Don't throw away your old phone just yet. For less than 70 yuan, you can turn a 10-year-old old phone into a data center in an instant. It remained connected for 8 hours during a fishing trip at sea.

Do you also have a few old smartphones gathering dust in the depths of your drawer? Maybe the screen is cracked, the battery is worn out, the system is laggy, or the performance is outdated. In any case, they have long since been retired. But now, they might just "return to the front line."

In this era of "AI Everywhere," computing power is productivity. However, not all scenarios are suitable for deploying large, expensive, and energy - consuming data centers. Recently, a study from the University of Tartu points out that those idle old smartphones in your hand are actually "mini - data centers" waiting to be activated.

Experiments show that even a few smartphones that are 10 years old can efficiently complete tasks such as image recognition and sensor data processing. More importantly, the total transformation cost is only 8 euros (approximately 66 Chinese yuan)!

Why choose old smartphones? Can they really "perform"?

You might think that building a data center with smartphones sounds a bit unreliable. After all, the batteries of these old smartphones are no longer durable, and the operating systems are fraught with security vulnerabilities. Many people believe that smartphones are updated rapidly, and the "residual value" of old models is extremely low. However, from a hardware perspective, this perception is inaccurate.

For example, the Google Nexus 5, released in 2013, is equipped with a quad - core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, and supports Wi - Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, multi - touch... In terms of basic performance, it is not inferior to some embedded devices commonly used in IoT scenarios, such as the common Raspberry Pi development board.

As Huber Flores, an associate professor at the University of Tartu, said, "Smartphones are designed for high - energy - consumption scenarios. They are well - optimized, not prone to overheating, and quite efficient in processing large - scale data." After years of optimization in industrial design, smartphones have advantages such as strong heat resistance, low power consumption, and a compact structure. They are portable terminals designed for complex computing tasks.

Therefore, even if the battery performance of these old devices has declined, the operating systems are outdated, and there may even be security vulnerabilities, with a little "tinkering," they can still be used to build a flexible and efficient mini - distributed computing platform.

The road to restart for "drawer warriors": How do old smartphones transform into data centers?

It is reported that this research is mainly led by Huber Flores, Ulrich Norbisrath, and Zhigang Yin from the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu, as well as Perseverance Ngoy from the Institute of Technology and their international colleagues.

In the experiment, they selected four Google Nexus smartphones that had been out of production for many years and transformed these old smartphones into "mini - data centers" through the following steps:

(1) Remove the battery and use external power supply

The first step is to remove the original battery of the smartphone to avoid the risk of chemical leakage from the aging battery. Replace it with an external power source (such as a voltage regulator module or a power adapter) to ensure a safe and reliable continuous power supply.

(2) Replace the operating system to enhance controllability

The research team uniformly replaced the original Android system of the smartphones with PostmarketOS or a similar lightweight Linux - based system to break free from the closed - source limitations of Android, unlock more flexible hardware control and programming interfaces, and develop and run necessary applications on it. In this way, researchers can freely deploy tasks, patch system vulnerabilities, and combine multiple smartphones to work together.

(3) Multi - smartphone cluster collaboration architecture

Connect the four old smartphones to form a cluster. One of them serves as the "master node," responsible for receiving sensor data or instructions from the control system and distributing tasks to the other three "worker nodes" for parallel processing. This master - slave structure can handle tasks such as image recognition and sensor data aggregation, and each device participates in the collaboration within the entire system.

(4) 3D - printed structural bracket

Use 3D - printed components to make brackets and enclosures to fix the four smartphones, provide physical protection and structural support, and facilitate on - site experimental deployment.

Surprisingly, the construction cost of this entire "mini - data center" is less than 8 euros, far lower than the price of the latest generation of Raspberry Pi devices (over 50 euros).

"You can easily find these smartphones by rummaging through the trash," Huber Flores joked. "All you need is a voltage regulator module to power the smartphones, then install an open - source system, and deploy control software. In this way, you can build a small - scale data center that can be quite useful."

There are also limitations: Not all smartphones can be transformed

According to the research team, this "smartphone data center" made its debut in an ocean experiment near the Portuguese island of Madeira. At that time, they enclosed it in a waterproof compartment, connected it to a high - definition camera, and placed it in an underwater environment 25 meters deep in the Atlantic Ocean. They successfully performed image recognition and counting of marine life.

It is worth mentioning that this experiment lasted for 8 hours and ran without any faults throughout the process.

Meanwhile, the team is also developing other application scenarios. For example, they can connect infrared sensors in the city center to count the flow of people, or deploy it on ground robots to provide real - time image analysis and decision - making capabilities for drones cruising overhead. "After the drone captures images, it can transmit the data back to the ground for this small - scale data center to analyze. This is not only flexible in deployment but also low in cost."

In addition, Huber Flores believes that there is a potential target group for this "smartphone data center" - startups.

"Many startups need to run data analysis and website hosting services but often cannot afford the high cost of cloud computing rentals," he said. "These smartphone clusters can just fill this 'light - but - stable' computing power demand."

However, this transformation is not without limitations.

The research team chose the Nexus series because it was an open - source project launched by Google, and its hardware structure is relatively "modular," making it easy to disassemble and transform. However, since its discontinuation in 2016, most smartphones on the market have increasingly adopted a closed - design approach. Once disassembled, the components are easily damaged. The operating systems are also more closed, and the difficulty of flashing a custom system continues to increase.

"If the transformation is too difficult, the cost of the entire solution will be driven up," Huber Flores admitted.

"Digging for gold" from electronic waste: The "second life" of old smartphones

In fact, according to data from the World Health Organization, electronic waste is one of the fastest - growing types of waste globally. In 2022, approximately 62 million tons of waste electronic products were generated globally, but only 22% of them were properly recycled.

The WEEE Forum has also estimated that the number of discarded smartphones reaches as high as 5.3 billion per year. When these electronic devices are burned or landfilled without proper treatment, they will cause serious pollution to the environment.

In contrast, the solution of transforming them into "reusable computing resources" is not only technically feasible but also of practical significance.

As Huber Flores said, "Innovation usually doesn't start with new things but with a new way of thinking about old things and re - imagining their role in shaping the future." He hopes that this research can inspire people and encourage electronics manufacturers to consider maintainability and reusability more when designing products, fundamentally reducing electronic waste.

So, if you also have a few old smartphones gathering dust, take a second look at them. They might not be "retired" yet but are waiting for a "restart."

Reference link: https://spectrum.ieee.org/smartphone-data-centers

Paper address: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10925535

This article is from the WeChat official account "CSDN". It was compiled by Zheng Liyuan and published by 36Kr with authorization.