The Cost of Your Smartphone

Pick up your smartphone and turn it over in your hand. It feels like a single, sleek object—glass, metal, maybe a bit of plastic. But chemically and economically, it’s closer to a small planet: a dense cluster of 60-plus elements, mined, refined, and assembled through a web of countries that stretches from Congolese cobalt pits to Chilean copper mines, Chinese refineries, Indonesian tin dredges, and Rwandan tantalum hills.

This article takes your phone apart—not with a screwdriver, but with a world map. We’ll follow the minerals that make a modern smartphone possible, and the countries that effectively “own” pieces of every device on Earth.

1. How many elements are hiding in your phone?

Chemically, smartphones are absurdly complex.

Of the 83 stable, non-radioactive elements on the periodic table, at least 70 can be found in smartphones—about 84% of all stable elements. Some analyses suggest that most smartphones contain roughly 80% of the stable elements in the periodic table in trace amounts or in specialized components.

A typical phone is built from:

• Structural materials: aluminum or steel frames, magnesium alloys, and hardened glass (silica + alumina).

• Conductors: copper wiring, gold and silver contacts, solders containing tin and sometimes silver.

• Semiconductors: ultra-pure silicon doped with elements like phosphorus, boron, and arsenic.

• Battery materials: lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and graphite.

• Magnets and motors: neodymium, dysprosium, and other rare earths; tungsten for vibration motors.

• Optics and display: indium tin oxide (ITO) for touchscreens; rare earths and other dopants to tune colors.

• Tiny but critical extras: tantalum in capacitors, palladium and platinum in contacts, gallium in radio chips, and more.

In mineral terms, that translates into a shopping list of ores:

• Lithium brines and hard-rock spodumene

• Cobalt and copper ores

• Tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold (the “3TG” conflict minerals)

• Bauxite (for aluminum)

• Graphite

• Rare earth ores (like bastnäsite and monazite)

• Silica sand and feldspar for glass and ceramics

No single country produces all of these in meaningful quantities. The “cost” of your smartphone is that it ties you—economically and ethically—to a patchwork of highly concentrated mineral supply chains.

Let’s map them by component.

2. The battery: lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and graphite

If your phone has a beating heart, it’s the lithium-ion battery. It’s also where the most geopolitically sensitive minerals come together.

2.1 Lithium: a handful of countries, one refining giant

Lithium for batteries is mostly mined in just a few countries:

• Australia leads current lithium production, supplying about 48–51% of global mine output in recent years.

• Chile is typically second, with roughly a quarter of global production and the world’s largest known lithium reserves.

• China has rapidly grown as a producer (around 15–20%), while Argentina, Brazil, Zimbabwe, and Canada make up much of the rest.

All of that, however, is only half the story. Lithium’s chokepoint is processing:

• Across key battery minerals, the top three refining countries supplied ~86% of output in 2024.

• Around 70% of lithium refining capacity sits in China, giving it outsized leverage over what ultimately ends up in battery-grade chemicals.

So even if your phone’s lithium was mined in Australia or Chile, the odds are high that it became battery-ready in a Chinese refinery before being shipped to a cell factory in China, South Korea, or elsewhere in Asia.

2.2 Cobalt: the Congolese core of your battery

Cobalt is used in many lithium-ion cathode chemistries to boost energy density and stability. It’s where your phone’s story becomes most entangled with governance, conflict, and human rights.

• Almost three-quarters of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 

• The DRC holds around 72% of global cobalt reserves and supplies more than 74% of production.

This cobalt often comes as a by-product of massive copper mines in Katanga. A portion is also produced by artisanal and small-scale miners, who can number in the hundreds of thousands and work in hazardous conditions with minimal protection or formal oversight. Recent efforts by the DRC’s state cobalt company and international partners aim to create “traceable” artisanal cobalt streams that meet environmental, social, and governance standards, including the first 1,000 tons of traceable artisanal cobalt announced in Kolwezi in 2025.

Yet the DRC refines almost none of this cobalt. The raw cobalt intermediates are shipped largely to China, which has become the dominant refiner:

• Most of the world’s refined cobalt is produced in China, not in the DRC.

• Chinese companies control over two-thirds of global cobalt processing and a similar share of lithium processing capacity.

So when you charge your phone, you’re plugging into a global value chain that starts in Congolese mines and runs through Chinese refineries, whatever brand logo is on the back.

2.3 Graphite and nickel: China’s quiet dominance

If lithium and cobalt get the headlines, graphite is the quiet workhorse of the battery anode.

• China accounts for about 77% of natural graphite mine production and dominates exports.

• It processes over 90% of the world’s graphite, and controls more than 95% of the supply of battery-grade graphite—the specific form used in anodes.

Other countries like Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar, and Canada are trying to grow their graphite industries, but for now, China is the central hub.

Nickel and manganese, also used in many cathodes, are produced in large volumes in countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia, Canada, South Africa, and Australia. But for smartphones, the biggest leverage points are still lithium, cobalt, and graphite—whose mining and refining are heavily concentrated in a small set of countries.

3. The nervous system: chips, wiring, and precious metals

Every tap and swipe depends on microscopic electrical pathways that only work because metals conduct electrons with extraordinary reliability.

3.1 Silicon chips: sand plus extreme precision

The core processors and memory chips in your phone are made from ultra-pure silicon wafers, starting from ordinary silica sand. Silicon is one of the most abundant elements in Earth’s crust, but semiconductor-grade production is dominated by a few high-tech countries rather than raw miners:

• Major wafer and chip producers include Taiwan, South Korea, the U.S., Japan, and increasingly China.

• The raw silica can come from many places—Australia, the U.S., China, or elsewhere—because purity is engineered during refining, not guaranteed by the mine.

So unlike cobalt or lithium, silicon’s supply risk is more about technological capability and fab capacity than mineral scarcity.

3.2 Copper: South America’s fingerprints on every circuit

Copper is the bloodstream of your phone’s circuitry—used in printed circuit boards (PCBs), power distribution, and connectors.

• Chile is the world’s largest copper producer, responsible for about 5 million tonnes in 2023—around 23% of the global total.

• Peru is typically second or third, with around 2.5–2.6 million tonnes per year.

• China, the DRC, and the U.S. also contribute significant mine output.

The copper in your phone may have started its life in an open-pit mine in the Atacama Desert in Chile or the Andean highlands of Peru, before being smelted, refined, drawn into wire, and etched into circuitry in East Asian electronics hubs.

3.3 Gold, silver, and palladium: micrograms of high value

Although each phone only contains milligrams of gold, scaled up across billions of devices, smartphones form a serious slice of global demand for precious metals in electronics.

• Global gold mine production is about 3,000 tonnes per year. The top producers—China, Australia, and Russia—account for roughly one-third of global output, with China alone responsible for nearly 12%.

Silver and palladium are also used in solders and contacts. Their mining is more geographically diverse, often as by-products of lead-zinc and PGM (platinum group metals) operations in countries like Mexico, Peru, Russia, and South Africa.

4. The screen and shell: glass, aluminum, and obscure metals

4.1 Gorilla glass: silica, alumina, and rare earth “spice”

Your phone’s main surface is chemically toughened glass: essentially high-purity silica (SiO₂) plus additives like alumina and alkali metals, treated to resist scratches and shattering.

The starting materials—silica sand and feldspar—are mined worldwide (from the U.S. and Europe to Australia, China, and beyond), so no single country dominates. But the glass chemistry uses trace elements to tune properties:

• Aluminum (from bauxite) for strength

• Small amounts of rare earths (like cerium or lanthanum) and transition metals to adjust optical properties and color

The mining side for these additives pulls in bauxite and rare earth supply chains.

4.2 Aluminum: Guinea, Australia, and China in your phone’s frame

If your smartphone has a metal chassis, there’s a good chance it’s aluminum alloy. That metal starts from bauxite ore, which is refined into alumina and then smelted into aluminum.

• Guinea and Australia are now the two largest bauxite producers. Guinea produced around 130 million tonnes in 2024, with Australia close behind at around 100 million tonnes.

• China is both a major bauxite importer (especially from Guinea) and by far the largest aluminum producer, smelting about 41 million tonnes—more than half the world’s primary aluminum output.

So even your phone’s smooth metal frame ties back to West African mines and Chinese smelters.

5. Tiny components, outsized impact: 3TG and rare earths

Many of the phone’s most critical materials are used in tiny quantities: micrometers of solder, milligrams in capacitors, slivers in vibration motors. But these “minor” elements—tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold and the rare earths—create some of the biggest social and geopolitical problems.

5.1 Tin: solder from Southeast Asia and beyond

Tin is a key ingredient in solder, which literally holds your phone’s circuitry together.

• Global refined tin production is a few hundred thousand tonnes per year. Sources are concentrated in China, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia, and Peru.

• China is the top producer; Myanmar has in recent years become the second-largest, though output has been disrupted by mine closures and conflict around the Man Maw mine.

Tin is sometimes classified as a “conflict mineral” because production in Myanmar and parts of the DRC is linked to armed groups and governance challenges.

5.2 Tantalum: coltan from the Great Lakes region

Tantalum is crucial for high-capacitance, tiny capacitors that smooth power in your phone’s circuits. It mostly comes from a mineral called coltan (columbite-tantalite).

• The DRC and Rwanda together account for a large share of global tantalum output, alongside Brazil, Nigeria, and China.

• Rwanda is officially reported as the world’s second-largest tantalum producer, with around 350–520 tonnes in 2023—though USGS later revised that figure lower and experts note that a significant portion of “Rwandan” exports are actually smuggled Congolese ore.

UN reports have repeatedly highlighted how armed groups in eastern DRC profit by taxing or directly controlling coltan mines. As of 2024–25, rebels in the Rubaya region were estimated to be generating around US$300,000 per month from taxing tantalum-rich mining areas, which supply a significant share of global tantalum used in electronics.

That means the tantalum in your phone may be only a fraction of a gram—but its value chain passes through some of the most conflict-affected terrain on Earth.

5.3 Tungsten: vibrations powered by China

Tungsten (also known as wolfram) gives mass and resilience to vibration motors and is used in some high-strength alloys and electrodes.

• China accounts for more than 80% of global tungsten production, with other contributors including Vietnam, Russia, Bolivia, and Austria.

Because of its strategic role in defense and technology, tungsten has been flagged by several governments as a critical mineral, and its China-centric supply has raised security concerns.

5.4 Gold: the conflict mineral that everyone knows

Gold in phones is mostly used for corrosion-resistant contacts in SIM trays, connectors, and printed circuits. Gold is also part of the EU and U.S. “3TG” conflict mineral regulations, due to its role in financing armed groups in regions like the DRC.

While major production comes from China, Russia, Australia, Canada, Ghana, and others, artisanal operations in Africa and Latin America can also be linked to environmental damage and labor abuses, including mercury pollution and unsafe, informal work.

5.5 Rare earths: China’s near-monopoly on magnets

Your phone’s speakers and vibration motors rely on neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets, sometimes doped with elements like dysprosium and terbium to withstand heat. These and other rare earths also appear in camera image stabilizers, small haptic devices, and some display phosphors.

• China produces around 68–70% of global rare earth mine output, and an even larger share of processing—close to 90% for heavy rare earths and magnet-grade materials.

When China tightened export controls on certain rare earth magnets in 2025, automakers and electronics producers worldwide felt immediate pressure, underscoring how concentrated this part of your phone’s supply chain has become.

6. Who really “owns” your phone? Mining vs. refining vs. manufacturing

When you look at the back of your phone, you see a consumer brand—Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Google, etc. But if you mapped influence by mineral stage, the “ownership” looks very different.

6.1 Mining: a patchwork of resource states

For the raw mining of smartphone-relevant minerals, the dominant countries are:

• DRC – Cobalt, copper, tantalum (coltan), some tin and gold

• Australia, Chile, Argentina, China – Lithium and other battery minerals

• China, Myanmar, Indonesia, Peru – Tin

• Guinea, Australia, Brazil, China – Bauxite for aluminum

• Chile, Peru, China, DRC, U.S. – Copper

• China, Russia, Australia, Ghana, Canada, U.S. – Gold

• China and a few others – Tungsten and rare earths

This map is geographically broad: Africa, South America, Asia, and Oceania all loom large. Many of these are developing countries with weak regulatory capacity, making issues like environmental damage, labor exploitation, and conflict financing more likely.

6.2 Processing: China’s strategic chokehold

At the processing stage—turning ores into battery-grade or electronics-grade materials—a very different picture emerges:

• China processes over 90% of the world’s graphite and controls more than two-thirds of global cobalt and lithium refining capacity.

• It produces about 70% of rare earths and dominates processing even more strongly, especially for heavy rare earths used in magnets.

• China is the largest aluminum producer and a significant copper, tin, and gold producer as well.

In other words, even when mining happens elsewhere (for example, lithium from Australia or cobalt from the DRC), the supply often converges on Chinese smelters and refineries before flowing into global manufacturing.

When agencies like the U.S. Energy Information Administration or the EU Commission talk about “concentration risk” in battery and tech mineral supply chains, this midstream dominance is what they mean.

6.3 Manufacturing and assembly: from Shenzhen to Chennai

The final stages—component manufacturing and phone assembly—are heavily concentrated in East and Southeast Asia:

• High-end chip fabrication is dominated by Taiwan (TSMC), South Korea (Samsung), and the U.S. (Intel, etc.), with China and others playing growing roles.

• Display panels, camera modules, and many sub-assemblies are made in China, South Korea, Japan, and increasingly Vietnam and India.

• Final assembly lines for most global smartphone brands still cluster in China, but significant capacity now exists in Vietnam, India, and other countries as companies seek to diversify.

By the time you buy it, your phone might say “Designed in California” or “Made in India,” but hidden labels would also read “Cobalt from DRC, lithium from Chile/Australia, copper from Chile/Peru, bauxite from Guinea, rare earths from China, tin from Myanmar/Indonesia, tantalum from DRC/Rwanda…”

7. The real “cost”: environment, labor, and geopolitics

The dollar price you pay for a smartphone—say US$600–1,200—captures only a fraction of its true cost.

7.1 Environmental damage: tailings, water, and carbon

Mining and refining the metals in your phone have significant environmental footprints:

• Open-pit copper and bauxite mines can transform landscapes, generate massive amounts of waste rock and tailings, and alter water systems in Chile, Peru, Guinea, Australia, and elsewhere.

• Lithium brine extraction in South America’s “Lithium Triangle” (Chile, Bolivia, Argentina) has raised concerns about water use and impacts on fragile salt flat ecosystems.

• Rare earth and graphite processing in China has historically been linked to pollution from acid leaching, radioactive waste (in some REE deposits), and air and water contamination.

• Gold and tin mining can involve mercury or cyanide use, and alluvial mining in river systems can scar ecosystems and harm fisheries.

Much of this environmental damage occurs far from end consumers, in communities that may see little of the wealth generated by the minerals extracted.

7.2 Labor and human rights: the human cost of critical minerals

Problems in critical mineral supply chains include:

• Artisanal cobalt mining in the DRC: estimated to employ up to 1.5–2 million people directly and indirectly, often without formal safety standards, with repeated allegations of child labor and unsafe conditions.

• Conflict financing in the DRC and Great Lakes region: armed groups and abusive security forces taxing or controlling mines for coltan, tin, tungsten, and gold, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in some areas.

• Smuggling and opaque supply chains: minerals from conflict zones in eastern DRC being laundered through neighboring countries (e.g., coltan labeled as Rwandan), complicating due diligence.

• Risks of forced labor in some processing regions, including concerns about Xinjiang-linked polysilicon and other materials that have triggered trade restrictions in the U.S. and regulatory debates in Europe.

To tackle these issues, regulators have introduced rules such as:

• U.S. Dodd-Frank Section 1502 (on conflict minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold) and the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation, requiring companies to report and perform due diligence on 3TG supply chains.

• The EU Battery Regulation (2023/1542), which adds due diligence obligations for cobalt, lithium, nickel, and natural graphite used in batteries, though key due diligence rules have been postponed to 2027.

• The broader Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), requiring large companies active in the EU to identify and address human rights and environmental risks across their global value chains.

For smartphone brands and their suppliers, this means increasingly complex audits, traceability systems, and reporting frameworks.

7.3 Geopolitics and resource security: the phone as a strategic object

Because smartphones use many of the same minerals as electric vehicles, grid batteries, and defense systems, they are entangled in larger strategic struggles over critical resources.

Recent developments include:

• The DRC extending cobalt export restrictions, contributing to price spikes and highlighting how quickly policy decisions in Kinshasa can ripple through global battery markets.

• China tightening control over rare earths and graphite, including new export regulations and licensing systems for rare earth magnets and battery-grade graphite.

• The EU and U.S. pouring billions into critical mineral projects, aiming to mine, process, and recycle more raw materials domestically to “de-risk” from Chinese supply.

In this environment, your smartphone isn’t just consumer electronics; it’s a tiny endpoint of a strategic system that governments increasingly treat as a matter of national security.

8. Can we make phones without new mines?

Given the environmental and social costs of mining, one obvious question is: could we satisfy smartphone mineral demand from recycling instead?

8.1 Urban mining: phones as ore deposits

Old devices—phones, laptops, servers—are rich in metals:

• Some estimates suggest that “urban ore” (e-waste) can contain dozens of times higher concentrations of certain metals than natural ores, especially for gold, copper, and palladium. (For example, a tonne of scrap smartphones can contain far more gold than a tonne of typical gold ore.)

• However, many phones are never collected for recycling; they sit in drawers, are illegally dumped, or are shredded without proper metal recovery.

The EU is trying to change this with rules requiring higher collection, reuse, and recycling rates for batteries and electronic products. Under its new Battery Regulation, by 2031 industrial batteries will have to contain minimum shares of recycled lithium, nickel, and cobalt, and there are similar pushes for consumer electronics.

If scaled properly, recycling could supply a significant fraction of the metals needed for future devices, easing the pressure for new mines. But as of today, recycling capacity and collection systems are far from sufficient.

8.2 Design and material choices

Phone makers are also experimenting with:

• Cobalt-free or low-cobalt battery chemistries (like LFP—lithium iron phosphate) for some products, although these are currently more common in EVs and low-cost devices than high-end smartphones.

• Reduced use of rare earths in some components, either through alternative motor and speaker designs or better efficiency.

• Modular and repairable designs that extend device life, reducing the total volume of new phones produced and thus of mined material required.

Still, performance, thinness, battery life, and cost pressures often pull in the opposite direction: more complexity, more specialized materials, and faster product cycles.

9. What this means for you—and what could change

No individual buyer can single-handedly fix the cobalt trade or diversify rare earths production. But understanding the map behind your phone clarifies what’s at stake.

First, it shows that your device isn’t just a product of “tech companies”; it’s a product of resource states. The DRC, Chile, Guinea, Australia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Rwanda, and—crucially—China all hold levers over the physical stuff inside your smartphone.

Second, it highlights that the most powerful actors are often not the miners or the brands, but the midstream processors: the smelters, refineries, and chemical plants that sit between raw ore and finished component. Today, that midstream is concentrated in China for many critical minerals, with a growing push from the EU, U.S., and others to build alternative hubs.

Third, it makes clear that the cost of your smartphone includes:

• Environmental externalities: water use, pollution, landscape disruption

• Human costs: unsafe artisanal mining, child labor risks, conflict financing

• Geopolitical risk: trade wars, export controls, and resource nationalism that can raise prices or cause shortages

What can actually help?

• Policy and regulation that focuses not just on disclosure but on genuine traceability, remediation, and community benefit in producing regions.

• Recycling and circularity—better collection of old phones, higher recovery rates, and design for disassembly.

• Technology choices: chemistries and designs that reduce reliance on the scarcest, most problematic minerals, without just shifting harm elsewhere.

• Consumer behavior: keeping phones longer, repairing rather than replacing when possible, and choosing brands that publish credible, third-party-audited sourcing data.

None of these are silver bullets. But together, they can change the map so that the next generation of smartphones—still astonishingly complex bundles of elements—come with a smaller trail of damage and a more equitable distribution of benefits.

Until then, every time you unlock your phone, you’re holding a condensed atlas of global mining politics in the palm of your hand.