My server is a phone now

thehamkercat•about 1 hour ago

"My phone is a server now"

would've been better

> built in battery backup

Isn't it always recommended to remove battery if you plan to use a phone or a laptop as a server? ( Fire hazard )

or is it fine to just limit the charging to 80%?

daemonologist•about 1 hour ago

Most phones won't boot without the battery. Obvious workaround is to connect a power supply (and large cap) directly to the BMS, but in my experience most phones will shut themselves down when they think they've drawn more than the capacity of their battery, even if the voltage is still high. You can sometimes get around that by rebooting the device every couple of hours (and there might be a software/firmware fix in some cases?), but it's a lot less annoying to just accept a small risk of a house fire.

jdiff•7 minutes ago

How many phones have you tested this with?

hnuser123456•43 minutes ago

You could throw the phone in an ammo canister, if the wifi AP is close enough. When I was building hobby quadcopters, which requires several ~half-pound batteries that are a chemistry optimized for maximum power density, a lot of guys recommended steel ammo cans for battery storage.

Forgeties79•29 minutes ago

I’m also an ammo-case-for-drone-batteries guy but they aren’t running and don’t generate heat. A phone would cook right?

yhjc2692•about 1 hour ago

Afaik mobile electronics’ power circuitry is designed so that power goes straight from charging port to the processor, without constantly charging/discharging the battery, once charging is complete. Unless the system suddenly draws a lot of power (more than the charger is supplying) - which is unlikely in a smartphone.

cfiggers•44 minutes ago

Some phones bypass the battery when plugged in, but not all do. I know it's advertised as a feature of some gaming phones because graphics-intensive gaming is one use case where you'd want to use the phone heavily while plugged in.

seg6•about 1 hour ago

Some newer phones support bypass charging, which powers the phone directly instead of continuously cycling the battery. Mine doesn't support that, unfortunately, so I've limited charging to 80% to reduce battery stress.

guilhermeasper•about 1 hour ago

That's what I thought when I read this. It will probably destroy this battery very quickly.

But in other hand, it is probably a pain in the ass to remove the battery and do some workarounds to make sure the phone correctly behaves without it.

wanda•about 1 hour ago

Couldn't you just have it charging on a time-regulated supply e.g. smart plug?

firasd•27 minutes ago

Yeah ‘old phones’ are pretty capable devices.

I’ve wondered for a while if they could be used as an extension to your laptop like the old 80s PCs where you would plug in hardware.

So ‘make it a server’ is the obvious way I guess, and then you could do things like render webpages on there and then stream them as images to your actual computer (like the now shutdown Mighty app), or run ffmpeg on there to convert a video, etc

mohamedkoubaa•17 minutes ago

A couple of old phones and a gaming laptop with a broken screen makes a beast of a cluster

bogzz•22 minutes ago

I plan to do this when I buy a new phone, thank you for the great writeup!

Would have been a fun load test had you hosted your blog on the phone.

agnishom•16 minutes ago

Shouldn't it be "My phone is a server now"?

Waterluvian•13 minutes ago

“My daily driver is a clown car now.”

hackernud3s•36 minutes ago

I've never heard of Surf but I can run 10x camoufox instances on a $8 VPS no problem. I highly recommend it.

yoyohello13•23 minutes ago

I thought this was going to be a rant about QR code menus.

My server is a phone now

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Discussion (19 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews