Old phones get new life in high-powered computer servers

princeton.edu

15 points·rbanffy··6 comments

This sounds to me like most retarded idea I've ever heard.

If smartphone SoCs were viable server platforms then you would buy them directly from the manufacturer instead of scavenging them from a landfill.

The entire idea is based around the cognitive dissonance of buying fully functioning hardware at low or no cost when the reason for the low cost is the fact that it's not fully functioning.

I don't get what you're saying. Buy old and used phones directly from the manufacturer?

The point of this is that it's recycling hardware that has already been used. Manufacturing new hardware defeats the entire point.

Exactly. I think you could make an interesting business off of this. Offer cheap hosting by letting the customer buy an old phone and then just charge them for running costs plus profit margin.

The low cost is because people no longer want the phones anymore because they can get "better", faster phones already. Thousands of old iPhones are shredded each year when they could technically be used as cheap extra computing power. I'm not very sure why you don't like this idea. :/

oh, cellphones. When i read the title I imagined a gigantic pile of ancient dial phones made of Bakelite being burned to power the servers.

That sounds like it wouldn't be very environmentally friendly.

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