Smartphones are extremely intricate devices. If you watch a teardown or if you’ve taken one apart yourself, then you’ve seen that there are thousands of components that make them up. This gets even more complicated when companies add in heat management components, water resistance, extra camera lenses, and so on. This is why it’s not uncommon for one of the thousands of components to fail and start a domino effect. According to Green Smartphones, around 5 billion phones were tossed globally this year.
Here are the most common reasons you’ll toss your phone
Based on the data, the bottom spots are held by wireless charging not working (1%) and GPS not working (1%). We don’t use these features all too often, so a lot of people just learn to deal with the issue and keep their phone. Next we have power button not working (2%) and volume button not working (2%). Next, we have Bluetooth not working (4%). Battery draining too fast (7%), camera not working (7%), and Wi-Fi not working (7%), are the next three items on this list. These are slightly more common and more annoying issues that cause people to upgrade to newer devices. Moving up the ladder, we have microphone not working (8%), overheating (9%), and speakers not working (9%). After that, we have touch screen not working (10%). The most common reason, and the winner by a long shot, is the phone not charging. This makes up a whopping 33% of the pie chart. Either the battery is no longer accepting the charge, or the charging port is damaged. A lot of phones refuse to charge at some point. If the phone doesn’t charge, you can’t use it, so it makes sense that this is causes people to toss their phones. However, if something like this does happen, it’s recommended that you at least try to get your phone repaired. You never know if you can salvage your phone.