Based on my personal experience at least one year on a 5 years old mobile. It can last longer but I decommissioned it because I got a NUC.
I had setup a charge limiter (between 20% and 80%) with Magisk, initially it was through an automation in homeassistant but the battery usage was very high.
In terms of charge cycles it was one or two per day max
Hello, that’s perfectly possible, actually I was selfhosting on android until recently. You can find more info in this post: lemmy.world/post/5342541
Unless you need some heavyweight lifting and you’re ok with installing directly the applications (no docker, sorry), that’s a good portable homeserver.
My only suggestion: buy an ethernet adapter as the WiFi connectivity will drop sometimes.
Until one week ago I was using an old Samsung A20 with good results. I moved to a mini PC as I wanted to host Immich server and I felt it was too much for the phone (it might not be the case though…)
Software: Termux (android app) SSH (OpenSSH in Termux) Rclone (in Termux) Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr (in proot-distro) Transmission (in proot-distro) Kavitha (in proot-distro) Podgrab (in proot-distro) Ombi (in proot-distro) ntfy (in proot-distro) Filebrowser (in proot-distro) Vaultwarden (in proot-distro) Homer with lighttpd (in proot-distro)
TLDR: Go for it! Use Termux with proot-distro to avoid headaches
With Armbian installed, you can offload services that require to be always active on the box and create an “on-off” schedule for the homelab. This will save quite some electricity usage especially if your homelab is beefy
Are you referring to the device hacking? If that’s the case it’s purely random for what I recall. High hacking skills means higher chances to get a good node. The only part I was paying attention to were which node to unlock first. I chose them so that if they came out as bad I didn’t block two or more lines from potential success
No Docker unfortunately, it would require either to recompile the mobile Kernel or use QEMU and I believe it would have a big impact on the performances. Basically this time the approach was: what can I do with an old mobile without rooting or anything. Hardware:
Samsung S20
USB3 to Ethernet & charger port
128GB SD card
Sofrware:
Termux (android app)
SSH (OpenSSH in Termux)
Rclone (in Termux)
Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr (in proot-distro)
Transmission (in proot-distro)
Kavitha (in proot-distro)
Podgrab (in proot-distro)
Ombi (in proot-distro)
ntfy (in proot-distro)
Filebrowser (in proot-distro)
Vaultwarden (in proot-distro)
Homer with lighttpd (in proot-distro)
Since I wasn’t able to install .NET Runtime in Termux directly, I used the proot-distro (Ubuntu) and inside I’ve installed all the services. Services are started manually every time I restart the proot-distro (unfortunately I’m getting an error when installing Termux:Boot), it’s a simple script so I’m not dying over it. To keep the proot-distro alive I launch is with the screen command so I’m ensuring persistence even when the terminal is closed.
It’s not a clean solution like docker etc. but I’m consuming 5 or 10Wh of energy every day which is close to nothing and probably sustainable with a solar panel.
Every once in a while (basically when the SD is almost full) I transfer the files with rclone to an external drive where I consolidate the files.
Oh extra tip, with rclone you can create a DLNA server so you can serve the files you have download immediately (tested with VNC and Kodi)
The phone/server has still room (CPU & RAM) to go and possibly I could install HomeAssistant without any issue. Also I could add Joplin and Floccus using webdav for storage as I had in my previous server but I don’t miss them.
Any other questions, doubts, scripts, feel free to ask!
I’m hosting al my services on an old Android mobile with termux. Power consumption is ridiculous, not 100% sustainable but it is very low power. You could add solar panels and you’re done. In terms of performance, mainly for family use, I’ve never had an issue once I plugged it to an ethernet port.