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