Minerals/From this phone

What's in your phone

Pick a phone. We take it apart into the metals inside it, then follow each one back across the world to where it was likely dug up, and to the deposits we have in 3D.

Unscrewing the back

The phone in words

What is inside a phone

A phone is mostly glass, plastic and a few common metals, with a long tail of rarer ones in milligram amounts. When geologists at the University of Plymouth dissolved a whole phone in 2019, they found 33 g of iron, 13 g of silicon and 7 g of chromium, but also 900 mg of tungsten, 160 mg of neodymium, 90 mg of silver and 36 mg of gold.¹ They worked out that making one phone takes 10 to 15 kg of mined ore.

This table is our estimate for the iPhone 16 (170 g), with the countries that mine most of each metal today. Pick any phone above to see its own numbers and follow its metals to the mines.

Element	In the phone	Where it is	Likely supplied by
Aluminium Al	24 g	frame, glass, battery foil	recycled (71% by the maker's figures); new metal: Guinea 34.1%, Australia 22%, China 19.8%
Copper Cu	12 g	wiring, circuit boards, battery foil	Chile 23%, DR Congo 13.9%, Peru 11.7%
Cobalt Co	9.7 g	battery cathode	recycled (99% by the maker's figures); new metal: DR Congo 74.2%, Indonesia 14.2%, Russia 2.5%
Silicon Si	8.7 g	cover and back glass, chips	China 70%, Russia 8.4%, Brazil 3.4%
Graphite C	8.1 g	battery anode	China 77.8%, Madagascar 4.4%, Tanzania 4.2%
Iron Fe	7.1 g	steel brackets, screws and shields	Australia 37.5%, Brazil 16.2%, India 11.9%
Chromium Cr	1.8 g	stainless steel	South Africa 45.1%, Turkey 17.6%, Kazakhstan 13.7%
Nickel Ni	1.8 g	stainless steel, plating, connectors	Indonesia 66.7%, Philippines 6.9%, Russia 5.1%
Lithium Li	1.1 g	battery cathode	recycled (95% by the maker's figures); new metal: Australia 31.7%, China 21.4%, Chile 19.3%
Tungsten W	900 mg	vibration motor weight	recycled (97% by the maker's figures); new metal: China 78.8%, Vietnam 3.5%, Kazakhstan 2.8%
Tin Sn	340 mg	solder	China 24.5%, Indonesia 21%, Peru 11.4%
Silver Ag	330 mg	solder, contacts, conductive paste	Mexico 24.2%, Peru 13.8%, China 13.1%
Neodymium Nd	160 mg	speaker and motor magnets	recycled (97% by the maker's figures); new metal: China 69.2%, United States 13.1%, Australia 7.4%
Gold Au	33 mg	contacts and bond wires	China 11.5%, Russia 9.4%, Australia 8.5%
Praseodymium Pr	30 mg	speaker and motor magnets	recycled (97% by the maker's figures); new metal: China 69.2%, United States 13.1%, Australia 7.4%
Tantalum Ta	27 mg	capacitors	DR Congo 52%, Rwanda 16%, Nigeria 15.6%
Palladium Pd	12 mg	capacitors and plating	Russia 44.2%, South Africa 36.8%, Canada 8.4%
Indium In	2.7 mg	touch layer and display (ITO)	China 69.1%, South Korea 16.4%, Japan 5.9%
Gallium Ga	2.2 mg	radio and power chips, LEDs	China 100%

The phones

iPhone 16 Pro (2024, 199 g, 3,582 mAh, titanium frame, glass back): about 88 g of metal in our estimate, led by titanium 16 g, aluminium 14 g, copper 14 g, silicon 10 g. A titanium band over a recycled aluminium frame. Apple publishes recycled content for seven metals in it.
iPhone 16 (2024, 170 g, 3,561 mAh, aluminium frame, glass back): about 76 g of metal in our estimate, led by aluminium 24 g, copper 12 g, cobalt 9.7 g, silicon 8.7 g. Aluminium frame and glass back. Apple publishes recycled content for eight metals in it.
Galaxy S25 (2025, 162 g, 4,000 mAh, aluminium frame, glass back): about 81 g of metal in our estimate, led by aluminium 24 g, cobalt 14 g, copper 12 g, graphite 9.1 g. Samsung's first Galaxy with recycled cobalt. Samsung says at least a quarter of its battery is cobalt by weight.
Galaxy S24 Ultra (2024, 232 g, 5,000 mAh, titanium frame, glass back): about 110 g of metal in our estimate, led by titanium 19 g, aluminium 17 g, copper 17 g, cobalt 14 g. A titanium frame and the largest battery here. It came before Samsung's first phone with recycled cobalt (the S25).
Galaxy A16 5G (2024, 200 g, 5,000 mAh, plastic frame, plastic back): about 65 g of metal in our estimate, led by copper 15 g, cobalt 14 g, graphite 11 g, iron 8.4 g. A budget phone: plastic frame and back, glass only on the front, and a big battery.
Pixel 9 (2024, 198 g, 4,700 mAh, aluminium frame, glass back): about 93 g of metal in our estimate, led by aluminium 29 g, copper 14 g, cobalt 13 g, graphite 11 g. Aluminium frame and glass on both sides. Google says the aluminium in the housing is 100% recycled.
Fairphone 5 (2023, 212 g, 4,200 mAh, aluminium frame, plastic back): about 87 g of metal in our estimate, led by aluminium 29 g, copper 15 g, cobalt 11 g, graphite 9.6 g. Built to be repaired, with a battery you can swap. Fairphone names the sourcing behind its main metals.
iPhone 4 (2010, 137 g, 1,420 mAh, steel frame, glass back): about 70 g of metal in our estimate, led by iron 25 g, silicon 9.9 g, copper 9.8 g, chromium 6.4 g. The 2010 classic: glass on both sides and a stainless steel band, which makes it heavy in iron and chromium.

Where the metals likely come from

No phone maker says which mine supplied the metal in a given phone. Metals are traded, refined and blended many times on the way to a factory, so we show where the world's new supply of each one comes from (USGS world production, latest year), and the named mines in the leading countries. Where a maker publishes recycled content for a metal, as Apple, Samsung and Google do in their product reports, that share is drawn coming from recycling instead. Cobalt is the sharpest case: DR Congo mined 74.2% of the world's cobalt in 2025, yet Apple says the cobalt in an iPhone 16 battery is all recycled. Gallium and indium are counted at the refinery, where China leads, because that is where USGS counts them.

Each metal ends at the ground it comes from: the 3D drill models we hold of deposits of that metal, 5 of them open without signing in for gold. They are deposits of the same metals, not the mines that supplied any particular phone.

Questions

What metals are in a phone?

About 20 that matter: by weight mostly aluminium, iron, copper, silicon (in the glass) and the cobalt, lithium and graphite of the battery, then grams or milligrams of nickel, tin, chromium, tungsten, silver, gold, tantalum, palladium, neodymium, indium and gallium. In our estimate for the iPhone 16 they add up to about 76 g of its 170 g; the rest is glass, plastic and oxygen.

How much gold is in a phone?

Tens of milligrams. A phone analysed whole at the University of Plymouth held 36 mg of gold and 90 mg of silver; the Oeko-Institut estimates about 30 mg of gold per smartphone. That is roughly 100 times the gold concentration of a high-grade ore.

Where does the cobalt in a phone battery come from?

Most newly mined cobalt comes from DR Congo, 74.2% of world mine output in 2025, then Indonesia. Some makers now use recycled cobalt: Apple says the iPhone 16 battery uses 100% recycled cobalt, and Samsung says at least half the cobalt in the Galaxy S25 battery is recycled.

How we estimate it

Amounts are our estimates for a phone of that weight, battery and build, made from published measurements of whole phones and each phone's published specification. They are not a teardown of that model and are rounded to two figures. Silver, gold and palladium scale from the Oeko-Institut's figures per 110 g of smartphone without battery; copper, nickel, tantalum, indium and gallium from the German Environment Ministry's shares of an average phone; tungsten, neodymium and praseodymium from the phone Plymouth analysed; tin from a tablet's solder scaled by weight. Frame weight is our estimate: about 12% of the phone for aluminium, 20% for a stainless steel band, an 8% titanium band over a 5% aluminium substructure. Each glass side is about 8.5% of the phone (12% in 2010); aluminosilicate glass is about 30% silicon and 7% aluminium by weight. Internal stainless steel (brackets, screws, shields) is about 6% of the phone: 70% iron, 18% chromium, 8% nickel. Battery weight from its capacity at about 0.27 Wh per gram (0.2 in 2010). Cobalt is 19% of the battery (Oeko-Institut) or Samsung's own 25%; lithium is 0.118 g per g of cobalt (LiCoO2); graphite is about 16% of the battery, copper foil 8%, aluminium foil 4%.

Production shares: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, through our minerals atlas. Recycled content: each maker's own published figures, which we have not audited. We describe rocks, not stocks: no company or price view is implied.

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Pictures: Pangkalpinang. Mijn 3b. Een reeks koelies bezig met het transporteeren van grond, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Salar de Atacama, Chile, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).