I prefer to assume he's lugging a 12U mini relay rack around with him, including a UPS and cellular fallback for networking, so he can run an Android VM and use it as his cell phone.
To me, "my server is now..." implies there was some server, it used to do server things, but now it has been repurposed to do something else.
When I read the title, I literally thought "wow, I've seen a lot of people make servers out of old unused phones, but this is the first time I've heard someone make a phone out of an old unused server!"
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.
That's surprising to me. It's been a standard feature on laptops for 20 years.
Edit: Or I should say, it was 20 years ago. Maybe modern stuff is worse, but my M2 MacBook Air and Framework 13 Intel Core both power on without a battery.
Are you sure that this is not something every single device does? I’ve never heard of a device that continually switches between charging and discharging while powered if the battery is full.
Not OP, but I know that's not mainstream for phones at all. I think only Pixel phones enable it as a normal thing, when you have the 80% charge limit enabled. Sony (since 2020) and Samsung (since 2023) have it, but only when you enable it within some game settings for selected apps. Maybe gaming phones have it because they're plugged in more than others and care about heat. Apple doesn't do it.
LiPo batteries will fail over time if left fully charged. If you don't need the battery it's best to keep it somewhere around 40%. If 80% is the only option, that's usually good enough.
The primary failure mode starts when the cells are charged near their maximum voltage and kept there.
Not really. No sign of a phone. Just a computer — same as what all other servers run on.
"My server runs on a computer with a form factor that is atypical for server workloads" gets a little closer to the heart of the article, but even then it seems the real meat of it is about Android, not the hardware (although that is mentioned too).
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.
This is true but lithium-ion batteries degrade even while not being charged or discharged, and this is worse at the extremes of the state of charge (including fully charged), and at higher temperature (and often a plugged in device is on constantly and therefore spends more time at a high temperature than it normally would), so it's still not great for the battery. A lot of devices have a mode where the batter is kept at a lower state of charge if it's been plugged in for a while to try to reduce this.
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.
Steamdeck lets you set your preferred % and the dock does pass through charging/power, which I love because that combo guarantees the longest possible life for the battery. I turn it back to 100% for flights, otherwise leave it as 80% at all times. Mine is almost 4 years old now but I don’t feel even a hint of battery degredation yet.
Even then, some phones that advertise bypass charging are actually using a software-based implementation, and they can still end up with swollen batteries after being plugged in for extended periods.
AFAIK this is rarity in smartphones and most are charged through battery, which is why those few which have it advertise their direct/bypass charging feature
> It will probably destroy this battery very quickly.
'Very quickly' seems to be measured in decades from what I see
Most people I know have their laptop docked, either near-permanently at home or taking it between home and a desk with dock (so it's nearly always plugged in when in use)
The 'servers' I've had were all old laptops - yes, with battery (don't have to buy a separate UPS if one is already included). I've now also had two non-server laptops that were plugged into power pretty much all the time. I treated my first laptop perfectly: taking out the battery anytime I'd be in a classroom for several hours and it was already full enough (you know, back when sliding out your battery was possible in the first place), but I'm not noticing any faster degradation on the systems I treat poorly. I'll activate the 80% cap function where it exists (that is, in the latest phones and my work laptop's UEFI config panel), but the evidence of it being helpful has yet to materialize
I have read that studies show that charging to 100% causes degradation and I trust those more than random people's anecdotes (and I'm a random person), but I'm starting to wonder if I've maybe just misunderstood the study results. Maybe it's like how smoking increases your chance for some cancers but you might also be fine in the end. I see people with plenty of much younger and better-treated batteries that can't sustain literally 30 seconds of use whereas mine are reasonably close to the new state (some haven't had many charge cycles, just sat at a stressy high voltage all the time, which was indeed supposed to destroy them), and I don't know how to explain that otherwise
I had a laptop as a server for a really long time, and I also poked around using a phone for some server things (not as main server) and after some time it was unusable (the whole phone was suffering because wasn't prepared for a battery that fucked).
Anyway, my point is, maybe his phone has some mechanism similar to laptops to prevent this kind of thing, but in the end it's a phone. It's not the intended use for it.
Well, maybe, but could that not also be the chance thing I mentioned? That it greatly increases odds, but a 'great increase' of 1% per decade is still not more than a third of the cases or so. Or it's the bypass charging that a sibling comment mentioned indeed
Some phones do too, it depends on their power management integrated circuit (PMIC) and driver. Though it's always better to physically disconnect the battery when not in use, as there is always a trickle current otherwise (most "spicy pillows" batteries are due to deep discharge, as far as I know). The best practice is to store batteries disconnected, at 60% capacity). In theory you could build a small circuit to sit in between the phone and battery to protect it, maybe I'll have a go at it.
What you can do, with some extra steps, is have Home Assistant installed (and have a Home Assistant server, I guess!) on the phone and use a smart power switch that's also associated with Home Assistant.
The phone's battery can be reported to Home Assistant, where an automation can be triggered to turn off power to the phone when the battery gets above a certain percentage and turned back on when it goes below.
Not the best solution, but certainly an alternative from messing around with trying to get the phone to work without a battery.
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.
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.
Depends on how well the canister insulates it. Steel conducts heat fairly well; it'd get hot inside but I'd guess some airflow around the canister would probably keep it from getting hot enough to cook the electronics. (definitely don't take my word for it lol)
Phones are very low power, likely just a slightly warm spot on the can that radiates, conducts, and convects the heat out. You could also use one of those peltier module phone coolers, to ensure the heat gets out of the phone and into the air faster.
> 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 :)
Hmmh. My Samsung Galaxy S4 doesn't boot w/o battery. Not sure, whether early in the boot process the presence of a battery is tested or whether there just isn't enough juice.
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%?