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The smartphone evolution - an analysis of the design evolution and

environmental impact of smartphones

Conference Paper · September 2020

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The smartphone evolution - an analysis of the design evolution
and environmental impact of smartphones
Marina Proske*1,2, Erik Poppe1, Melanie Jaeger-Erben1,2

1
TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany
2
Fraunhofer IZM, Berlin, Germany

* Corresponding Author, marina.proske@izm.fraunhofer.de, +49 30 464 03 688

Abstract
The smartphone industry has always been characterized by rapid technical change and new product proliferation.
Although the smartphone has a relatively small environmental footprint compared to other IT products, it has one
of the shortest use cycles and at the same time the widest dissemination of any electronic product, making it a
product of high environmental concern. In this paper we will provide a market based analysis on smartphone
designs for a period from 2000 to mid-2019 showing that smartphones changed towards “bigger and better” (bigger
displays and batteries, more storage, memory, cameras, faster and better processors, cameras and sensors), with
only little variability between models, brands and market segments. Thereby, this product development is mirrored
with changing environmental data (e.g. maturing technology, more efficient production) showing how the absolute
environmental impact changed.

1 Introduction short market cycles (e.g. time in markets, release cy-

The smartphone industry has always been character-
ized by rapid technical change and new product prolif-
eration. Although the smartphone has a relatively small
environmental footprint compared to other IT products,
it has one of the shortest usage cycles and at the same
time the widest dissemination of any electronic prod-
uct, making it a product of high environmental concern.
The dynamic nature of the smartphone market and the
persistent short useful lives of smartphones increasing
the necessity for the evolution towards a more sustain-
able design. In this paper we will provide a market
based analysis on smartphone designs for a period from
2000 to mid-2019 and address three questions: (1) How
(fast) did technology features change regarding
smartphone, (2) when do “flagship features” reach the
centre of the market, (3) how does this correspond with
changing environmental data (e.g. maturing technol-
ogy, more efficient production)?
Research on the design evolution of cell- and
smartphones dates back to the early 2000s and has al-
ways been driven by the question of dominant design
strategies, but environmental issues are often missing.
For the analyses we gather market data of smartphones
with an internet-based data mining approach where we
combine different internet sources. We will show that
the market will reach a peak in product proliferation by
2014, followed by a steady decline in annual new prod-
uct releases, indicating a transition to a mature industry.
Despite this, various surveys indicate that the
smartphone market continues to be characterized by
cles) and persistently short usage cycles (section 2).
This will be compared and combined with life cycle
data on smartphones as a whole and on individual fea-
tures (section 3).
2 Technological evolution of the
smartphone
This section gives a brief outline on the historical de-
velopment of mobile communication, particularly con-
centrating on the design developments.
2.1 The evolution of a new technology
(1861 - 1990)
The first telephone and much later its mobile version
were not an instant success. “Alexander Graham Bell
was so convinced his pioneering telephone would be
such an unwanted intrusion that he initially promoted
his invention in the 1880s at expositions and fairs as an
entertainment system that conveyed music and theatri-
cal performances over headphones to those who
couldn’t afford to buy tickets to the real thing” [21].
The example shows an inherent characteristic observa-
ble in all emerging technological fields: products do
not appear out of the blue and always evolve in the in-
terplay between innovators (producer) and lead users.
While the “knowing-how” creates the basis for certain
technologies, the “knowing-what” is about the success-
ful identification and testing of possible operational do-
mains [7].
The restraint towards the telephone and its application
proved only temporary and spread quickly throughout
the business world. Once the proof of usefulness was
given and due to new successes in radio transmissions,
soon first ideas of mobile phones emerged. In his essay
„Das drahtlose Jahrzehnt" [The Wireless Century]
from 1910, Robert Stoss anticipates some features of a
modern smartphone as “Citizens of the wireless age
will walk around everywhere with their "receiver"
placed somewhere in the hat or elsewhere”[29]. Stoss
even goes beyond simple communication as he pre-
dicted the “gesprochene Zeitung” [spoken newspaper],
“Telharmonie” [Multimedia Streaming] and envi-
sioned a kind of mobile online shopping [29].
The prognosis of Stoss was surprisingly close to reality,
but there was still a long way to go: At the beginning
and increasingly from the middle of the 19th century
onwards the first mobile car telephones were devel-
oped by Ericsson and others. The first-generation de-
vices still had to connect to the local network, thus
making it impossible to make phone calls while driv-
ing. Later in 1920, large two-way car radios came on
the market. An improved version for the mass market
was introduced by Galvin in 1931. “Galvin linked
‘‘motion’’ and ‘‘radio’’ and gave the radio the trade
name Motorola” [12]. Second World War revealed
smaller backpack mounted devices that were nick-
named “walki talki” [18]. Over time, radio technology
further advanced but could not overcome its main lim-
itation for a broader commercial use: „each radio
would have to work on a separate frequency from its
neighbours, otherwise calls would be interfered with,
confused, or worse, eavesdropped” [1].
In 1973, Motorola revealed its game changing portable
telephone, the shoe-sized and 800 grams heavy Dyna-
Tac. However, not until 1983 a commercial version
came available in the market. Yet the actual system
level innovation took place in the background. To allow
several devices to communicate without interfering
with each other in a network, larger cells were divided
into smaller cells. To enable mobile conversation, a
massive fixed infrastructure of wires, transmitters and
receivers had to be in place [1]. Thus, the set-up of the
first commercial cellular radio systems (1G) took sev-
eral years to evolve and was first introduced 1979 in
Japan and 1983 in the United States [12]. Until today,
the principle of cellular radio is the most effective ver-
sion of mobile radio and is still the principle for all net-
work generations that have followed so far.
2.2 Optimization and consumerization
(1991 – 1995)
Despite the launch of early cellphone networks form
1979 upwards [12], the commercialization for mobile
communication was still on hold. The first-generation
networks (1G) were based on analog signal transmis-
sion and therefore limited in the capacity of network
participants and bandwidth. Each country had its own
specification that were often incompatible with each
other. This changed slowly with the introduction of the
first full-digital networks (2G) and especially the GSM
network (Global System for Mobile Communications)
in Europe in the early 1990s [15]. The GSM and its
technical specifications were a result of a pan-Euro-
pean collaboration in standardization [30]. In hind-
sight, GSM was a great commercial success, but ini-
tially network vendors registered low subscriptions of
less than 5% of the total population in Europe [15]. It
was not until 2002 that the number of mobile subscrib-
ers overtook the number of fixed-line subscribers on a
global scale [28]. Nevertheless, it was the standardiza-
tion efforts for a shared network that led to further con-
sumerization and market growth, as manufacturers
could now produce for a global scale rather than for
niche markets.
The first GSM approved phone was brought to the mar-
ket by Orbitel in 1991, had a weight of 2 kg and was
more a bulky transportable phone than a mobile.
Motorola and Nokia followed little later with much
smaller, cost-efficient consumer handsets [7]. In gen-
eral, in the first half of the mid-1990s manufacturers
where characterized by technical improvements and
constraints: “The design choices were governed by the
tradeoffs between production costs, size and weight,
and battery run-time” [17].
2.3 Segmentation and product differen-
tiation (1996 – 2007)
In the early market phase, manufacturers focused on
vertical innovation, e.g. by increasingly integrating
components along the supply chain, improving quality
and upscaling production to reduce costs. Throughout
the 1990s there was a clear convergence towards light,
compact mobile phones with improved technical per-
formance, “a trend towards vertical product homogeni-
zation” [17].
The pioneering advantage of early innovators dimin-
ished over time as demand grew and others were at-
tracted to the market. Started as niche manufacturers,
brands such as Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola quickly
became global players and where accompanied by
other large electronic equipment manufacturers such as
Mitsubishi, Samsung and Siemens. The increasing
competition forced manufacturers and brands to differ-
entiate their products. How to attract new or existing
customers to new products? There are various exam-
ples that can be illustrated:
 Gamification: The Nokia 6110 (1997) got a pre-
installed game called “Snake”.
  Individual customization: The Nokia 5110 (1998)
offered the possibility to change the appearance
individually with exchangeable covers.
 Improved interface: Siemens S10 (1998) had the
first color screen
 Changing form factor: Nokia 3210 (1999) had a
fully internal antenna.
 Add hardware features: The Kyocera Visual
Phone VP-210 (1999) was the first commercial
mobile with an integrated digital camera.
 Internet: The Nokia 7110 (1999) was the first mo-
bile with wireless application protocol to browse
the Internet
 Customer segmentation: The Samsung Lady
Phone (2004) had a mirror and menstruation cal-
endar
The product differentiation phase created a variety of
new designs, form factors (e.g. flip phones, sliders,
clamshell) and dozens of new features that extend the
core function of a simple telephone [7]. Such devices
are also called „feature phones", although the term was
not so common back then.
In tandem with the development of feature phones,
there was another decisive development and important
prerequisite for the development of smartphone.
Thanks to further advances in microelectronics, a com-
pletely new generation of devices was introduced at the
beginning of the 1990s with the Personal Digital Assis-
tants (PDA). PDA or handhelds were portable devices
and downsized pocket Personal Computer’s (PC) [31].
They combine a number of features for Personal Infor-
mation Management (PIM) such as calendars, notes,
phone book and wireless data transmission (email, In-
ternet).
Regarding the parallel development of mobile phones
and PDA’s it seems naturally that both products began
to converge. Already in 1997, Ericsson came up with a
prototype for a new device it named „Smart Phone”
(Ericsson GS 88). In contrast to a feature phone with
its bundle of integrated and unchangeable special-pur-
pose features, a smartphone is a multipurpose device
with: „ (…) the ability to run software programs, later
called ‘apps,’ that enabled them to perform tasks that
had not been envisaged when the phone was manufac-
tured” [19]. The development of smartphones as uni-
versal computers was already in use before Apple re-
leased the iPhone in 2007 and even anticipated by some
experts [31].
Although technological development progressed stead-
ily until 2000, manufacturers were faced with band-
width limitations, limiting the operating range to sim-
ple applications with low data usage. RIM had great
success with the introduction of its two-way pager the
BlackBerry 850 in 1999, which supported email – but
was lacking other features when there were already
other product with more features in the market: „Early
wireless inventors failed because they crammed multi-
ple office tools into book-sized devices. The product
were battery and bandwidth hogs and a headache to op-
erate [21]”. The example illustrates the importance of
convenience and ease of use when it comes to product
design. Looking back, one would think that the devices
were easy to use in the past, but in many cases, they
were not. However, manufacturers often violate this
rule by increasingly integrating features that are not
fully mature and are often only a response to the com-
petition (also known as „featuritis”) [22].
At the beginning of the 21st century, product designs
began to proliferate in all directions, colours, sizes, fea-
tures, different user interfaces and navigation concepts.
From a theoretical point of view, experimenting with
different designs and configurations is a necessary part
of any product evolution, which often end in a domi-
nant design: “After that selection takes place as an in-
teractive process by different forces (buying behav-
iours of consumers, competing manufacturers, legisla-
tion, etc.), leading to the survival of the best-adapted
product variants, of which the most prolific are also re-
ferred to as dominant design. Then retention of know-
what (product characteristics, items) and know-how
(manufacturing technology) is achieved as best-
adapted variants are reproduced” [7].
2.4 Dominance of the multi-purpose
Smartphone (2007-2019)
The introduction of the iPhone by Apple in 2007
marked a turning point for the smartphone industry.
„Even it was not the first model of smartphone in the
market, it soon became a point of reference for all pro-
ducers in the coming years in terms of design and user
interface” [6]. The iPhone had an integrated Operating
System (OS), a web browser and the iTunes Store for
downloading audio and video. It had a touch screen (in-
stead of a keyboard) with a software-based keyboard.
One year later, the iPhone 3G was launched, along with
a virtual marketplace (Appstore) for downloading ad-
ditional software applications.
According to Giachetty, Apple was able to redefine the
market boundaries in two ways: „First, it was able to
look across substitute industries: the smartphone indus-
try, the portable music industry, and the Internet com-
munication device industry – three product categories
that shared similar functionalities. Apple was the first
handset vendor to perfectly integrate the core functions
of these three product categories into a single device.
Second, Apple looked across complementary product
and service offerings by relying on a platform mounted
on its other devices that brought together a broad eco-
system of app developers for its iPhone” [9]. Instead of
inventing completely new technologies, Apple has con-
sistently converged what was already there or in other
words: „Smartphones were not invented by Apple, but
they were defined by Apple” [1]. However, this devel-
opment was not detached from external political cir-
cumstances.
Apple used an advantage that no other manufacturer
had ever had before and that was leading to another
system level innovation. Although mobile data could
previously be used over networks, and in particular
with the introduction of 3G in 2003, its capacity was
rather limited. For this reason, the network operators
have specific requirements for the manufacturers re-
garding the amount of data that may be moved in the
network at all. Network operators used to make money
from phone calls and SMS, so how should one make
money from email and internet videos? For a long time,
carriers not only run their networks, but also sold hand-
sets and content. In order to use their networks effec-
tive and gain profits, carriers set up technical require-
ments which OEMs implemented accordingly. Apple
was the exception, as it made a unique deal with the
U.S. carrier AT&T to design its iPhone the way it
wanted without intervention [14], [9]. In return, Apple
gave the carrier a share of the profits and agreed to an
exclusive partnership. The iPhone was designed for
multimedia applications and thus strained the networks
of AT&T and its battery, which lasted less than eight
hours. Apple changed the mobile game: Bandwidth
conservation and battery lifetime was long time the pri-
ority of the mobile industry – now the new battle-
ground was mobile computing [21]. Because of the
popularity of the iPhone other carrier also wanted to
have comparable smartphones for their customers and
the old principles of bandwidth conservation were
abandoned. By this, Apple not only introduced a dom-
inant design, but also changed the paradigms in the
market.
After initial hesitation, major manufacturers later fol-
lowed and adapted their smartphone designs: Physical
keyboards gradually disappeared, form factors became
uniform and all manufacturers relied on flexible oper-
ating systems that could be extended with third-party
apps. Google released Android, an OS that can be used
free of charge on devices by other manufacturers and
is still one of the most widely used systems.
The historical development of mobile phones shows
that performance densities and integration of parts and
features have intensified enormously within the mar-
ket. Moreover, novel use patterns have been ‘inte-
grated’ into mobile phones (e.g. clocks and diaries).
Over time, phases of dominant designs seem to be fol-
lowed by product differentiations in order to gain mar-
ket advantage. For most devices, not even the battery
can easily be swapped. Displays, which are often dam-
aged when dropped, are also not easy to repair. The ar-
chitectural innovation of the smartphone (as a con-
verged system of different technologies) was accompa-
nied by an increasing integration of single components
that are glued to the phone.
3 Feature development in context
of environmental impact
As shown by the historical analysis, the outer design as
well as the feature spectrum of mobile phones changed,
but aligned towards “bigger and better” since the de-
velopment of the first iPhone in 2007: bigger displays
and batteries, more cameras and sensors, more storage
and memory capacity, but (at least until the foldable
displays in 2019) the whole market developing in the
same direction.
As several life cycle assessments (LCAs) of
smartphones show, the main impact is caused by the
electronic components. Printed circuit board PCB and
the main ICs processor, memory and storage can cause
more than half of the whole manufacturing GHG emis-
sions, followed by battery and display with a signifi-
cantly lower share (see Figure 1, [8], [23], [27]).
housing and display
miscellaneous internal structural
5% Printed
parts elements
9% 3% Circuit Board
Assemblies
battery
6%
12%
power supply RAM memory
4% 12%
connectivity
3%
flash memory
processor
30%
16%
Figure 1: Share of GHG emissions caused by
smartphone manufacturing, picture from [27]
In the following, we analyse the feature development
in the context of the environmental impact (specifically
the GHG emissions). Thereby, LCAs are always one-
off assessments based on a data with specific time and
technology relevance. To assess the changing environ-
mental impact of feature development also needs to
take into account changing manufacturing efficiency or
even different manufacturing processes and technology
nodes. However, reliable data for the manufacturing of
electronics is already scarce and partly out-dated.
Changes over time in the manufacturing data can there-
fore be shown only for a small range of parts.
For the design and feature analysis a data set from the
online product database GSMArena was gathered, cap-
turing product specifications for 9,430 smartphones
from the year 2000 upwards. The data shows an in-
crease in number of models and manufacturers on the
market from late 1990 to 2014, with more than 900
models released from almost 60 manufacturers. Since
then, the number of models and manufacturers de-
creased slightly. The GSMArena data shows that
phones became bigger in the last years, containing
more display area, bigger batteries, better and more
cameras, more storage capacity, and more sensors Figure 3: Carbon footprint of Huawei
([10], detailed analysis of this data is published in smartphones and their display size, based on [11]
[24]). The impact of the production and the energy consump-
3.1 Display and form factor tion in use have likely increased with larger displays
over the years. On the other hand, production effi-
The form factor of the phones changed, the devices be- ciency increased as well. Environmental reporting
came larger, but thinner. At the same time, the weight from the Taiwanese display manufacturer AUO shows
increased only slightly. The thinnest smartphones are decreasing GHG emissions per produced panel area
about 5 mm thick, most high-end and middle-class de- since 2008 (Figure 4).
vices are below 1 cm currently. The average display
size changed from 2 inches in 2005 for mobile phones 100 7

and 3.5 inches of the first iPhone in 2007 to about 6 90

6
80
inches in 2019 with screen-to-body ratio increasing

GHG emissions [kg CO2e]

70 Scope II 5

Displaysize [inch]
from 20% to 80% (Figure 2). Thereby, not only the 60 Scope I 4
shift from feature phones to smartphones increased the 50 Displaysize
screen-to-body ratio. The ratio still increases for 40 3

smartphones, leading to camera notches and fingerprint 30 2

sensors under the display class. Display resolution in- 20
1
10
creased as well in absolute pixels and pixels per inch
0 0
(PPI) with currently 360 PPI on average [4] [10].
2003

2008

2016
2002

2004
2005
2006
2007

2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015

2017
2018
2019
2020
8 90

7
Display size (models)
80 Figure 4: GHG emissions per produced panel area
Display size (average)
70 and average display size of smartphones, based on
Screen-to-body ratio [%]

6 Screen-to-body Ratio
60 [4], [10]
5
Size [inch]

4
50
This shows that GHG impact from display manufactur-
3
40
ing decreased significantly between 2008 and 2012,
2
30
and stabilized on the same level since then. Use of
20
chemicals stayed more or less stable, with the limita-
1 10
tion that with more processes being covered in the de-
0
2000 2005 2010 2015
0
2020
tailed accounting by the manufacturer, the higher the
numbers became. This led to several recalculations for
Figure 2: Display size and screen-to-body ratio, past years [4].
based on [10] Besides growing display size, there are also different
Thereby current carbon footprints by Huawei from display technologies in use: LCD and (AM)OLED dis-
2016 to 2019 smartphones show, that although displays plays, with the latter growing in numbers over the last
do not cause the main share of the overall impact, the year. From environmental perspective, the production
total footprints correlates with the display size (see Fig- impact of both technologies is similar according to [2]
ure 3). with OLEDs having a slightly lower impact by 8%.
3.2 Battery technology
The environmental impact from battery manufacturing
depends on the weight and capacity of the battery. Av-
erage battery capacity increased from ~700 mAh in
2000 to ~3,700 mAh in 2019. In the same time, a tech-
nology shift from nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) over
lithium-ion (Li-Ion) to lithium-polymer (Li-Polymer)
batteries took place. NiMH batteries were phased-out,
Li-Ion and Li-Polymer batteries are still used in the provement of GHG emissions data, this would only re-
marked with a stronger shift towards Li-Polymer. Ac- sult in an increase by factor ~3. Similar for RAM,
cording to an LCA by [13], this trend towards Li-Poly- which increased from 128 MB to 4 GB, the GHG emis-
mer is favourable from environmental impact as the Li- sions increased by factor ~7.
Polymer batteries have a lower production impact per
60 100
capacity. No LCA data on production efficiency over NAND Flash [per GB] 90
time is available. 50

GHG emissions [g CO2e/GB]

Samsung 80

Storage capacity [GB]

3.3 Storage and memory 40 SK Hynix
70
60
The storage capacity of the smartphone has a strong 30
Storage capacity
(average)
50
impact on the total GHG emissions of the phone. Data 40
20
on iPhones shows the difference between the lowest 30

and highest storage configuration does have an impact 10

20

between 10 and 30% of the total phone (see Figure 5) 10

0 0
and are on average between 70 and 80 g CO2e/GB [3]. 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020
120
Eol
Transport Figure 7: GHG emission per GB storage capacity
100
Use
More Storage
of Flash chips and average storage capacity of
GHG emission [kg CO2e]

80 Manufacturing
smartphone, based on [16], [10]
60
3.4 Feature spectrum
40

Besides the performance level of the integrated fea-

tures, the feature spectrum increased as well. The first
20

0
iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone X iPhone 8 iPhone 8 iPhone 7 iPhone 7 iPhone iPhone iPhone
iPhone had one rear camera, the current iPhone 11 Pro
11 Pro 11 Pro
Max
11 XS Max XS Plus Plus 6s 6s Plus SE
has one front and three rear cameras, each of them
coming with an individual CMOS sensor.
Figure 5: GHG emissions of iPhones, based on [3]
The average number of sensors increased, fingerprint
As shown in Figure 6 and Figure 7, the GHG emissions sensor, face recognition and NFC are more and more
per GB dropped significantly over the last years due to common in today’s phone as shown in Figure 8. All of
technology improvements. Older data from Boyd also these features need additional control chips.
showed that, the impact per die area increased, but 400
needed die area per GB decreased, leading overall to
350
an improvement of the impact [5]. The absolute num-
ber shown in Figure 6 and Figure 7 are however signif- 300
Number of models

icantly lower than presented by other sources such as 250 fingerprint sensor
Boyd [5] or indirectly by Apple [3]. 200
face recognition
NFC
700 SDRAM all [per GB] 6 150

600 Samsung [per GB] 5 100

GHG emissions [g CO2e/GB]

Memory capacity [GB]

500 SK Hynix [per GB] 50

4
400 RAM capacity 0
(average) 3 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020
300
2 Figure 8: Availability of smartphone models with
200
fingerprint sensor, face recognition and NFC,
1
100 based on [10]
0
2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020
0
Aspects such as PCB area and number of layers stayed
more or less the same across several generations ac-
Figure 6: GHG emissions per GB storage capacity cording to [20], but the density, in which electronic
of DRAM chips and average memory capacity of components are placed on the board, increased as the
smartphones, based on [16], [10] total number of ICs increased with the growing feature
spectrum.
From the first iPhone in 2007 and today’s average ac-
cording to data by GSMArena, there was an increase in Housing material changed from plastic frames and
storage capacity by factor ~20. Based on the shown im- back covers to metal frames with aluminum and glass
back covers. With the growing number of devices with
wireless charging capabilities, glass and plastic back
covers increase at the expanse of aluminum back co- Others

vers which are not suitable for that feature. According Wireless
charging
to [26], the wireless charging feature comes with an im- Casing

GWP [kg CO2e]

pact 0.25 kg CO2e within the phone and lower charging Camera
efficiency which would reduce in higher use phase
Display
emissions. Additionally, the different housing materials
Battery
also leads to differences in the environmental impact as
glass and metal have a higher GWP and higher weight Flash

for the same size of phones. However, the overall im- RAM
pact on the smartphones GWP is small as shown in Fig- 2008 2019
ure 1.
3.5 Impact of an “average” smartphone Figure 9: GHG emissions of the “average” phone
2008 and 2019
Based on the before described feature development, the
“average” smartphone for 2008 and 2019 could be de- 4 Summary and conclusion
fined as shown in Table 1: display size, battery capac- The analysis showed that “the smartphone” is currently
ity, storage and memory capacity increased, housing connected to a very specific look and feature spectrum
material changed from plastic to glass. with only little variation. Functional performance has
Features 2008 2019 significantly increased with technology evolution on
several levels, which was often connected with effi-
RAM [GB] 0.128 4 ciency gains in production. Where environmental data
Flash [GB] 4 70 is available not as an on-off data point, but as timeline,
Battery capacity 700 3,700 we showed that the environmental impact decreased
[mAh] per functional parameter (e.g. per display area or per
Battery type Lithium-Ion Lithium-Poly- GB storage) and also technology changes can be con-
mer nected to more efficient production (as shown for the
Display size 3 6.2 change of battery technology). However, these effi-
ciency gains cannot outweigh the rapid functional in-
Housing material plastic glass
crease, leading overall not to a decrease of environ-
Cameras 1 rear 1 front, 3 rear mental impact.
Wireless charging no yes
Currently, with foldable displays coming to the market,
Table 1: Features of the “average” smartphone it remains to be seen how that will impact the relevant
2008 and 2019 form factors of the smartphone market, the environ-
For an estimation of the environmental impact this mental impact of display manufacturing as well as the
functional development is connected with evolving en- lifetime of the products.
vironmental data as shown in section 3.1 to 3.3. For 5 Literature
other aspects similar environmental data is used, ne-
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1350
[3] Apple: Product Environmental Report, several re-
ports on individual iPhones, [Online], available:
https://www.apple.com/environment/
[4] AUO: Corporate Social Responsibility Report,
reports 2010 – 2019, [Online], available:
https://csr.auo.com/en/download/c1
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