I have 2 older iPhones. A 7 Plus and a 9. Idk what to do with them. Is it possible to self host on iPhones?
Edit. Not iPhone 9, iPhone 8.
If it has a decent camera, use it as a dedicated webcam. If the camera is just okay, convert it to a car dash-cam or a home security camera with integrated UPS, storage, and even fallback connectivity via mobile networks. Use it as a dedicated gaming device, or a music player for non-IoT speakers. Convert it to an LTE modem and make it a fallback for your home internet. Run a Monero node on it. Or a Briar mailbox. Host a personal website on it and make it available via DynDNS. Make use of the phone’s sensors, e.g. the light sensor or the microphone for home automation. Connect it to speakers and use it as a Bitcoin price monitor that plays “You Suffer” by Napalm Death every time BTC passes a certain threshold. Or just use it as a digital photo frame on your desk.
A fork of Asahi Linux can be installed on iPhone X. Not sure about older ones. But you should look into it.
Edit - i am trying to find the source. Pretty sure i read it on lemmy.
Edit - take a look at this. https://github.com/HoolockLinux/docs
I did this several years ago. It worked well for a few months, and then burnt out the phones. They’re not meant to run 24/7 and on a charger the whole time.
Being at 100% all the time kills a battery quite fast, especially older batteries. Trick is to hack the phone to work without one, or limit the charge to some 40-60% (smart socket control loop for example).
You have an iPhone 9? It doesn’t exist, you probably have something else.
iPhone 7 got Linux ported, so yes you can. Try looking for postmarketOS (though there aren’t that many working features, it’s good enough for running servers)
You can run Windows 9 on an iPhone 9.
I meant 8. Fat fingers. I’ll update the op. Thanks!
i don’t think there is even wifi support for the iPhone 7 though
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Apple_iPhone_7/7%2B_(apple-d10)
https://projectsandcastle.org/status it worked on sandcastle, maybe it hasnt been ported to mainline yet?
if usb works then usb networking may be a better option
I’ve used an old, out-of-support phone as a permanently plugged-in homeassistant control panel. Not quite self-hosting as in phone-server, but a fun easy project and a great way to keep an old device in use.
Just sell them for whatever
Sell them? They worth peanut
Sell them and buy peanut.
20 dollars can buy many peanuts
Explain!
The phones are probably still working. New battery and touchscreen and someone will be happy with it.
To the normal user it is e waste because it’s an old apple phone. It doesn’t matter how much you get for it. Just get rid of it so that someone can use it or strip it apart for its parts. And most importantly, to get it out of your sight.
What is your definition of “proper”, in this context?
Something actually capable of doing this well? Even a raspberry pi would be better suited.
A Nintendo Wii would also work, as exemplified by this blog running on a NetBSD Wii.
But in all seriousness, the original comment has a point: using a mobile phone as a server is possible but also wastes a lot of the included hardware, like the cellular baseband, the touchscreen, and the voice and Bluetooth capabilities. Selling the phones and using the proceeds to purchase a used NUC or an SFF PC would give you more avenues to expand, in addition to just being plain easier to set up, since it would have USB ports, to name a few luxuries.
There are loads of cheap Chinese mini-PCs based on Intel N95, N100 or N150, and they’d make the job easier than a phone or a Raspberry Pi. Spend a little more and you can get some pretty cheap AMD Ryzen-based models with much more capable CPUs.
I don’t think that’s the point. It can be fun to use something like an old Phone to use it as a homeserver or the like. It’s a pet project and not about efficiency or being really useful.
I’d just pickup a 6-8th gen Intel workstation
Probably anything else. A pi is a good idea.
I used to run software on an old phone that basically worked as a camera NVR.
At some point the battery swelled up and I’m glad my house didn’t burn to the ground. I only noticed it because the glass screen protector on that phone had popped off from the screen flexing under pressure 😮
As long as you have a way of monitoring your phones, or at least physically isolating them from important things, then you could probably do it without many risks.
Looks like you can host a website on an iPhone. Jailbreaking my afford you more options, but your typical home server type stuff (NAS, media streaming) would require a lot of storage an iPhone isn’t likely to have. Hardware Haven on YouTube used an old Android phone to host a Home Assistant instance, but after a quick search I couldn’t find anything about using an iPhone that way.
Try a-shell. If you set your screen to always on it might works.
copyparty
Can be used as permanently plugged in wifi hotspots?
