My server is a phone now

Post by Kuinox » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 1:33 AM UTC

alightsoul wrote: post #40

Kuinox wrote: post #24

I did a similar thing recently. I run kube in a VM, and it was ressource constrained. I hooked an old samsung to my pc and have let claude handle everything. I only had to unlock the bootloader, flash the image claude uploaded. It rebuilt postmarketos multiples times to enable various flag, and now there is a kube node running on it.

did you commit or open source your changes to postmarket os? also you can't unlock bootloaders anymore on samsung phones. you will need to find an exploit. https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame

Post by sejje » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

firasd wrote: post #12

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 vide…

Post by nine_k » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #35

daemonologist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but it's a lot less annoying to just accept a small risk of a house fire. Agree! But do get one or two of those "small automatic fire extinguisher" or whatever they are, that you can attach on stuff, for electrical panels and what not, and put right next to it together with a traditional fire alarm, and you're good to go :)

Post by johntash » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 1:52 AM UTC

gareim wrote: post #44

gerdesj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My phone is a server now" - OP's choice is a subtle one. By saying "my server is now ..." implies a change of server platform to a phone but not where it came from. Your offering: "my phone is a server now" implies a change of phone usage but does not indicate where the server came from. The article itself tells all.

> By saying "my server is now ..." implies a change Except the original title is "my server is a phone now", not "my server is now...".

Post by neurostimulant » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

cfiggers wrote: post #8

yhjc2692 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.