A lot of people tend to keep their old smartphones around once they upgrade. Maybe it¡¯s a sentimental thing, maybe it¡¯s just a device for emergencies, or maybe to give to a relative.
Most of the time however, these end up buried at the back of a cupboard somewhere.
All images by Kyle Wiens (Courtesy of Motherboard)
So it¡¯s cool to see Samsung instead taking these old devices and recycling them into something better than before. It¡¯s all part of the company¡¯s new ¡°Upcycling¡± initiative, to put all those old smartphones to use once more, instead of them becoming e-waste in your home or a landfill.
At its recent developer conference in San Francisco, Samsung demonstrated the initiative¡¯s potential with the coolest thing we¡¯ve ever seen smartphones do. The company managed to take 40 old Galaxy S5 smartphones, and turn them into a bitcoin mining rig. It was the perfect demo for upcycling, which involves repurposing old hardware instead of reselling it or disassembling it for parts.
The Samsung C-Lab, a creative engineering team from the company, also had a few other upcycling projects on display. These included a Galaxy tablet turned into a laptop running Ubuntu, an old Galaxy S3 becoming a fish tank sensor, and an old phone programmed with facial recognition software to act as a home security camera system.
The company didn¡¯t specify details about the bitcoin mining rig but, according to Motherboard, information displayed at the event stated that 8 Galaxy 5S units working in tandem can mine bitcoins with greater efficiency than a desktop running an i7 2600 processor.
Most importantly, Samsung says it plans to release the rooting software it used to unlock the devices, as well as blueprints for the various projects they demoed, online for free very soon. And considering your old phone isn¡¯t going to run newer apps beyond a certain point, some of these might be a great way to not only flex your creative muscles, but also to put your old devices to use instead of them wasting away.