In 2017, Samsung announced Galaxy Upcycling at its Developer Conference, promising to unlock bootloaders on old Galaxy phones so users could transform them into smart home devices, Linux computers, or retro gaming consoles. The program partnered with iFixit and even had a GitHub page, generating genuine excitement in the open-source community.

Four years of silence followed. When Samsung finally shipped something in 2021, it was Galaxy Upcycling at Home—a stripped-down version that could only detect sounds and measure brightness. No bootloader unlocking, no custom operating systems, no open-source marketplace. The program required Galaxy S9 or newer devices, limiting it to phones still worth over $100 on the secondhand market, essentially turning valuable hardware into basic $30 sensors.

Despite the massive gap between promise and delivery, Samsung won a sustainability award for the program. The company's own recycling numbers tell a different story: just 38,000 phones collected from 2 billion sold—a 0.0019% recovery rate. After partnering with iFixit on a self-repair program in 2022, Samsung priced parts so high and imposed such restrictive repair limits that iFixit ended the partnership in 2024, calling the program non-viable.