I’ve been cleaning up my home office and found 2 pretty old smartphones in a box, around 10 years old I’d say. I don’t have any old chargers to check if they still work so I’m unsure what sort of data is on there, if any, or if they still charge up even.
What are the chances I can safely dispose of them at a recycling center, without risk of anyone trying to check into the phone? None of them can have the battery removed so I don’t want to just smash them with a hammer.
I would just destroy the touch screen.
Without it, you can’t unlock the phone or give a PC permission for data access or USB debugging.
The danger of someone disassembling the phone to mount its flash storage in another device is negligible.
Several millennia in to the future people find your phone remarkably preserved and it’s contents become the cornerstone of their understanding of this era. Especially your browser history. What will your name be known for throughout the human history?
Several millennia in the future it will be a holy relic from the fore-fore times, fought over by the Clans of the Saltplains, and ultimately displayed at the entrance to the Manmeat pits. The knowledge required to access the data on it is long lost.
Yeah, the data won’t last that long: Everything from CDs to SD cards is not permanent.
You can plug a USB keyboard and mouse in. I did this when my touch screen broke on my old phone.