Smartphone components

3D view of a representative smartphone, screen up

A smartphone brings together a battery, stacked circuit boards, camera modules, a loudspeaker and a vibration motor. The loudspeaker and vibration motor both use magnets.

Whether those magnets are rare-earth depends on the design. Keep the battery intact and use a collection program that accepts your device.

Find a recycling program

Magnets that move and make sound

A phone’s loudspeaker and its vibration motor both work by passing current through a coil next to a permanent magnet.

Rare-earth magnet applications include speakers. Whether a specific phone uses rare-earth magnets, and which alloy, depends on its design.

Cutaway drawing of a representative phone vibration motor, its can opened and cut along its length: two flat copper coils under a tungsten mass, which carries two oppositely poled magnets and is held between two zigzag leaf springs. — A representative linear vibration motor. Alternating current in the two flat copper coils pushes and pulls on the magnets under the tungsten mass, which swings back and forth on its leaf springs. The motion is exaggerated here.