30-06-2025
You can turn your broken phone into a working computer centre for cheap; scientists show how
That old iPhone sitting in your junk drawer could actually be working right now. Turns out, it could even help scientists track dolphins or make your city's buses run on time.
You probably upgrade your phone every couple of years. Most of us do the same thing, which means there are billions of phones just sitting around. Meanwhile, we're building data centers that consume massive amounts of energy to handle our digital needs.
Some researchers in Estonia looked at this situation and had a realisation: what if we could turn those old phones into tiny workhorses that actually help run our digital world?
The process is simple. They take an old smartphone, remove the battery for safety, plug it into external power, pop it into a 3D-printed case, and you've got yourself a mini data center for about eight dollars. Link several of these together, and you have a network that can process data just like those energy-hungry server farms.
It's already working. They've got clusters of old phones sitting underwater, automatically spotting and tracking marine life - no human divers needed. The same setup could work at your local bus stop, counting passengers and helping the city optimise schedules.
This approach tackles two problems at once. We're drowning in electronic waste (over a billion new phones made every year), and we need more computing power that doesn't wreck the planet.
The best thing you can do is use your current phone as long as possible. But when it's truly time to move on, this kind of innovation gives that device a second life doing something useful, instead of leaking chemicals in a landfill.
Think about the scale here. Every year, we toss out phones that have more computing power than the computers that sent humans to the moon. These devices contain rare earth metals that companies spend fortunes mining and processing. When we throw them away, we're literally throwing away resources while simultaneously destroying the environment to mine new ones for the next generation of devices.
Traditional data centres are expensive beasts. They cost millions to build, require constant cooling, and consume enough electricity to power small cities. By comparison, a network of repurposed smartphones uses a fraction of that energy and costs almost nothing to set up.
The researchers are just getting started, but they're already talking about powering smart cities and conservation projects with networks of recycled phones. Schools could use them for research projects. Farmers could monitor crops. Environmental groups could track pollution levels in real time.
Your old smartphone might not just be clutter - it could be part of our sustainable digital future. The technology that once connected you to the world could keep working long after you've moved on, helping solve problems we haven't even thought of yet.
The research was conducted by the University of Tartu's Institute of Computer Science and has been published in IEEE Pervasive Computing.
