I wouldn't do it because of the fire hazard. Better to use hardware that is meant to run 24/7 plugged in.
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
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Yep. I was going to use an old one as a security camera but thought better of putting a lithium battery permanently plugged in on a windowsill.
Newer phones have mandated removable batteries, wonder if they run without them being installed
They don't.
Most mobile devices have their power management modules configured to prevent booting unless they receive an all good signal from a connected battery. It is possible to take that signal, but not trivial.
"bypass charging" is becoming a bit more popular now. you see it on some android gaming tablets where it bypasses the battery once a cable is plugged in, which makes sense considering how quickly the battery would run down on those. i think i saw the recent google pixel devices having this feature as well so many it will just be a thing on all phones eventually
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This has been discussed many times already, and I am not saying that to scold you but if you look for the right keywords you'll find a lot in the search.
E.g. the most recent one I know of is this https://lemmy.world/post/52120798
But that was posted in an android community, so not visible here.
Thanks! I’ll check it out
if you do this, be sure to root and install ACCA to restrict battery charging and limit current for safety/longevity
I guess I'll be the devil's advocate today. 😈
I've seen some pretty serious phone "servers".
I personally think that turning a phone into a device that can stay on 24/7 should be easy enough.
Finding software that works on your phone's hardware... that's a whole different beast. 😬
The only thing that keeps me worried is the battery. I would never leave it plugged in 24/7. It's a fire hazard..
bad idea IMO. i did this once, the device has to be permanently plugged in, which strains the battery. after a few weeks the battery inflated. that stuff can explode and set your house on fire.
better buy a raspberry pi. last time i checked they were $20 each.
last time i checked they were $20 each.
$20? Hundreds of $$ now with ramflation
use this
Very few people want the old models. So used ones are often found for 20 zorkminds again.
That's a very important point to consider. Unless you remove the battery, you shouldn't use it as a server. If you still do, store it in a metal bowl or so and put it somewhere where the heat of the bowl itself cannot start a fire. And make sure that your smoke detectors are still working and not expired. Then, be aware that if the battery explodes, your apartment fills with biting toxic smoke within minutes, and that can happen in the middle of the night. So keep some clothes ready at the door that you can wear when fleeing the apartment.
or just buy a minipc for $130 from Ebay.
It is frustrating though, I have several old phones that are in good shape. It would be nice to give them a job. There might be one or two that boot without a battery.
I saw one post where a guy was using a phone as a torrent share server thing. They had an app that cycled the battery between 10% and 80%. Setting that sort of thing up would take care of the battery issue.
Not in perpetuity though
Of course not. I didn't mean to say that would solve the issue completely. Theres plenty of other reasons why having a phone as a server is not the best idea, the battery is just the most flammable reason.
I looked at using my old Galaxy S10e to host some things and ran into this same issue. It depends on the device, but I found a video of a guy revmoving the battery and soldering in a special resistor or something to trick the phone into a) thinking the battery is installed and b) that the battery is not discharging and will stay powered on.
It's been a minute since I've seen the video, but I think he gave an explanation of how it all works. Still on my to-do list for when I need a weekend project.
I have 3 pi 4s that where maybe 45 dollars each when I bought them, last time unchecked they where 600 dollars. I thought about selling them, but completely forgot if I want a pi again, and go to buy one, by then they might be 400 each.
You can buy x86 mini PCs for less now with only a minor hit to power consumption (they use slightly more power). I used to love Pis for home labbing, but I have switched to mini PCs for it.
I have two spare 8th gen Intel PCs I saved from the garbage bin, and a old gaming desktop that I now use as the server. So if I need a spare server I'm probably going to use one of those. I can get USB to gpio so been thinking of trying trying that route more considering how often people get rid of old pcs. I have a stack of windows vista-7 era laptops I was going to take apart for scrap too which could be used.
I bought the pis a long time ago, each time a found a project for one I was sad I didn't have one to play with and kept buying more. They aren't really even in use now. Ones built in to my work station and occasionally I boot into it and use raspberry pi imager to flash ubuntu or something on a USB. Its useful to have just ready on occasion. I have a hard time getting rid of them because of use cases like that, and in have a lot of hats/accessories for them like the ai camera. Even though I'm not really going to use them like I used to anymore.
I love reusing old tech like this. People toss / sell at a loss a lot of stuff that has quite a bit of use left in it.
If you already make a recycling run to the scrap yard its worth doing. I got 120 bucks last run just off old PCs and it wasn't even that much, you just get more when you separate it. Aluminium cases, ram, motherboard, hard drives, CPUs. The older they are often the more they are worth, and if you are into eBay selling im sure you could make a killing. I heard even DDR 3 is coming back so who knows anymore.
Only thing you shouldn't take is TVs you have to pay to get rid of them. Maybe don't take appliance too. some people do, for example fridges have a few valuable components but I would not reccomend it. You end up with plastics and other junk sometimes and have to pay to get a dump run.
A lot of it only makes sense if you can store a pile until it gets big enough to be worth a trip out.
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I've seen too many spicy pillow samsungs to do this. But I have also seen that you can use a capacitor in place of the battery, so maybe worth checking that out.
it happens to every one of them eventually. Wonder what really causes it?
Thank you everyone for commenting on this, I didn’t expect this much feedback!
I will go ahead and start this project with an old phone, not sure yet which phone, and I’ll document everything and give you an update soon!
A friend is running Linux, Nginx, Hermes Agent, and a few other things on her old phone. Definitely doable! It's a decent idea - very small form factor, phones have pretty powerful CPUs, and a lot of people have an old phone they're not doing anything with.
I'm doing that. Works fine. There's an article in PMOS wiki about limiting the max battery voltage.
it would probably be a great way for people to get their feet wet if they dont have a server, but maybe not a great long term solution due to possible battery issues (unless its a phone that supports bypass charging)
most people have an old phone lying around that could be set up fairly quickly with something like syncthing for some basic file synciing, or run some services using termux along with tailscale or netbird so they can be accessed when away from home. all that would still be a bit of work but it would be a lot less daunting than all the research you have to do when youre getting into self-hosting. server/nas hardware, disks, how you are going to set them up, what OS to install etc etc
I had the same thought. Got an older laptop laying around and might try to fiddle with it.
The issue that arises for me is electricity cost. A smartphone doesn’t have a fan and I trimmed for efficiency, unlike many other devices.
What do you want to use the cluster for?
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Lots of people chimed in regarding battery, which is a legitimate issue.
Another thing though is ARM. Phones usually have a different processor architecture and this architecture used to be incompatible with lots of server software. I remember being pissed at because I couldn't even host a TeamSpeak Server on it because it wasn't compatible. Now this was a while back and I've heard compatibility has gotten better but still, do some research beforehand.
I would be worried about the battery, as many others pointed out too. I had a somewhat similar project with old MacBooks. I thought taking the battery off would make its fan to spin at 100%, yet turned out it does not. Right now one of my servers is MacBook Pro from 2011, and it kicks. It has no battery installed, and it looks like a pretty good server to me. It starts automatically when there’s a power loss, which is ideal for a server. Can totally recommend.
Old phone means old unsupported vendor version of the linux kernel vulnerable to script kiddie exploits.
The idea would be to put something like postmarketos or armbian on it so it actually is a supported platform.
Hardware Haven had a go at it and made an interesting video covering this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBOoDffWF0Y
Sounds like a good idea! I read somewhere, that you can also launch Docker via Termux on Android. Just in case Postmarket OS won't work.
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