Obviously you'd have to replace the OS with an up-to-date one to use the phone as a cluster node.

But... if Google can do so if handed a random pile of old phones, then why would a consumer not be given the same option for their phones? If it works only for phones sold by Google once, same question holds. And applies to other vendors.

As you said: the "phone becomes useless just because OEM drops support" cycle needs to be broken. Well.. that and ability for end-users to replace batteries, screen, fix connectors etc.

Also it's unclear how data would move in & out of these old-phone-compute-nodes. USB-C? Article is a bit light on details there.

The article seems to be fairly clear about this: it is Google focusing on Google phones (so unlocking the bootloader should not be an issue) and they did mention that the kernel would have to be replaced (albeit for other reasons).

I would think the main factor against such clusters is cost. Even if the four year old phones are free, they have to be dismantled, tested, and supporting hardware/software has to be developed. All of that would have to be done on an ongoing basis. While Google may have the volume to be able to build uniform clusters with a given generation of hardware, generations are measured in months. Using four year old hardware also trims four years off the expected life expectancy of the components, and that is comparing like to like (not consumer grade hardware to server grade hardware). I've got to wonder how all of that extra work affects the carbon-footprint they are trying to reduce. It would probably be more effective to increase the use life of the phone as a phone.

All of that is fine for a research project or, on smaller scales, hobby projects. It would be extraordinarily difficult to make it commercially viable.

>This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems preventing users from maintaining their phone with security updates, and very limited support length from OEM's leads to VERY insecure devices after they drop out of support.

Approximately nobody is throwing away phones because the OEM stopped providing security patches. They're doing it for more practical reasons, like the phone getting slow, the battery wearing out, or wanting a better camera.

Moreover being able to replace firmware blobs/kernels/whatever doesn't mean such updates will actually materialize. For lineageos, many phones are stuck on 22.2 (android 15) because android 16 requires linux 5.4 and above, which means phones with earlier kernels are out of luck. Prior to this, there were phones from as early as 2016 (eg. the original Pixel) that could be upgraded to the latest Android. This isn't a "firmware blobs" or "locked down systems" problem. The kernel sources are available, and the kernel can be replaced, but nobody is going to bother upgrading the kernel for a 10 year old phone.

https://lineageos.org/Changelog-30/#legacy-devices

>You should not be connecting these old devices to an internet accessible network.

This depends on the use case. If you're using this as some sort of NAS or compute cluster running trusted workloads, you should be fine as long as there isn't some sort of RCE in the kernel.

Exactly this. Few phones allow bootloader unlock let alone open drivers that can be brought forward to a mainline kernel.

The article seems to refer to a 2023 Pixel Fold as one of their candidates - I guess a good opportunity if those fragile screens get damaged but not a cheap used device otherwise.

Even normal slab pixel devices have limited support for true android replacements like PostmarketOS let alone cheaper 3rd party devices usually running Mediatek/Exnos SOC that have zero open docs or support.

I'm using a OnePlus 7, as my daily driver. Because it was bootloader unlockable, and LineageOS exists, I still can use it. And it performs respectfully, and serves my purpose. Except, my banking software, and digital payment applications, all works

So, OEM just have to let us unlock the bootloader, just let us unlock it after they stop selling it, and it would reduce so much waste.

They are just so greedy

Google has so much influence over the hardware manufacturers. They should do more.

Does anyone in the industry know why so much firmware is proprietary?

> This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems

Couldn't Google somehow fix this? Since they control the substrate (Android) and they would be doing it for their convenience

Which consumer ever cares about "security" updates on phones?

> proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems

caused by the very same Google...

Isn't the story that some gaming consoles were sold at or under cost price and the markup was on the game sales? I don't know if it's fair to require that needs to be unlocked

Yet I 100% agree on a generic computing device and they're not really that different in the end. Maybe that it needs to be unlockable after it has been on the market for 4 years or so (all units, no matter when they were sold, no matter if support ended)

Or maybe undercutting the competition like this to make it back later on games is not a profit model we should want? And that everything should just be unlockable insofar as it has X amount of memory, CPU power, capable of doing IP traffic... something like that. (Seems silly to require a firmware unlock on your toaster)

Make it a seven year rule: hardware vendors must release necessary source code for firmware, blobs, etc.

I think there should be a 20 year rule for all released commercial software to release the source code outside of national security concerns.

Really interesting project. Do you have a link to a writeup/paper?

Not fiction but you might find this interesting: https://collapseos.org/why.html

Pump 6 and Other Stories has a few in that vein, sort of. Eg there are no petrol engines, instead compression springs, treadle operated computers, etc. There are some pretty grim stories in there, some may find them distasteful.

https://windupstories.com/books/pump-six-and-other-stories/

Also I guess Silo / WOOL by Hugh Howey is perhaps closer to what you wrote literally but probably not quite the vibe maybe.

I suspect it might be too ‘soft’ for a lot folks around here (sadly), but “Monk and Robot” is charming.

In general, you should look into the ‘solarpunk’ genre, especially post-apocalyptic solarpunk.

Not exactly what you're describing, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After kinda fits the vibe. Warning: it's really depressing, but a good read if you're in the right head space for it.

Besides published material, Cuba comes close. Kept frozen in time by eternal restrictive sanctions.

Book of Eli has vibes along those lines

Are we still at the fantasy stage?

That’s cool, do you have a write up about it?

This is such a cool project. I run a Tor Snowflake node, so the of concept of enthusiasts contributing to a decentralised network interests me.

However it does worry me that I've never heard of acurast... I consider myself pretty well read on the subject of decentralised projects, has it just not taken off?

>given that they made their phone platform specifically to not let you install your own operating system.

???

You can still install alternate OSes (eg. grapheneos) on their latest phones.

>And now, they're making it illegal to install custom apps too: https://keepandroidopen.org/

Besides the questionable use of "illegal" (what are they going to do, send you to jail?), that's not even accurate. You can still install apps after a 24 hour wait, or no wait at all if you use adb.

You say that as if Google is a single hive mind with every team and vertical perfectly aligned like the Borg.

The article is pretty clear in the opening lines that this is a Google Research grant to the University of California, not even primarily done by Google employees.

There is nothing about Android as a platform that forbids installation of your own OS. That's a phone oem choice and the fact Pixel phones can be unlocked proves as much. In fact this is the reason this project is even possible.

I don't have time for an elaborate sourced answer but in short, yes, the efficiency gains of modern devices is almost negligible compared to the CO2e of producing a new device at current device lifespans. I can't remember if you would have to use a device for 15 or 25 years before upgrading is better than continuing to use it, but I thought it was 25

Edit: yes, 25. Found my go-to reference for this quickly after all

> The report about the cost of planned obsolescence by the European Environmental Bureau [7] makes the scale of the problem very clear. For laptops and similar computers, manufacturing, distribution and disposal account for 52% of their Global Warming Potential (i.e. the amount of CO₂-equivalent emissions caused). For mobile phones, this is 72%. The report calculates that the lifetime of these devices should be at least 25 years to limit their Global Warming Potential. —https://wimvanderbauwhede.codeberg.page/articles/frugal-comp...

> Are these phone processors really as compute-pet-watt efficient as a regular data center processor?

I have no numbers to back up my argument, but smart phones are very power efficient by their nature are they not? I can play a 3d game, with impressive graphics, on a tiny device powered by a battery... With very little heat generated.

If your goal is to run LLM inference on a gpu in a power efficient manner, I bet a smart phone is a good place to start.

Producing phones emits a lot of CO2 (or equivalents). It takes more energy to produce, than the amount of energy a phone uses in its typical life.

But yeah, these are great questions which are not obvious at all and should be answered when proposing such a system.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516656

This earlier comment referenced it :)

Yeah, I think the intention matters here. There might even be a whole business to be created from this.

They cover this in the article, they’re just running motherboards removed from the other components specifically because no one wants exploding phone batteries in their data centre.

Aside from bootloaders, this is the only thing stopping me from using old devices for cool stuff.

Only the very cheapest phones still have eMMC. I bought a Pixel phone second hand last year and it shows the wear level of the storage somewhere in the settings. I forgot the number but it was so low, extrapolation got me to something crazy like maybe 20 or 50 years of expected use at that rate

That consumer rate isn't datacentre use, but not every task is write-to-persistent-storage intensive. You can also replace the sdcard and write to that instead if this is a worry (that's what I've been doing on my phones since I use them quite intensively; maybe that's overkill nowadays idk)

A few years? I have a bunch of phones from 2009 around that are still fully working and I have never had eMMC fail on any of them, and they use it for swap among other things. In my experience screens, batteries and USB ports fail much more often.

I've been using GNU/Linux as my phone OS for the last 18 years on several devices, enjoying "normal payloads of tools & scripts". Aside of a short time around 2017-2019 I never carried and relied on any other phone. It's not some wishful fantasy, it already exists and works.

Carbon is fungible right up until you make something out of it, at which point it’s really not without a significant effort. We can’t just take a mobile phone and decompose it back to its component atoms for reuse as something else, recycling is to some degree a myth, and to a greater degree incredibly energy demanding in itself to get things broken down to a level they can be turned into something new.

There are recycling and trade-in programs that could collect compatible phones and pass them on in bulk.

I have Nexus 5, Xiaomi A1, Redmi Note 7, Samsung S7, and a Kindle Fire HDX, all running either LineageOS (Kindle) or PostmarketOS (the rest). PmOS ones run some not very demanding containers (scrapers) on k3s.

They're not useful as phones, because the battery, screen, radio, etc. are damaged; but they may still have a working CPU inside, which would be sufficient for this project.

I have a drawer full of old phones with broken screens, obsolete chipsets, etc. I usually buy phones rather than get them through a contact plan with trade-ins though.

I did before the switch to volte.

I recycled them wheb carriers decided to block a bunch of phones.

I have a large amount, some are occasionally useful when debugging.

The article mentions the Pixel Fold. I suspect Google possesses every Pixel Fold ever made.