[arthurcolle]

I find it highly unlikely that human labor is necessarily required to remove the backplate of an iPhone, remove flash storage and recycle the rest. But let me know if I'm wrong - the entire example is extremely contrived in any case.

[throwanem]

It'd be a hell of an expensive robot, and probably not all that reliable - more complex than "Liam", what with the masked hot-air rework requirement, and even that was just an ad that never actually got built. And that assumes you only need the one kind of robot, which is a bit optimistic given that sizes, shapes, internal configurations, and assembly methods tend to differ among iPhone versions. You might need several expensive robots. (And have you seen what it takes to tear down an iPhone? It is not a simple process! Special tools are required, and I don't just mean for getting the unicorn screws out.)

In any case, you'll pay much more for a refurb that's helping cover cost of the considerable labor involved in that kind of rework, whether it's expensively done by humans or done by expensive robots. With that kind of production cost, and especially with a huge upfront automation investment to amortize, it's going to be a struggle to keep the prices of refurbs from exceeding those of new product, and at that point it's no longer economical. The whole point of buying refurb is to get the same product for less money, or more product for the same money, as you'd get buying new. If you can't sell refurb at that kind of price point without taking a loss, you may as well not bother.