Junking a no-longer-trendy cellphone involves throwing away an expensive microprocessor chip – which uses vast quantities of natural resources in its manufacture. Now Philips has a plan to cut this waste (World Patent application 2004/51971).
Instead of being soldered into the phone circuit, Philips’s new chip will form part of a larger version of the removable SIM card that already carries each subscriber’s account details. For budget handsets the SIM will contain a basic processor. For more sophisticated devices that perform tasks like web browsing, the SIM will be equipped with a state-of-the-art microprocessor. Either way, when you switch between different phones in the same class,…
