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 03:59:44 am
content: Greetings,Recently I have done a disassembly on a few old phones that I had lying around. Now that the phones are disassembled I have got the main motherboard, the keypads, and finally the LCD display. What is reasonable to keep for future projects and what is unusable?By LCD's I mean not the 16x2 ones, but the more complex ones, such as this:

author: PeterG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 04:21:09 am
content: The only items i would keep from a mobile are the Screen, Mic and Speaker. Everything else is mostly proprietary and not much use.There are a few threads ion forums of the Nokia screens.Regards

author: PeterG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 04:25:15 am
content: If the phones are older models, you may be able to mod them so they work as a SMS based controller.Regards

author: electrode
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 06:54:17 am
content: I salvaged some high-intensity white and blue SMD LEDs from an old LG phone once. Only worth getting if they are chunky enough to be safely desoldered.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 10:44:18 am
content: I did the same with a phone that got run over ( luckily not mine.......) and am using the teeny tiny LED's as a keyboard light. Placed behind the monitor and projecting down, with a simple 1 transistor dimmer and a pot to provide both low light and off when needed. Superglue worked well to stick then to a small steel plate as a heatsink cum mounting, and more superglue held down the 68R resistors providing each die with current limiting. Common lead was stripped from old network flexible lead, using only one strand, with another drop holding it as well.Some of the larger caps were reused on remote control fobs to provide better decoupling, allows batteries to be used until they no longer can provide 6v ( out of a 12V A23 battery) when before they stopped working when the internal resistance got past a few ohms, now they still work when they can only supply uA of current to the cap. A 16V or better unit permanently across the battery ( you normally can find a trace that allows them to be soldered direct to the board after removing the solder resist, some might need a short thin wire on one side) works well on 12v units, while a 10V unit works on those that use 2 CR1220 cells.

author: harnon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 11:28:07 am
content: At the mini Maker Fair in Melbourne in January somebody was pulling the vibration motors out of mobile phones, attaching them to toothbrush heads along with coin cell batteries and making little "random walk" robots.... it was kind of pointless but cool.

author: bullet308
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 01:17:53 pm
content: If a particular display panel is supported by the Arduino IDE, you can employ the housing, keyboard and display for a custom portable Arduino-powered whatever. The panel used in the Nokia 51xx series is so supported and I have one coming in off of ePay to play with in building a Geiger counter. Cell phones are an excellent form factor for all sorts of personal electronic projects, I figure...

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 03:57:35 pm
content: I pulled a colour LCD out of an old Nokia phone, it has LS017B8UA01B as the part number, but no datasheets to be found unfortunately.

author: sonicj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2012, 07:23:27 pm
content: Quote from: AntiProtonBoy on February 05, 2012, 03:57:35 pmlook at the pin configuration and compare to other's projects using nokia display.-sj

author: AlphZeta
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 06, 2012, 04:08:36 pm
content: Sadly enough, most of the components inside a modern phone are pretty much garbage after the phone is dead.I have tried salvaging a few LCDs that looked promising but it seems that to drive those LCDs you'll have to build some pretty complex circuitry to begin with and that totally defeats the purpose of salvaging....Other chips in a cellphone are either too application-specific or proprietary to be useful.The only things I have found salvageable (or worth salvaging) are the high-intensity LED some phones have as camera flash and, small vibrator motor, speaker, and the MIC.

author: bullet308
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 06, 2012, 10:09:25 pm
content: True. A friend gave me four Motorola StarTacs a while back. I busted one of them open and have not figured how to do anything with any of it. :-/

author: DavidDLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 06, 2012, 10:48:47 pm
content: If it is a recent phone you can get ALS ( Ambient light sensors ), accelerometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes and more.Difficult to get the real part numbers, but it is also difficult the miniaturization of the connections.

author: DavidDLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 07, 2012, 07:16:21 pm
content: Forgot to mention you can also find digital mics as well

author: Balaur
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 07, 2012, 07:28:55 pm
content: The few components I've actually reused from mobile phones have been the batteries and some LEDs.I have some speakers/mics/vibrators that I don't know what to do with yet.I also wanted the battery charger ICs but I could only find CPU-driven, datasheetless thingies.Cheers

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2012, 10:54:07 pm
content: Quote from: DavidDLC on February 07, 2012, 07:16:21 pmWhat's a digital mic?I thought they were all analogue.

author: DavidDLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 09, 2012, 03:14:20 am
content: Quote from: Hero999 on February 08, 2012, 10:54:07 pmhttp://www.eetimes.com/design/analog-design/4213798/Digital-microphone-technologies-improve-the-mobile-user-experience-

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 09, 2012, 03:45:08 am
content: So a digital microphone is an analog mic with a built in A/D.

author: DavidDLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 09, 2012, 08:03:04 pm
content: Pretty much.