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...
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 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.
>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.
> Approximately nobody is throwing away phones because the OEM stopped providing security patches.
I thought that, but a surprising number of people think that no support means that their device becomes vulnerable on the very next day. Not all of them act upon it but that seems to be the understanding of people who know what a security update is (not my grandma, but my mom for example) but aren't real techies or just not in this area. And it's not like these people are installing non-OEM patches! Nice as that would be...
Some time before and during covid, I feel like security update awareness became a lot more mainstream. Maybe because there's not much else to talk about in smartphones anymore anyway, so you shift from "ooh this fancy new one has a fingerprint reader in the power button and its notification LED on the back!" to "I don't want a new one; which one can I use for the most amount of years to avoid this hassle"
Probably also a culture thing. I guess most people in low- and middle-income countries have other worries; I'm speaking from a northwestern european viewpoint
> Approximately nobody is throwing away phones because the OEM stopped providing security patches.
This becomes a practical reason more quickly than you think. If a company only provides 4 years of security updates and they only provide 2 android MV releases, you quickly become out of date. I had a BlackBerry Key2 that I bought in 2018, I had to replace it in 2024 and I was really holding onto it despite a lot of practical problems - Slack dropped support for the version of Android a year earlier, it was only when I tried to install Google Wallet and could not that I finally decided despite the hardware and software functioning fine it really wasn't practical to use a device that was stuck on such an old version of Android. (I would've tried to figure out the kernel myself if the bootloader wasn't locked.)
But that's feature updates, not security updates? If the manufacturer kept providing security patches for your old Android version, it wouldn't have helped you install Slack and Wallet.
Phones don't actually get slower, or, they shouldn't, if they are reasonably well maintained. A battery swap might be necessary to preserve battery life under load. A NAND might start going bad.
Apple just shipped iOS 27, which has support for 2019's iPhone 11. So we are around 7 years there. It's probably fine for many people's use!
For a task like openclaw or hermes, or even something more aggressively graphical & GUI, it's not hard to imagine an 8 year old phone doing fine.
> Phones don't actually get slower, or, they shouldn't, if they are reasonably well maintained.
Relative to ever rising hw requirements of apps they obviously get slower. That is why I personally buy new phones.
Have you ever owned an older phone or older computer in general? Whether hardware or software caused, they get slower.
Only if the software gets slower. My 2015 MacBook Air is slow with the latest supported macOS but runs Linux super snappy for the same tasks.
Unless the thermal paste goes bad and the fans get clogged and you get thermally throttled.
Battery swaps usually don't work very well, unfortunately.
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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.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. But I think there is a chance for this to be commercially viable if it is offered in a different way. I,e not just raw cloud computing maybe you can run games on these clusters and jack the price a little. This is highly dependant on the virtual age of these clusters if they survive 10 of continuos work maybe there is a chance
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.
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?
I've worked with manufacturers who shipped us binary blobs for their hardware. They are often willing to customize the software for you, but they want to own the modifications, which they can use for other customers. A big part of many contracts is a services component where they provide features or advanced functionality, and this lets them mark up their bill substantially. They're existentially scared of their hardware being cloned or their customers building in-house solutions, so they have to stay competitive on that front.
It's also a huge pain in the ass for them to release software as open source. They would need to track all the different forks and modifications in an organized manner (they often do a lot of copy paste and one-off nonsense). They run pretty light staffing on a lot of these components and doing all of that is just another chore for their overworked devs.
Lastly, I've heard they sometimes use other commercial, closed-source software components which they can't easily relicense.
Is this all bullshit? Yes absolutely. I'm not defending them but these are the excuses they give.
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
Which consumer ever cares about "security" updates on phones?
Some fraction of the ones that use the phone for password storage and banking. The latter seems to be nearly everyone, the former is very likely if there's a techy in their lives but since maybe 5-7 years it also seems to be becoming quite mainstream
> 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
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.
I haven't ever heard of an SoC supplier demanding that the device's bootloader must be locked. Are you sure that this is happening? I've only ever seen devices delete first-party blobs, presumably of the manufacturer's own volition.
Unisoc mandates locked bootloaders, but it's true, the majority doesn't care, they just want to sell the SOC
They're literally doing the opposite, right now you can't install a custom operating system, but in the near future you won't be able to install custom apps either: https://keepandroidopen.org/
What do you mean you can't install a custom operating system? The bootloader is unlocked on google phones, isn't it?
You can install a custom operating system on (a non-carrier-locked model of) every phone Google has ever made.
This website is full of false FUD.
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.
> proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems
caused by the very same Google...