Apple Touts Latest Smartphone Disassembly Robot in Promotion Tied to Earth Day

In an announcement tied to Earth Day, Apple promoted its trade-in program called GiveBack, offering Apple store gift cards in return for used devices, including non-Apple brands. For every device received at Apple stores and at Apple.com via the Apple GiveBack program through April 30, the company will make a donation to Conservation International, it said. Apple touted its latest disassembly robot, dubbed Daisy, calling it “the most efficient way to reclaim more of the valuable materials stored in iPhone.” Daisy, capable of disassembling nine versions of iPhone and sorting components for recycling, is the product of “years of R&D” and incorporates parts based on Apple's first disassembly robot launched in 2016, it said. The robot can take apart up to 200 iPhone devices per hour, removing and sorting components, “so that Apple can recover materials that traditional recyclers can’t -- and at a higher quality,” said the company. Trade-in values, meanwhile, top out at $315 for phones, $1,000 for computers, $285 for tablets and $175 for smartwatches. A calculator on the Apple website gave us a trade-in value of $245 for our iPhone 7 based on questions about capacity and condition. The iPhone 8 and X weren’t prepopulated in the calculator. The latest generation Samsung device in the calculator was the 128 GB S6 edge plus, with a trade-in value of $150 in an Apple gift card and the suggestion: “Why not put it toward a new iPhone?” Products that aren’t eligible for credit can be recycled, said Apple. Other products -- including Apple TV, hard drives, cables, headphones, AirPorts, iPods, HomePods, displays, printers and scanners, keyboards and other accessories -- are eligible for recycling through a third-party recycler, it said, and consumers provide addresses to receive a prepaid shipping label.