Samsung has just turned 40 Galaxy S5 smartphones into a large Bitcoin mining machine

by Cosmin Vasile / Oct 30, 2017, 11:15 AM

Samsung has just turned 40 Galaxy S5 smartphones into a large Bitcoin mining machine

It's no surprise that most smartphones launched these days are more powerful than many computers released several years ago. So, why wouldn't a handful of smartphones be as powerful as one of the modern PCs worth more than $2,000?

Well, it appears that you only need eight old Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphones to be able to mine Bitcoin the way a desktop computer does. In fact, the smartphones are more power-efficient at Bitcoin mining than a similarly powerful PC, Samsung claims.

As part of its “Upcycling” initiative, Samsung has decided to show other smartphone companies that even two-year-old handsets remain useful and can be turned into something new, thus prolonging their life.

For that purpose, Samsung built a Bitcoin mining rig comprising of 40 Galaxy S5 smartphones. The entire mining machine runs on a new operating system specially developed by Samsung for this “green” project.

Besides the Bitcoin mining rig, Samsung also showed a couple of other repurposed smartphones and tablets at its developer's conference in San Francisco. Among them, an old Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet turned into an Ubuntu-running laptop, and a Galaxy S3 programmed to monitor a fish tank.

So, yes, there seems to be life after death even for old smartphones that have reached their EOL (end of life) status.

source: Motherboard

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9 Comments

1. Nopers unregistered

But it’s just such a bad bitcoin mining rig. They were better off as phones. If you want to do something with them load them with stock android and recycle them as phones.

posted on Oct 30, 2017, 11:25 AM 6

3. mikehunta727 unregistered

Yeah its not effective at all

posted on Oct 30, 2017, 11:46 AM 0

2. Not_Amused321

Posts: 67; Member since: Jan 06, 2013

S3 monitoring a fish tank?! Holy s**t! Speaking of such..I just replaced my s6 daughterboard and I cracked the lcd display in multiple places..it's tedious and not easy taking off lcd display from frame..but hey, at least it's charging again lol

posted on Oct 30, 2017, 11:40 AM 0

5. GTRagnarok

Posts: 48; Member since: Aug 22, 2014

Why are they comparing it to a CPU? They're terrible at mining. Most desktop GPUs would run circles around this rig.

posted on Oct 30, 2017, 12:49 PM 1

6. Boast_Rider

Posts: 536; Member since: Sep 14, 2017

Both are bad at bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining is all about ASICs now. GPU do good at ether and CPU for XMR(monero).

posted on Oct 30, 2017, 1:28 PM 3

7. matistight

Posts: 1054; Member since: May 13, 2009

It's funny they pick phones with AMOLED screens to display things on the screen forever (pretty much)

posted on Oct 30, 2017, 2:10 PM 0

9. worldpeace

Posts: 3135; Member since: Apr 15, 2016

It doesn't need to display anything, even most bitmining rig didn't even connected to monitor, It just need monitor for first setup (and after power cut)