If you have an old smartphone sleeping in a drawer “just in case,” you’re not the only one neglecting it. In France alone, recent studies estimate that more than 100 million mobile phones are sitting unused in people’s homes. Across the European Union, over half of people aged 16–74 keep their old phones instead of recycling them, and only about 1 in 10 devices actually makes it to proper recycling. Worldwide, the mobile industry talks about billions of “dormant” or soon‑to‑be‑discarded phones at a time when more than 5 billion handsets are expected to become e‑waste in a single year.
At L’École de design Nantes Atlantique in France, a leading French design school, a group of design students decided that “sleeping” smartphones deserved better than the back of a drawer. Their project, Rephone, explores how old smartphones can be reborn as simple, dedicated objects by combining fresh software ideas with clever physical design.
