How a Smartphone Is Made: Materials, Chips, Assembly and Recycling

A smartphone is made from glass and aluminium or steel for the body, ultra pure silicon for its chips, copper, gold and silver for wiring and contacts, tin for solder, tantalum for capacitors, tungsten and rare earth magnets for vibration motors and speakers, indium for transparent display electrodes, and lithium, cobalt and graphite for the battery. Those materials are mined on several continents, refined, turned into chips, displays, cameras, batteries and boards, assembled, radio tested and certified, then loaded with signed firmware that keeps updating for years. At the end of its life the phone should be collected and taken apart so the metals can come back.

This guide walks that path from mine to recycler, using figures only from primary sources: USGS, the SEC, vendor product environmental reports, the FCC, EPA and official platform documentation. It ends with the software supply chain every phone also carries, which is where Safeguard works.

Key takeaways

• Supply is concentrated. According to USGS, Congo (Kinshasa) mined about 73% of the world's cobalt in 2025, China produced about 82% of natural graphite, about 69% of mined rare earths and 99% of primary low purity gallium, and China accounted for almost 80% of silicon materials.
• Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold are the "conflict minerals" covered by the SEC rule adopted on 22 August 2012. US listed companies file Form SD by 31 May each year for the prior calendar year.
• A modern application processor goes through thousands of fabrication steps over more than three months, from bare wafer to packaged chip, before it ever meets a circuit board.
• Before a phone can be marketed in the United States, its radios must be authorized under 47 CFR part 2 subpart J, and its body exposure must stay at or below the FCC's 1.6 W/kg SAR limit.
• Apple's report for iPhone 18 Pro lists 63 kg of gross CO2e for the 256 GB model, 46 kg of which comes from production. Storage size moves the number a lot: the 2 TB model is 109 kg.
• Every phone runs a signed boot chain and receives over the air updates, a software supply chain of its own.
• Old phones are worth recovering: USGS estimated in 2006 that a tonne of handsets (without batteries) held about 300 g of gold and 140 kg of copper. Lithium ion batteries must never go in household trash or recycling bins.

What is a smartphone made of? The materials table

Production figures are 2025 estimates from the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 unless marked otherwise. Vendors publish which components use recycled material, not the gram weight of every element, so the second column relies on vendor reports and USGS end use descriptions.

In short: the battery, magnets and chips carry the most concentrated supply chains, and the solder and capacitors carry the regulated ones.

The journey at a glance

Stage 1: Where do a smartphone's minerals come from?

USGS publishes the most widely cited open data on mineral supply, one chapter per commodity, every January. The figures below come from the 2026 edition, with estimates for 2025.

Silicon: from quartz to polysilicon

Silicon starts as quartz (silica). Smelters reduce it to silicon metal, mostly used in aluminium alloys and silicones; a small, extremely pure share is refined into semiconductor and solar grade polysilicon. USGS reports that China accounted for almost 80% of global silicon materials production in 2025. Chip wafers are sliced from single crystal ingots grown from that polysilicon.

Aluminium, steel and glass: the body

Many models use an aluminium alloy frame; steel shows up in brackets, the battery enclosure and heat spreading parts; glass or glass ceramic covers the display and often the back. These materials are produced globally, so their story is less about concentration and more about energy: aluminium smelting is electricity intensive, which is why recycled aluminium matters for carbon footprint. Apple's iPhone 18 Pro report lists 85% recycled aluminium in the enclosure and 80% recycled steel in several components, including the battery enclosure and the vapor chamber chassis. Samsung's 2025 sustainability report says it applied recycled aluminium to the Galaxy S25 and S25+ frames.

Copper, gold, silver and palladium: the wiring

Copper carries current through board traces, flexible cables, coils and battery foil. Gold plates contacts because it does not corrode. Silver and palladium appear in solder alloys and capacitors. A 2006 USGS fact sheet, still the most cited public breakdown, estimated that a typical handset of that era (113 g without battery) contained about 16 g of copper, 0.35 g of silver, 0.034 g of gold and 0.00034 g of platinum. Those numbers describe 2005 phones, not today's larger devices, so treat them as an order of magnitude.

Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold: the "3TG" conflict minerals

Four metals get special attention because their mining has been linked to the financing of armed groups in Central Africa.

• Tin goes into solder. Almost every component in a phone is soldered to a board. USGS reports world tin mine output of about 290,000 t in 2025; tin has not been mined in the United States since 1993, and solder accounted for 11% of US tin use.
• Tantalum goes into small capacitors that store a lot of charge for their size, which suits crowded phone boards. World tantalum output was about 2,500 t in 2025. USGS lists Congo (Kinshasa) at about 1,300 t and Rwanda at about 400 t, together more than two thirds of the world total. Tantalum has not been mined in the US since 1959. USGS also notes that in June 2025 the US State Department reported an agreement signed by the governments of Congo (Kinshasa) and Rwanda that was expected to improve stability in eastern Congo.
• Tungsten is dense, which makes it useful for the moving mass in vibration motors. Apple's iPhone 18 Pro report says its Taptic Engine uses 100% recycled tungsten. World output was about 85,000 t in 2025, of which China produced about 67,000 t, and China added export controls on selected tungsten items in February 2025.
• Gold: covered above; world mine output was about 3,300 t in 2025.

Lithium, cobalt and graphite: the battery

• Lithium: USGS estimates world production excluding the US rose 31% to about 290,000 t in 2025. Australia (about 92,000 t), China (about 62,000 t) and Chile (about 56,000 t) led, followed by Zimbabwe and Argentina. Batteries made up 88% of global lithium end use. Apple reports 95% recycled lithium in the iPhone 18 Pro battery.
• Cobalt: world mine output was about 310,000 t in 2025, with Congo (Kinshasa) at about 73% and Indonesia at about 14%. Samsung says the Galaxy S25 battery contains at least 25% cobalt, half of which is recycled, sourced from used Galaxy devices and from batteries discarded during manufacturing. Apple reports 100% recycled cobalt in the iPhone 18 Pro battery.
• Graphite: most lithium ion anodes use graphite. USGS reports that China produced an estimated 82% of the world's natural graphite in 2025.

EPA's guidance on used lithium ion batteries describes cobalt, graphite and lithium as critical minerals: economically and strategically important, with a high risk of supply disruption and no easy substitutes.

Rare earth elements: the magnets

Speakers, the vibration motor, camera stabilisation and magnetic charging alignment all need small, strong permanent magnets, and the strongest are made with rare earth elements such as neodymium. USGS lists magnets as the leading global use of rare earths. In 2025, world mine production was about 390,000 t of rare earth oxide equivalent; China produced about 270,000 t, the United States about 51,000 t and Australia about 29,000 t.

The supply has been subject to policy shocks. USGS records that China tightened export controls in April 2025 on samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium; expanded them in October to five more elements; then in November suspended the October controls for one year, while the April controls stayed in effect. Apple reports 100% recycled rare earth elements in all iPhone 18 Pro magnets.

Indium and gallium: displays and specialised chips

Indium is the "I" in indium tin oxide, a transparent conductor coated onto display and touch layers. USGS says ITO production accounts for most global indium consumption, that refinery production was about 1,100 t in 2025 with China at about 760 t, and that refined indium cost about $350,000 per ton.

Gallium is used in gallium arsenide and gallium nitride devices, which USGS lists as integrated circuits and optoelectronics such as LEDs, laser diodes and photodetectors. USGS reports that China accounted for 99% of world primary low purity gallium production. After export controls that began in August 2023 and a later ban on exports to the United States, China lifted that ban for one year in November 2025.

What concentration means in practice

Concentration means a disruption in one place, whether policy, conflict or a plant outage, reaches every phone maker at once. Software teams see the same pattern when one widely used open source package has a problem.

What does the SEC conflict minerals rule require?

On 22 August 2012, the US Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a rule mandated by the Dodd Frank Act. It requires companies that file reports with the SEC to disclose their use of conflict minerals that originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country, when those minerals are "necessary to the functionality or production of a product" they manufacture or contract to manufacture.

From the SEC's announcement and the Form SD instructions:

1. Which minerals. Form SD defines conflict minerals as columbite tantalite (coltan), cassiterite, gold, wolframite or their derivatives, which are limited to tantalum, tin and tungsten, plus any other mineral the Secretary of State determines is financing conflict in the region. That is where "3TG" comes from.
2. Which countries. An "adjoining country" is any country sharing an internationally recognised border with the DRC.
3. What a company must do. It must run a good faith "reasonable country of origin inquiry". If that inquiry shows the minerals did not come from the region, or came from recycled or scrap sources, the company says so and describes the inquiry. If not, further due diligence and a Conflict Minerals Report follow.
4. When. Reports cover a calendar year regardless of fiscal year and are filed on EDGAR by 31 May. The first reports were due on 31 May 2014, for calendar 2013.

There is an important later twist. In August 2015 the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit held that requiring companies to state that products had "not been found to be DRC conflict free" violated the First Amendment. On 7 April 2017, after the district court's final judgment, the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance said it would not recommend enforcement action if companies filed only the disclosure under paragraphs (a) and (b) of Item 1.01 of Form SD, the country of origin inquiry part. So the inquiry and Form SD filing continue, while the detailed Conflict Minerals Report has been under a staff no action position since 2017. The staff statement says it expresses an enforcement position only, not a legal conclusion on the rule.

Large phone makers go beyond the minimum. Apple's 2026 Environmental Progress Report says that 100% of the tin, tungsten, tantalum, gold, cobalt and lithium smelters and refiners identified in its supply chain are required to take part in an independent third party audit every year, and that it maps smelters for other materials such as mica, copper, graphite and nickel. Samsung's 2025 sustainability report says it collects smelter information from suppliers with the industry's Conflict Minerals Reporting Template, Extended Minerals Reporting Template and Additional Minerals Reporting Template.

The parallel with software is direct: the mineral industry built standard templates to pass origin data along the chain, and software bills of materials do the same job for code.

Stage 2: How are a smartphone's chips made?

A phone contains dozens of chips: the system on a chip (SoC) with CPU, graphics and neural cores, plus memory, storage, the cellular modem and radio front end, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, power management, audio, touch controllers and camera image sensors.

ASML, which builds lithography systems, describes six critical steps in chipmaking. In plain terms:

1. Wafer. A cylindrical ingot of very pure single crystal silicon is sliced into thin wafers and polished smooth. The 300 mm wafer is the size most often used.
2. Deposition. Thin films of conducting, insulating or semiconducting material are laid down on the wafer.
3. Photoresist. The wafer is coated with a light sensitive layer.
4. Lithography. Light is projected through a mask (the reticle) that holds the circuit pattern, shrinking it onto the resist. Deep ultraviolet systems use wavelengths down from 365 nm; extreme ultraviolet uses 13.5 nm for the finest features.
5. Etch. Exposed material is removed with gases (dry etch) or chemical baths (wet etch) to form the three dimensional pattern.
6. Ion implantation. Ions are directed into the silicon to tune its electrical behaviour and form transistors.

Those steps repeat for dozens of layers. ASML says the process consists of thousands of steps and can take more than three months from design to production. At the end, the wafer is diced into individual dies, each die is mounted on a substrate that routes its signals, and the package is closed. In phones, memory is often stacked on or beside the SoC package to save board space and power; our memory evolution guide explains how LPDDR differs from desktop memory.

This stays conceptual on purpose: fabs handle hazardous gases and acids under strict controls.

Why chips weigh on a phone's footprint

Chipmaking uses a great deal of electricity, ultra pure water and process gases. Apple says that from fiscal 2026 it models SoC emissions with imec.netzero models using primary data on process node, die size and the regional grid. Storage chips explain why the 2 TB iPhone 18 Pro is listed at 109 kg CO2e against 63 kg for 256 GB.

Counterfeit and recycled parts

Chip provenance can break in grey market channels. The Semiconductor Industry Association says counterfeit semiconductors pose threats to health, safety and security, and cites a counterfeit part found in an automated external defibrillator and another that caused a fire in a vacuum cleaner. SIA has also commented on the link between e-waste and counterfeits, because chips pulled from scrapped electronics can be remarked and resold as new. That is one more reason phones should go to certified recyclers, not informal channels.

Stage 3: The display, cover glass and camera modules

Display

Phone displays are LCD or, increasingly, OLED, both built on glass backplanes with thin film transistors and transparent conductors such as ITO. Apple's iPhone 18 Pro report says its updated display model puts average carbon intensity at 0.16 kg CO2e per square centimetre for OLED panels and 0.03 kg CO2e per square centimetre for LCD panels.

Cover glass

Cover glass is chemically strengthened glass or glass ceramic. Vendors describe their own materials; Apple says iPhone 18 Pro uses Ceramic Shield 2 with three times better scratch resistance than the previous generation, a vendor measurement.

Cameras

A camera module combines an image sensor (a silicon chip), a stack of lenses, an infrared filter, an autofocus actuator and, on many phones, optical stabilisation that moves a lens or the sensor using small magnets and coils. That is why rare earth magnets and copper coils appear in camera modules, and why Apple's report lists recycled gold wire "in all cameras and Camera Control".

Radios and antennas

Phones carry cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC and satellite positioning radios, with antennas often formed from frame segments separated by plastic "antenna lines". Our Wi-Fi generations guide covers how the Wi-Fi side has changed.

Stage 4: How is a phone battery made?

A phone battery is a lithium ion pouch cell, plus a protection circuit board. Inside the cell:

• A cathode of a lithium metal oxide, commonly containing cobalt, coated on aluminium foil.
• An anode of graphite coated on copper foil.
• A porous separator that keeps the electrodes apart while letting ions through.
• An electrolyte of lithium salt in organic solvent.

The layers are wound or stacked, sealed in a pouch, then given a first charge (formation), aged and graded. A protection circuit cuts off the cell outside safe voltage, current and temperature limits, and battery management firmware reports health to the operating system.

EPA explains why handling matters at end of life: lithium ion batteries pack a lot of energy into a small space, and a battery that is crushed in a garbage truck or sorting line can start a fire.

Stage 5: The circuit board and final assembly

The main board

Most of a phone's electronics sit on one or two densely packed boards. The process, at a high level:

1. Board fabrication. Layers of copper and insulating laminate are patterned, drilled with tiny vias and pressed together into a multilayer board. Pads are finished with a thin protective metal layer, often including gold.
2. Solder paste and placement. Solder paste, an alloy based on tin, is printed onto the pads. Automated machines place chips, capacitors (including tantalum ones), resistors, connectors and shields.
3. Reflow. The board passes through an oven that melts the solder and forms the joints.
4. Inspection and test. Automated optical and X ray inspection checks joints under chips; electrical tests check that the board works.

Apple's report says the gold plating and tin solder on all Apple designed printed circuit boards in iPhone 18 Pro are 100% recycled.

Final assembly

Final assembly brings the main board, battery, display, cameras, speakers, haptic engine, antennas and buttons together in the enclosure, seals the device and installs the initial software. Apple says all established final assembly supplier sites for iPhone 18 Pro are third party verified as Zero Waste to Landfill by UL under the UL 2799 standard, which requires at least 90% diversion through methods other than waste to energy, and that these sites must use safer cleaners and degreasers assessed with tools such as US EPA Safer Choice.

This guide does not rank manufacturers or name assembly partners; the point is the structure of tiered suppliers with smelters at the bottom.

Stage 6: How is a phone tested and certified before sale?

FCC equipment authorization in the United States

Every phone is a radio transmitter, so it needs regulatory approval. The FCC says radio frequency devices must be properly authorized under 47 CFR part 2 before they are marketed in or imported into the United States. The FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology runs the program, and it has two approval procedures: Certification and Supplier's Declaration of Conformity (SDoC). Which one applies depends on the rule part. For cell phones, the FCC refers to the "equipment certification test data" behind each grant, so phones go through Certification.

The FCC's summary of the process: determine which rules apply and which procedure is required, test at an authorized laboratory, obtain the approval, label the product and include compliance information in the manual, then maintain compliance.

The FCC notes that these requirements also enforce other policy goals, including human RF exposure limits and hearing aid compatibility for wireless handsets. The FCC's equipment authorization pages also carry a separate prohibition on authorizing "covered" equipment.

SAR: how much RF energy the body absorbs

Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) measures how much RF energy the body absorbs while using a phone. The FCC limit for public exposure from cellular telephones is 1.6 W/kg, set in coordination with federal health and safety agencies such as the FDA. The FCC says any phone legally sold in the US is at or below that level, and that the highest SAR values reported in certification test data are usually included in the grant record you can find from the device's FCC ID.

Stage 7: Firmware, the boot chain and over the air updates

A phone is not finished when the last screw goes in. It ships with several layers of signed software, and most of them keep changing for years.

The boot chain

Apple's Platform Security guide describes the iPhone boot process: when the device powers on, the application processor runs code from read only memory called the Boot ROM, "laid down during chip fabrication" and implicitly trusted. The Boot ROM holds Apple's root certificate authority public key and verifies that the next bootloader, iBoot, is signed by Apple before running it; iBoot then verifies and runs the kernel. The cellular baseband performs its own secure boot with signed software, and the Secure Enclave verifies its own operating system as well. If verification fails, the device drops into recovery or device firmware upgrade mode rather than booting unverified code.

Android's equivalent is Verified Boot: per the Android Open Source Project, a chain of trust from a hardware protected root of trust through the bootloader to the boot and other verified partitions, each stage checking the next. Android 4.4 introduced Verified Boot with dm-verity, Android 7.0 began strictly enforcing it so that compromised devices do not boot, and Android 8.0 introduced Android Verified Boot (AVB). Rollback protection stops a device from being returned to an older, vulnerable version.

On iPhone, then, the root of trust is fixed during chip fabrication: hardware and software supply chains meet in one block of read only memory.

Over the air updates

On Android, A/B system updates keep a bootable system in one slot while the over the air (OTA) update installs to the other. If the update fails to apply, the user keeps running the old system; if it installs but fails to boot, the device falls back to the previous slot. Updates can also be streamed, so they do not need free space for the full package.

Every OTA image is built from the kernel, drivers, open source libraries, vendor binaries and system apps, and the apps on top add their own dependency trees. That software is where Safeguard's work starts. Our iPhone vs Samsung Galaxy security comparison covers how update policies differ by platform, without ranking the phones.

How big is a phone's carbon footprint, and where does it come from?

Phone makers publish life cycle assessments for their products. Apple's iPhone 18 Pro report, dated to the 9 September 2026 launch, is a good worked example because it breaks the number down. All values are gross greenhouse gas emissions in kg CO2e for the 256 GB model, calculated under ISO 14040, 14044 and 14067 and including packaging and in box accessories:

Shares are our arithmetic on Apple's figures and round to slightly over 100%.

And by configuration:

About three quarters of the footprint happens before the phone is switched on, mostly factory electricity; Apple reports 50% of manufacturing electricity for this model came from renewable sources. Storage alone can add more emissions than three years of charging, and keeping a phone longer than the assumed three years spreads the manufacturing footprint further.

Apple's report for the base iPhone 17 (September 2025) lists 30% recycled content and 55 kg of net emissions for its 256 GB model. Methods change between years and vendors, so never compare different vendors' numbers as if measured identically.

Step by step: read what is inside your own phone

These checks are read only. None of them changes settings, unlocks a bootloader or erases data.

1. Find the FCC ID and look up the grant

The FCC says the FCC ID is usually shown somewhere on the device's case; many current phones also show it in an on screen regulatory page in settings. The FCC explains that the first characters are the grantee code and the rest is the equipment product code. Enter them at the FCC ID search to see the grant, test reports and, usually, the highest SAR values.

FCC ID search:  https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/fccid
Enter:          Grantee Code  +  Equipment Product Code
Read:           grant date, frequency ranges, SAR summary, test lab

2. Read the vendor's environmental report

Search the vendor's environment pages for your model's product environmental report. Look for recycled content by component, footprint by phase and configuration, and the assumed years of use.

3. Check the security patch level and boot state on Android

With USB debugging enabled on your own device and Android platform tools installed:

# Confirm the device is connected
adb devices

# Android version and security patch level
adb shell getprop ro.build.version.release
adb shell getprop ro.build.version.security_patch

# Verified Boot state reported by the bootloader (green means locked and verified)
adb shell getprop ro.boot.verifiedbootstate

# Active slot on A/B devices (_a or _b)
adb shell getprop ro.boot.slot_suffix

On iPhone, open Settings, then General, then About, to see the iOS version, and Settings, then General, then Software Update, to see whether an update is waiting.

4. Record it as inventory

If you manage a fleet, record hardware and software facts together so a single bulletin can be matched to devices quickly:

device: corporate-phone-0142
model: example-model-identifier
fcc_id: ABCD-EXAMPLE123
os_version: "16"
security_patch: "2026-10-01"
verified_boot_state: green
active_slot: _b
environmental_report: link-to-vendor-pdf
apps_built_in_house:
  - name: field-inspection-app
    version: 4.2.1
    sbom: sboms/field-inspection-app-4.2.1.cdx.json

The phone's firmware is the vendor's to patch; the apps you build and ship to those phones are yours.

5. Plan the end of life before you need it

Before a phone leaves your hands, back it up, sign out of accounts, and erase it. Our guide to what a factory reset removes and what it leaves behind covers the details. Then use a vendor take back program or a certified electronics recycler.

End of life: how are old phones recycled?

What is in a pile of old phones

USGS's 2006 fact sheet, "Recycled Cell Phones: A Treasure Trove of Valuable Metals", used data from a recycler to estimate that one metric ton of obsolete phones, without batteries, contained about 140 kg of copper, 3.14 kg of silver, 300 g of gold, 130 g of palladium and 3 g of platinum. EPA still cites the same USGS work: for every million phones recycled, about 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered. The same fact sheet reported that less than 1% of phones retired each year were then being recycled. That figure is from 2003 era sources and long out of date, but the concentrations explain why recyclers want phones.

How recycling works

The broad sequence:

1. Collection through trade in, drop off, mail back or municipal programs.
2. Triage. Working phones are wiped and refurbished; the rest are dismantled.
3. Battery removal first, because of fire risk; batteries go to specialist recyclers.
4. Disassembly or shredding by hand, robot or shredder and sorter.
5. Metal recovery at smelters and refiners; magnets and haptic modules can be routed separately.

Vendors have built specialised tools. Apple's 2026 Environmental Progress Report says its Daisy robot could disassemble 36 iPhone models as of 2025; Dave disassembles the Taptic Engine to recover rare earth magnets, tungsten and steel; Taz is a shredder system that separates rare earth magnets from audio modules; and Cora, an e-waste processing line launched in 2025, uses shredding and sensor sorting for higher recovery rates. Daisy's home is Apple's Material Recovery Lab in Austin, Texas. Apple's iPhone 18 Pro report says it offers or participates in take back and recycling programs in 99% of the countries where it sells products. Samsung says it operated e-waste collection in more than 100 countries in 2025 and collected about 7.54 million tonnes of waste electronics worldwide between 2009 and 2025.

What you should do

EPA's advice is simple and worth following exactly:

• Delete personal information before donating or recycling.
• Lithium ion batteries and devices containing them should not go in household garbage or recycling bins.
• Take them to separate battery recycling or household hazardous waste collection points.
• To prevent fires, tape battery terminals or place loose batteries in separate plastic bags.

One addition of our own: do not try to pry a swollen or damaged phone battery out yourself. Hand the device to a recycler or repair shop as it is.

Where Safeguard fits, honestly

Safeguard does not mine, refine, audit smelters, test radios, scan phone firmware images, generate hardware bills of materials or manage devices. None of the material, chip, assembly or certification steps above is something Safeguard touches.

Where it does fit is the software that phones run and the software your team builds for them. If you ship a mobile app, its dependency tree from npm, Maven, Gradle, CocoaPods or Swift Package Manager is a supply chain with the same shape as the mineral one: many tiers, a few heavily used components, and a need to know what is inside each release. Safeguard scans repositories, container images and SBOM files (safeguard scan --dir ., --image, --sbom), matches components against vulnerability databases, uses reachability analysis to rank what your code actually calls, shows which projects carry a given component and version, and evaluates policies and gates. Autonomous remediation can open fix pull requests, and it ships switched off. The Safeguard phone app lets you approve each command the CLI wants to run on your computer, from your phone.

Common mistakes: misconceptions about how phones are made

• "A phone is mostly rare earths." Rare earths are a small mass fraction, mainly in magnets. By weight, glass, aluminium or steel, the battery and the board dominate.
• "Conflict minerals means all minerals from Africa." The SEC rule covers tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold from the DRC and adjoining countries. Cobalt is not in the statutory 3TG list, although many companies now audit cobalt smelters voluntarily.
• "Companies no longer file under the conflict minerals rule." Form SD filings continue each 31 May. What changed in 2017 was a staff no action position on the detailed Conflict Minerals Report.
• "A larger storage option is just a software setting." It is more silicon. Apple's figures show the 2 TB iPhone 18 Pro at 109 kg CO2e against 63 kg for 256 GB.
• "Recycled content figures are the same everywhere." Each vendor defines recycled content its own way. Apple measures certified recycled mass relative to the device, excluding packaging and accessories. Compare like with like.
• "FCC certification means a phone is secure." It covers RF emissions, exposure and related rules, not software vulnerabilities.
• "Once a phone is assembled, its supply chain is done." Every OTA update and every app update is a new delivery from a software supply chain.

FAQ

What materials are needed to make a smartphone?

Glass, aluminium and steel for the body; silicon for chips; copper, gold, silver and palladium for wiring; tin for solder; tantalum for capacitors; tungsten for the vibration motor; rare earths for magnets; indium for display electrodes; gallium for some chips; and lithium, cobalt and graphite for the battery.

How much gold is in a smartphone?

A 2006 USGS fact sheet estimated about 0.034 g of gold in a typical 2005 handset, or about 300 g per tonne of phones without batteries. Modern phones differ, and vendors do not publish per element weights, so treat that as an order of magnitude.

Where do the minerals in phones come from?

From many countries, with heavy concentration for some. USGS data for 2025 shows Congo (Kinshasa) mining about 73% of cobalt, China producing about 82% of natural graphite, about 69% of mined rare earths and 99% of primary low purity gallium, and Australia, China and Chile leading lithium.

What are conflict minerals in phones?

Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, often called 3TG. The SEC rule adopted on 22 August 2012 requires companies that file with the SEC to inquire into whether these minerals came from the DRC or an adjoining country and to file Form SD by 31 May each year.

How are smartphone chips made?

Pure silicon wafers go through repeated cycles of deposition, photoresist coating, lithography, etching and ion implantation, building dozens of layers. ASML says the process involves thousands of steps and can take more than three months. Wafers are then diced into dies and packaged.

What testing does a phone need before it can be sold in the US?

It needs FCC equipment authorization under 47 CFR part 2, which for phones means Certification through testing at an authorized lab, plus labelling and compliance information. Testing covers RF emissions, RF exposure (SAR at or below 1.6 W/kg) and hearing aid compatibility, among other rules.

What is the carbon footprint of making a smartphone?

It depends on the model and storage size. Apple's report for iPhone 18 Pro lists 63 kg CO2e for the 256 GB model, with 46 kg from production, 13 kg from three years of use and 3 kg from transport. The 2 TB model is listed at 109 kg.

How do I recycle an old phone safely?

Back it up, sign out, erase it, then use a vendor take back program or a certified electronics recycler. Do not put it in household trash or recycling bins, because the lithium ion battery can start a fire. If the battery is swollen, do not try to remove it yourself.

Does a phone's software have a supply chain too?

Yes. The boot chain, operating system, baseband firmware and every app are built from many components, including open source libraries, and delivered through updates. Knowing what is in each release is the software version of knowing which smelter processed your tin.

Fix it without waiting for upstream

Nothing in a phone's mines, fabs or assembly lines can be patched by a pull request, and phone firmware itself has to come from the device vendor. But the mobile apps and backends your team builds pull many open source components through npm, Maven, Gradle and CocoaPods, and each OTA image is assembled from open source too, so the same patch discipline applies to everything you ship onto those phones.

Whatever the vulnerability, most of the risk sits in two gaps. The first is the time between a fix being published and that fix actually running in your production builds. The second, and worse, is the time before any fix exists at all, while a maintainer works out a patch and a release schedule. Waiting through both gaps is a habit, not a requirement. Safeguard gives teams three ways to close them.

1. Autonomous remediation: pull requests, not tickets

When a fixed version exists, Safeguard's Griffin models open a tested, policy gated pull request that moves the affected dependency to the safe version. You can run it on one repository or in bulk across every project that carries the vulnerable version. Remediation covers eight categories, including dependencies, licenses, security posture and findings. Reachability analysis ranks the vulnerable code paths your application actually calls first, so the first pull requests you merge are the ones that matter most. Autonomous remediation ships switched off, with every category set to Manual, so your team decides how much runs on its own and what still needs a human approval.

2. Gold Open Source: the safe version in seconds, free

gold.safeguard.sh is free and needs no login. Search any CVE or package to see affected and fixed versions, CVSS, EPSS, CISA KEV status and a recommended safe version, or use the "Am I affected?" checker. The same data is available through a free read API, README status badges and RSS threat feeds. The safeguard-sh/gold-scan-action GitHub Action can fail a build on a known exploited vulnerability, on any known vulnerability, or never, so a version you have just removed cannot quietly come back in next week's merge.

3. Gold Registry: start from components that are already fixed

registry.safeguard.sh provides hardened, drop in replacements for upstream packages and container images. Every Gold artifact is held continuously to zero exploitable critical or high CVEs, zero malware and a completed license check, with SLSA L3 or higher provenance, a Sigstore signature and a public evidence page you can hand to an auditor. An artifact loses its Gold badge if it regresses. Teams can point their own package directory at the registry so hardened equivalents resolve without changing how developers install anything.

When upstream has no fix yet, or will not ship one, Safeguard first works to get the fix accepted upstream. If the issue is severe or upstream will not move, Safeguard builds a fork, fixes the vulnerability there and publishes a hardened Gold build, so you are not stuck on a maintainer's release schedule. You can also request a hardened, compatibility tested build of a specific package. This fork and patch flow is in early access today, so ask which packages it covers before you plan around it.

One honest limit: when the vulnerable code lives in a vendor appliance, a hosted service or an operating system runtime you do not build yourself, the fix still has to come from that vendor or distribution. The steps above apply to the open source dependencies and container images you build and ship, which is where most teams carry the largest and least tracked share of their exposure.

To try it on your own machine, download Safeguard from https://safeguard.sh/download and see the CLI documentation at https://docs.safeguard.sh/docs/cli .

See how Safeguard would help

To be plain about the fit: Safeguard does not touch minerals, chips, radios or phone firmware. These demos show the software side, which is the part of a phone's supply chain your team builds and ships.

The first demo is a real Android session with the Safeguard phone app. You send work to a computer running the Safeguard CLI, and when the CLI wants to run a command, you approve it on the phone with Allow once, Allow for turn or Deny. It is the same device this whole post describes, used as the approval point for changes to the software you ship.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

The second demo is a real Safeguard CLI session. Asked to fix a lodash CVE, it reads the finding and advisory, asks before each command, edits package.json to lodash 4.17.21, runs npm install and npm test with approval, prints a summary and pushes nothing. The same approve each step flow applies to a dependency upgrade in a React Native app or the backend your mobile app talks to.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

The third demo sets up Safeguard's local runner on your own machine, approves it with its device code, and then scans from the terminal. Run against a mobile app repository, that tells you which components and versions are inside the release, the software counterpart of a smelter list.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

Quick check

Sources

• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Silicon (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Copper (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Gold (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Tin (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Tantalum (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Tungsten (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Lithium (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Cobalt (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Graphite (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Rare earths (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Indium (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Gallium (PDF)
• USGS Fact Sheet 2006-3097: Recycled Cell Phones, A Treasure Trove of Valuable Metals (PDF)
• SEC press release 2012-163: SEC adopts rule for disclosing use of conflict minerals, 22 August 2012
• SEC final rule release 34-67716: Conflict Minerals (PDF)
• SEC Form SD instructions (PDF)
• SEC Division of Corporation Finance: Updated statement on the effect of the court of appeals decision on the conflict minerals rule, 7 April 2017
• Apple: iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max Product Environmental Report, September 2026 (PDF)
• Apple: iPhone 17 Product Environmental Report, September 2025 (PDF)
• Apple: Environmental Progress Report 2026 (PDF)
• Apple Platform Security: Boot process for iPhone and iPad devices
• Samsung: Circular economy
• Samsung Electronics Sustainability Report 2025 (PDF)
• FCC: Equipment Authorization
• FCC: Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) for Cellular Telephones
• EPA: Electronics Donation and Recycling
• EPA: Used Lithium Ion Batteries
• ASML: Six crucial steps in semiconductor manufacturing
• Semiconductor Industry Association: Anti-Counterfeiting
• Android Open Source Project: A/B system updates
• Android Open Source Project: Verified Boot

Last reviewed: 23 October 2026.