A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones (research.google)
67 points by vikas-sharma 3 hours ago
zipy124 2 hours ago
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.
You should not be connecting these old devices to an internet accessible network.
Google notably does well here with 7 years of support, but others such as Sony are 4 years, and Xiaomi on non-flagship devices are similar, or Samsung on their lowest budget models...
RetroTechie an hour ago
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.
djfergus 38 minutes ago
The lack of open, replaceable software is the main blocker. The article talks about only keeping the motherboard anyway.
End users don’t need to replace screens, ports and batteries if there is reasonable cost parts and skilled labour available.
I’m happy with a trade off where a device has extreme miniaturisation and water resistance but needs someone with some surface mount soldering skill and the right tools to work on it.
Regardless, many (most?) phones hardware will last longer than the software running on it.
djfergus an hour ago
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.
azkalam 26 minutes ago
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?
binyu 40 minutes ago
> 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
redleader55 29 minutes ago
Unfortunately it is a bit more complicated than that. All these phones run firmware, bootloaders, libraries under license from SoC providers, who package components from other vendors under a license themselves. Opening up the bootloader can be done, but two things have to happen: either the phone is crippled of various functionalities or the manufacturer is in breach of license because all the binary blobs become open and can be reverse engineered. No one wants to go through all of this for a few hundred people who are interested in running their home assistant on an exotic device.
dvdkon 19 minutes ago
ajsnigrutin 18 minutes ago
Why would they?
They're actively working on closing the ecosystem even more (no more sideloading), DRM features, etc.
Maybe they'd do it for themselves, but they clearly don't want you, the customer, to do whatever you want with the device you bought and paid for.
noodlesUK an hour ago
I would love to see regulation that required making bootloaders unlockable to enable this sort of thing. People have been making clusters of consumer hardware for decades: I’m sure people remember the PS3 supercomputers of the mid 2000s.
I personally have lots of batch jobs like CFD simulations that could easily run on a fleet of phones with no real reliability issues, and I’d love to reuse old hardware and give it a second life. I’m already considering running old servers from e.g ETB but the cycles per watt on a phone are probably much better.
lucb1e 40 minutes ago
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)
IsTom 5 minutes ago
> were sold at or under cost price and the markup was on the game sales?
To be honest that has always had a smell to me akin to dumping.
LastTrain 34 minutes ago
> I don't know if it's fair to require that needs to be unlocked
Sure it’s fair, and manufacturers could price accordingly. Legally enforceable is another story.
planb 15 minutes ago
Sometimes I have weird fantasies about a post apocalyptic world where factories burned down and people have to live with the tech that’s available. No network, just off site solar power or generators, only local devices. I think it’s interesting to think about how far we could get with this.
Does anyone have recommendations for novels, movies or video games with that topic?
tetris11 13 minutes ago
Book of Eli has vibes along those lines
denysvitali 20 minutes ago
Sounds like a marketing focus and less technical perspective of: https://blog.denv.it/posts/pmos-k3s-cluster/
dzonga 4 minutes ago
in a weird way - this shows how much of a premium there's with cloud computing, while also showing how much computation power is in consumer devices.
tetris11 12 minutes ago
Ctrl+F PostmarketOS. No? No, apparently.
madduci an hour ago
I love the take about it. But nowhere is mentioned how have they installed Linux on those boards and which kind of distribution. I would also run Linux on retired phones, just I can't because some of them have a locked bootloader and the unlocking method doesn't work anymore, because the producer has retired the tool
rbanffy 2 hours ago
Speaking as someone who has a cluster of four RPi Zero W’s mounted in an Ikea picture frame running as a Docker Swarm cluster, I LOVE this idea.
cloud8421 an hour ago
That’s cool, do you have a write up about it?
christophilus an hour ago
Well, I really don’t like Google, but if they make this a thing, I’d switch to Android and put Graphene on it or whatever just so I could tie into this. This is an excellent idea.
maz1b an hour ago
I've always wondered what that would be like. A fleet of 50 relatively modern flagship smartphones, wiped and retrofitted software wise to act as a homogeneous server, running ubuntu or centos or fedora, something like that.
newsclues 38 minutes ago
Do many people really have a stockpile of working old phones?
From my observations, phones get destroyed, used until the battery swells and breaks them, or handed down to kids or less careful users. No one I know has a bunch of old phones that are still useful but unused.
t-3 5 minutes ago
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.
fer 13 minutes ago
I have Nexus 5, Xiaomi A1, Redmi Note 7, Samsung S7, and a Kindle Fire HDX, all running either LineageOS (Android) or PostmarketOS (Alpine). PmOS ones run some not very demanding containers (scrapers) on k3s.
jstanley 14 minutes ago
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.
pornel 34 minutes ago
There are recycling and trade-in programs that could collect compatible phones and pass them on in bulk.
mhd 2 hours ago
Beowulf cluster time for old Pixels?