Your old smartphone could soon power a data centre:How Google’s ‘carbon computing’ project aims to reduce e-waste and data centre emissions

Most of us have at least one old smartphone lying forgotten in a drawer or somewhere else. Maybe its screen is cracked, the battery no longer lasts a day, or you simply upgraded to a newer model. For most people, that’s where a phone’s journey ends. But what if those discarded devices could be brought back to life, not as phones, but as part of a data centre? That is exactly what researchers at the University of California San Diego, with support from Google, are trying to achieve. Their ambitious project aims to transform thousands of retired smartphones into a low-cost, low-carbon computing platform that could support research, education, and cloud-based applications. If successful, the initiative could offer a new way to tackle two growing problems at once: mounting electronic waste and the rapidly increasing energy demands of modern computing. Why are researchers looking at old smartphones? The world replaces hundreds of millions of smartphones every year. On average, people upgrade their devices every four years, often because they want better cameras, faster processors, or new features. Yet many of those replaced phones still work perfectly well. While they may feel outdated as personal devices, they remain surprisingly powerful computers. Researchers argue that throwing away this computing power is wasteful. Instead of letting these devices gather dust or become electronic waste, they believe old smartphones can be repurposed to perform useful computing tasks. Artificial intelligence, cloud services, online applications, and large-scale data processing require vast amounts of computing infrastructure. Building that infrastructure requires huge investments in hardware, electricity, water, and raw materials. What exactly is Google supporting?
Google is supporting a research project at the University of California San Diego that aims to build a data centre using approximately 2,000 retired Google Pixel smartphones.
The goal is not to create another massive AI facility like the ones powering ChatGPT or Gemini. Instead, researchers want to build a cloud computing platform capable of supporting: The project is expected to become fully operational in Fall 2026. Also read: Why does ChatGPT always pick 73 number?: Ask for random number between 1 and 100, and you’ll get an interesting answer

How can old phones become a data centre? At first glance, the idea sounds strange. Data centres usually consist of large racks filled with powerful servers, not smartphones. The researchers have a solution. Step 1: Strip the phone down
The phone itself is not used in its original form. Researchers remove: What remains is the motherboard, which contains: Step 2: Install a new operating system Smartphones normally run Android, which is designed for everyday users. For data-centre use, researchers replace Android’s mobile-focused software with a Linux-based operating system better suited to cloud computing. This allows the devices to run server applications, programming workloads, and cloud services.
Step 3: Connect hundreds or thousands Groups of phones are linked into clusters, allowing them to share workloads and function like a larger computing system. Software such as Kubernetes helps manage and distribute tasks across the network. Are smartphones powerful enough? According to researchers, the performance cores found inside modern smartphones can match, or sometimes exceed, the single-core performance of traditional server processors. The main limitation is scale. Servers typically have: Smartphones have: Because of these limitations, researchers estimate that around 25 to 50 smartphones can deliver computing power similar to one modern server for certain workloads. Why is Google Interested? Google’s involvement is not just about finding new uses for old phones. The company is also looking at the environmental side of computing. When people think about data centres, they usually focus on electricity consumption. However, there are two major sources of carbon emissions: 1. Operational carbon This comes from the electricity used to run servers and cooling systems. 2. Embodied carbon This refers to emissions created while manufacturing hardware. Producing new servers requires: All of these processes generate significant emissions before a server is ever switched on. Also read: Is your phone always at 100% brightness?: One setting that could be draining your battery; follow these tips to avoid it

Has this been tried before? Yes. Researchers at the University of Tartu previously experimented with repurposed smartphones as miniature data centres. The prototypes reportedly cost only a few euros per device to build, showing that smartphone-based computing can be both practical and affordable. Could this become common in the future?
It is too early to say. However, the project highlights a growing shift in how the technology industry thinks about sustainability. Rather than constantly manufacturing new hardware, researchers are increasingly exploring ways to extend the life of existing devices. If smartphone clusters prove reliable and cost-effective, future universities, research labs, and small organizations could potentially build low-cost cloud infrastructure from hardware that would otherwise become electronic waste.