Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Guy shows how to make a toy robot out of a broken Android phone

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 9:13PM EST

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Even people who are talented at making repairs sometimes break things so bad that they’re impossible to fix. The man who runs the YouTube account ElectroBOOM recently had this happen when he blew out its integrated power-management circuit. After concluding that the phone was completely broken beyond all repair, he and his daughter tried to come up with some way to salvage the parts of the device that still worked. What they created was an adorable toy robot whose main body consists of the head of a toothbrush.

FROM EARLIER: HTC’s next iPhone ripoff is looking sleek in new leaked photo

The pair took the phone’s vibrator module, a coin cell battery, a switch and some wire, and then mounted them on top of the top of the toothbrush head. Flipping the switch would start the device vibrating, which in turn made the toothbrush head move around in circles. If anything, the mini contraption looks like a robotic house centipede of some kind:

Is this the most sophisticated robot in the world? Obviously not. All the same, I have to give them credit for their ingenuity in salvaging some parts from a broken device. And as the daughter explains to her father, the robot is at least “much better than the cellphone you fixed.”

Check out the whole video below.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.