Turning old smartphones into miners ?

[Flyingterlik]

Hi guys,

I'm in this cryptospace for two years now (jumped in at the '17-'18 hype), and I'm at the point where I want to experiment with mining a little bit.

I have some old smartphones laying around like the Galaxy S3, S5, Sony Z5 and I know that they together hold some CPU power.

So Im curious if anybody knows a way to turn these into miners ?

I've searched through the internet but couldnt fond anything useful.

I'm theorizing it should be doable by installing Linux on these phones and then letting a mining software run on them?

I think so because I remember installing Win95 on the S3, so 1+1 maybe ?

Thanks in advance < 3

Edit;
Btw I know it's not "worth" it to mine and that its cheaper to buy (heck even faucets pay more than what I theoretically can mine) but I just love the idea of making old useless phones do something :p

[1714805418]

1714805418

[philipma1957]

it would work like shit for btc.

so it would need to be for an alt coin


which means you should have posted in alt coin section not here.

edit I asked for mods to move to alt coins.

[Flyingterlik]

Ah thanks, newbie mistake I guss x_x

[mocacinno]

it would work like shit for btc.

so it would need to be for an alt coin


which means you should have posted in alt coin section not here.

edit I asked for mods to move to alt coins.

Nah, not even for altcoins... You can only fake "mine" with a cellphone, some altcoins have released apps in the past that were incorrectly called miners. As long as you ran these apps, the creators would send altcoins to your wallet, but you weren't actually mining with your phone.

@OP: if you want to learn about mining, you can mine monero with a decent cpu (altough you'll never break even...), you can mine some altcoins with your GPU (very hard to break even) or you can buy a cheap ASIC. If it's really only learning, try mining on the testnet. That way you can solo mine and actually learn the basics. Testnet coins are worthless tough!

Mining =/= free money printing. No matter which piece of hardware you use to create hashes, you'll still have to make a lot of calculations to figure out if you can actually break even/make some profit.

[rudizabudi]

Im using M2G Android Miner to mine Monero. But you need a lot of cellphones to achieve pc-like results.
Eg my S6 gets about 15 h/s, but my S9 gets 40+ h/s.

[stomachgrowls]

Check this one and might interest you in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5120083.0

Im not shilling nor recommend for you to engage but since this one involves some mining using up smartphones.Dont know if it does work.

[joblo]

Smartphone miners are all scams because nobody with a clue takes smartphone mining
seriously. The apps target naive newbies who would fall for "make money fast" scams.

Mining is a compute intensive program that requires heavy duty compute power that
can handle a full load continously. Anything portable is intentionally designed opposite.
They are designed to use as little power as possible to conserve battery life and don't
have the cooling capacity to run hard for any length of time.

[adaseb]

Im using M2G Android Miner to mine Monero. But you need a lot of cellphones to achieve pc-like results.
Eg my S6 gets about 15 h/s, but my S9 gets 40+ h/s.

Its pretty bad that an S9 can get 40H/s when an RX 470 gpu gets like 1000H/s. The RX 470 can be had for like $50 on eBay and an S9 is still a pretty expensive phone. It also has a battery inside that will most likely explode due to the sheer constant heat of the mining. And right now its not profitable to mine with the RX 470, so mining with an S9 is even worse.

If you really want some money and got some spare phones, just put them on Craigslist and sell them for cash and use that cash to buy crypto instead. Not really worth the headache and like the above poster have said, its a scam fad and the other phone miners are fake mining and you won't actually make any profit.

[rudizabudi]

Im using M2G Android Miner to mine Monero. But you need a lot of cellphones to achieve pc-like results.
Eg my S6 gets about 15 h/s, but my S9 gets 40+ h/s.

Its pretty bad that an S9 can get 40H/s when an RX 470 gpu gets like 1000H/s. The RX 470 can be had for like $50 on eBay and an S9 is still a pretty expensive phone. It also has a battery inside that will most likely explode due to the sheer constant heat of the mining. And right now its not profitable to mine with the RX 470, so mining with an S9 is even worse.

If you really want some money and got some spare phones, just put them on Craigslist and sell them for cash and use that cash to buy crypto instead. Not really worth the headache and like the above poster have said, its a scam fad and the other phone miners are fake mining and you won't actually make any profit.

You are absolutely right. I just mentioned these numbers to show how tiny they are. Phones just cant compete with pc cpus and gpus. But thats just because of the overhead costs, the hashrate per wattage ratio is pretty much equal compared to my 1080s on Monero.

Nevertheless I wouldnt call it scam because it is what it is. Everybody can run the numbers and compare it to see it's not worth it out of a financial point of view. But it still serves the general idea of decentralization and for some it's just fun to see and try if something works even if it makes no sense.

Btw my S6's temperatures arent that high. Just about 40-50° Celsius. They get way hotter playing mobile games for example. My guess is phone gpu causing most of the heat which isnt used for mining. But Im no expert, correct me if I'm wrong.

[ololajulo]

it does not look like any one has tried it for lots of coin. I also dont think many of these phones have strong hardware that can handle mining, what of the low battery capacity of those phones?

[nc50lc]

it does not look like any one has tried it for lots of coin. I also dont think many of these phones has strong hardware that can handle mining, what of the low battery capacity of those phones?

I'd tried it back when coinhive is a thing (for testing purposes), so I'm talking about Monero.

I used one Samsung S4 (about <10h/s) device to calculate if 10 or more can produce a decent amount of profit... and the result was like everyone is saying: it's a waste of time and mobile phones if you're planning to use your own devices because charger's pulling more power than the hashrate.
Those "mobile miners" aren't really designed for "personal" mining but for the so-called "advertisement-substitute" or botnets (hundred or thousand devices that you don't supply power and own will do ).

So @Flyingterlik forget it.

Edit;
Btw I know it's not "worth" it to mine and that its cheaper to buy (heck even faucets pay more than what I theoretically can mine) but I just love the idea of making old useless phones do something :p

Why don't you just sell them?

[adaseb]

Im using M2G Android Miner to mine Monero. But you need a lot of cellphones to achieve pc-like results.
Eg my S6 gets about 15 h/s, but my S9 gets 40+ h/s.

Its pretty bad that an S9 can get 40H/s when an RX 470 gpu gets like 1000H/s. The RX 470 can be had for like $50 on eBay and an S9 is still a pretty expensive phone. It also has a battery inside that will most likely explode due to the sheer constant heat of the mining. And right now its not profitable to mine with the RX 470, so mining with an S9 is even worse.

If you really want some money and got some spare phones, just put them on Craigslist and sell them for cash and use that cash to buy crypto instead. Not really worth the headache and like the above poster have said, its a scam fad and the other phone miners are fake mining and you won't actually make any profit.

You are absolutely right. I just mentioned these numbers to show how tiny they are. Phones just cant compete with pc cpus and gpus. But thats just because of the overhead costs, the hashrate per wattage ratio is pretty much equal compared to my 1080s on Monero.

Nevertheless I wouldnt call it scam because it is what it is. Everybody can run the numbers and compare it to see it's not worth it out of a financial point of view. But it still serves the general idea of decentralization and for some it's just fun to see and try if something works even if it makes no sense.

Btw my S6's temperatures arent that high. Just about 40-50° Celsius. They get way hotter playing mobile games for example. My guess is phone gpu causing most of the heat which isnt used for mining. But Im no expert, correct me if I'm wrong.

I am assuming that the miner software you downloaded for your phone was using the GPU instead of the CPU to mine, since GPUs work better than CPU in mining. This is only a guess, I don't know anything about the M2G android miner.

One thing you need to realize is that when someone is playing a high intensity game on their phone, they usually hold it in their hands and their hands are actually the heatsink and its what lowers the temperatures. When you put the phone on a wooden table and leave it mining for hours plugged into the wall, then it will have much higher temperatures.

[huntingthesnark]

it does not look like any one has tried it for lots of coin. I also dont think many of these phones has strong hardware that can handle mining, what of the low battery capacity of those phones?

I'd tried it back when coinhive is a thing (for testing purposes), so I'm talking about Monero.

I used one Samsung S4 (about <10h/s) device to calculate if 10 or more can produce a decent amount of profit... and the result was like everyone is saying: it's a waste of time and mobile phones if you're planning to use your own devices because charger's pulling more power than the hashrate.
Those "mobile miners" aren't really designed for "personal" mining but for the so-called "advertisement-substitute" or botnets (hundred or thousand devices that you don't supply power and own will do ).

So @Flyingterlik forget it.

Edit;
Btw I know it's not "worth" it to mine and that its cheaper to buy (heck even faucets pay more than what I theoretically can mine) but I just love the idea of making old useless phones do something :p

Why don't you just sell them?

Samsung did a project as a POC a while back, but obviously they have plenty of smartphone resources. If I recall, the things you'd need to do are write a custom firmware for the phone (to remove the powersaving barriers, run 100% util for 24h, etc, all those things phones aren't designed to do), and most importantly hack into the hardware, add a massive external cooler/WB to the chip, and bypass the battery so it doesn't explode. Probs need a custom miner too.

Obviously, once you've done all this you end up with a pretty poor hashrate (compared to a desktop CPU) so really, really, really not worth the hassle. For example, you could go experiment chaining together cheap Ryzens for RandomX, which might actually make some money soon, and would be a hell of a lot easier.

[riskyfire]

Hi,

I've been experimenting mining with old phones, Android devices & SBC's like Pi devices over this past year.

Some results are quite good considering the very low power costs and the use of old hardware that most people just have in a drawer.

I'm currently mining Turtlecoin + Loki, also Veruscoin, VeriumReserve & uPlexa. I've covered the process and results in a few videos.

Crypto Mining Update | New RTX Rig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuY6uET4wXY

Crypto Mining On ATOMIC Pi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNilRSJsveI

Android Mining Guide [NO ROOT] - How To Mine uPlexa On Mobile Phones & TV Boxes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCwu0FqcO_M

Android Mining Guide - How To Mine Crypto Coins On Mobile Phones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_2XEM7qzQE

[hell_slayer]

I think you should not use smartphones for PoW cryptocurrency mining . This is a meaningless occupation that will not bring you anything except a damaged battery in your phone. The only option that can be used for mining on a smartphone is a PoS mining of coins that support it on their android wallets.

[mocacinno]

I have a solution for you and that's electroneum coin,you can mine on your phone using its cloud based miner

You can mine on multiple phone too and so far so good

That's one of the fake miners i was talking about... "Cloud based mining on your phone" = "receiving coins for running a non-mining app".

People should really stop referring to those apps as mining software since it confuses newbies...

[mihacrypto]

on older smartphones and so processors are weak, if they still load up to 100 percent, they will soon end, because overheating is provided

[DreamBlob]

on older smartphones and so processors are weak, if they still load up to 100 percent, they will soon end, because overheating is provided

Agreed, most phones (if not all) are not built to run 100% CPU load 24/7. Even if you add custom cooling/etc the costs would far outweigh the rewards.

[WackMack]

on older smartphones and so processors are weak, if they still load up to 100 percent, they will soon end, because overheating is provided

Agreed, most phones (if not all) are not built to run 100% CPU load 24/7. Even if you add custom cooling/etc the costs would far outweigh the rewards.

I think it's not worth it, how many smartphones and how much you need to remake to somehow compare with the PC

[mocacinno]

Whether you like it or not cloud mining is the only mining solution for mobile phones unless we have a POD(Proof of Data) algorithm in the future then it might work on phones

I have no opinion about this one way or another... I just have a problem with the word "mining"... It makes newbies (and some more established members) think they're actually using their phone to mine, this is false. They're getting some tokens to run a non-mining app on their phone. I have no idear what those apps are doing, but one thing is sure: they're not trying to find a hash of a blockheader that's under a certain target...

I also don't like people advertising cloud mining projects. I've been in this community for a relatively long time (allmost 5 years) and i've seen dozen of cloud "mining" companies. Most of them turn out to be a ponzi or a plain scam. The few that are not a ponzi or a scam sell 100% of the risk for a small part of the profit.
In the case of certain coins designed for mobile phones i can understand the fact that putting out a fake miner and distribute tokens accordingly might be one of the only options for fair distrubution, they still should have chosen a different terminology for their app tough.