A few years ago, Samsung announced a sustainability initiative called “Galaxy Upcycling”, an effort to adapt and reuse older smartphones. We haven’t heard much about it since, but today at CES 2021 Samsung announced an evolution of this program called Galaxy Upcycling at home. Basically, the idea is to allow people who still have older Galaxy smartphones to use them as part of their connected home, rather than just leaving them in a drawer (or worse, sending them to a landfill).
To enable new features for these old phones, Samsung will release a software update that allows owners to choose how they want to use their devices. One example the company gave was using an old phone as one. baby monitor – can hear a baby waking and crying and send an alert to the parents’ phone so they can check in. Another example was using a telephone to detect changes in the ambient lighting in a room and switch the lights on automatically. So, if you are not at home, but have left a pet behind, the lights can turn on automatically when it gets dark.