Most of us probably have an old phone or two lying in a drawer somewhere that could be put to better use. At CES 2021, Samsung announced an extension to its Upcycling sustainability program, called Galaxy Upcycling at Home, that will allow older Galaxy phones to be reused as useful tools for your home.
Samsung actually announced a program like this in 2017, but evidently did not do much with the idea. This time around, the use cases look much more practical and smarter at home.
In the video, Samsung gives the example of using an old phone as a monitor to detect when a baby is crying, at which point a notification will be sent to the parents’ phones. Another example uses the phone’s ambient light sensor to detect when it gets dark to turn on the lights in your home, which is good for your pets and for home security. There are certainly more use cases, but these are the two implementations that Samsung has shown so far.
We don’t know when Samsung will actually add this functionality yet, but it’s nice to see a company working to really keep its old products useful. We hope we don’t have to wait another four years to hear more about it.
