Smartphone technology development has led to a phenomenal increase in its use worldwide, triggering the development of efficient and safe lithium batteries to support advanced smartphones. Lithium ion batteries have many advantages such as high energy density, long lifetime, small size, low weight, no memory effect, and a slow loss of energy. Since new lithium batteries have been continually developed along with new smartphones, the batteries have high potentials to incur environmental impacts associated with rare, precious, and toxic metals. Thus, this study evaluates and compares metal-derived environmental impact potentials from smartphone lithium batteries taking into account battery model replacements, in order to figure out the environmental effect of battery technology development. The concentrations of metals in the batteries were analyzed to determine whether the batteries would be classified as hazardous waste. Life cycle impact assessment methods are used to evaluate resource depletion, human health toxicity, and eco-toxicity potentials from metals. The results showed that the technological development of the batteries did not contribute to reducing hazardous waste potentials. However, it significantly decreased resource depletion and toxicity potentials because the masses of metals were overall reduced over the battery model replacements. This study can be used to provide environmental information for manufacturers to produce low-impact lithium batteries and for e-waste policy makers to effectively manage and recover hazardous and toxic metals in waste batteries.

智能手机技术的发展已导致其在世界范围内的使用量显着增加，从而触发了支持高级智能手机的高效，安全锂电池的开发。锂离子电池具有许多优点，例如，能量密度高，寿命长，尺寸小，重量轻，没有记忆效应以及能量损失缓慢。由于新的锂电池与新的智能手机一起不断开发，这些电池具有产生与稀有，贵重和有毒金属相关的环境影响的巨大潜力。因此，本研究评估并比较了考虑更换电池模型的智能手机锂电池产生的金属对环境的潜在影响，以便确定电池技术发展的环境影响。分析了电池中金属的浓度，以确定电池是否将被归类为危险废物。生命周期影响评估方法用于评估金属的资源消耗，人类健康毒性和潜在的生态毒性。结果表明，电池的技术发展并没有减少潜在的危险废物。但是，由于在更换电池模型后金属的总量总体上减少了，因此它大大减少了资源消耗和潜在的毒性。该研究可为制造商生产低冲击锂电池提供环境信息，并为电子废物政策制定者提供有效信息，以有效管理和回收废电池中的有害和有毒金属。