Your old Google Pixel smartphone could be repurposed in a data center

The project to reappropriate Google Pixel phones has been undertaken, in part, to reduce the carbon footprint left by discarded devices. Even after they're thrown away, many old phones still retain significant compute ability. That's why this project is exploring "phone cluster computing", as Google Research puts it.

This process involves stripping old Pixels models of every component, save for the motherboard. Once the display, battery, casing and speakers have been discarded, the motherboard is put into a cluster, then repurposed as a "general-purpose computing platform", according to Google's blog post. Interestingly, a Pixel's motherboard is responsible for 50 percent of its carbon footprinting based on these Google Sustainability reports.

If you're a Google Pixel owner who's currently eyeing up that hot pink Pixel 11 leak and hoping it's real, you might take comfort in the fact your old phone could one day help students out. The researchers discovered a cluster of 20 Pixel motherboards can support education apps that could service a class of upwards of 75 students. The endgame of the project is way more ambitious, with a planned goal of providing a 2,000-strong phone computing cluster that could support a hundred similarly sized classes at once.

The system is due to launch this fall. Should it prove a success, the researchers think that it could offer schools affordable access to computer resources that works out much cheaper than building new infrastructure.