Develop to last: The impact of operating systems on smartphone longevity

Consumers in Europe replace around 136 million smartphones every year. These devices contain numerous critical raw materials essential to the transition to renewable energy. Moreover, mining these materials often involves unsafe and unethical working conditions, and their scarcity increases Europe's dependency on other regions.
To preserve critical raw materials within the region, Europe is striving to transition to a circular economy. So far, much of the focus in this transition has been on recycling; however, both return and recycling rates of smartphones remain low. An alternative, and much more effective, strategy is to extend product lifespans. While progress has been made in advancing repairability, the promising opportunity to prolong the lifespan of smartphones by replacing its operating system remains overlooked.
It’s a familiar situation many of us have experienced: although your phone still functions perfectly well, certain apps stop working because the operating system (OS) no longer supports the apps. As a result, you're forced to buy a new phone—even though the hardware of your phone still works fine and could last for years to come.
This whitepaper explores what the impact is of the operating system (OS) of a smartphone on its lifespan, costs and environmental impact.
The study indicates that the OS of Android smartphones can be replaced by another operating system which:
• almost doubles the lifespan of a smartphone (from nearly 5 years to over 9 years)
• reduces the costs for the user with 66% (from € 9,09 to € 3,10 per month)
• has the potential to decrease the environmental impact of smartphones in Europe with 3,677 million ton CO2 emissions every year and
• has the potential to reduce the consumption of valuable materials with 7263 ton every year.
Promising next steps to these findings are to technically test the hardware with the alternative OS over a longer lifespan with different usage patterns. Furthermore, a similar problem seems to be emerging for televisions. Developing an alternative OS for televisions could bring many benefits to users and the natural environment.