One man's broken iPhone is another man's art

Twice Used, a project launched by a smartphone repair specialist, wants to make modern household products out of our stories of "clumsiness and everlasting remorse."

We've all been there: One haphazard shuffle or slip of the fingers and time slows down as your smartphone sails toward the sidewalk, slamming down with the not-so-satisfying slap of glass on concrete. But rejoice, for the infamous feeling of shame upon shattering one's device may have a bright side. It turns out dismantled iPhones that are injured beyond repair make for interesting pieces of functioning furniture, jewelry, and kitchen accessories.
That's the idea behind Twice Used, the project of Chris Koerner, a phone and iOS screen repair specialist and owner of Alabama-based LCDcycle. On Friday, Koerner launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds in an effort to make the initiative a core part of his business, and to get out in the wild his iPhone ornaments -- from picture frames and coasters to pieces of jewelry and artistic renditions of clocks and coffee table countertops.

The idea started when Koerner discovered an interesting statistic from the early days of running his first phone repair shop while still in college. Out of every four iPhones that made their way to what would become his three-chain business, Phone Restore, one unit was typically unfit for rebirth.
"I noticed that only about 75 percent can be recycled -- the other 25 percent were just being stacked up in our warehouse," he said in an interview with CNET. That's because those unlucky devices with broken LCD portions of the screen weren't suitable for Phone Restore's process, which involves heating up the screen to remove and ultimately replace both the adhesive between the layers and the broken layers themselves.
"There are three parts to an iPhone screen: the LCD; the digitizer, which is the touch recognizer; and then there is the glass," Koerner explained. "As long as the LCD is working, it can be recycled. But you can't fix a broken LCD."