Smartphones are a common sight in this day and age, in fact finding someone who doesn’t own one might seem like a challenge. The differences for everyday usage may seem minimal, yet that is what most consumers focus on. However Android has a claim that Apple does not. The Samsung Galaxy S5 is capable of mining for Bitcoins.
Android devices mine Bitcoin
Thanks to a creative team built by Samsung, 40 older Android platform Samsung Galaxy S5 were used to make a rig capable of mining bitcoins. And the efficiency is rather astounding. The Samsung creative team; C-Lab, compared the Hash rate, wattage, and power efficiency of the mining rig to a PC with an i7-2600 core processor.
When comparing the hash rate the PC did show a far greater hash rate of 20,000 per second versus the 2,600 per second hash rate from the Samsung Galaxy S5. But when the team compared the wattage needed for both the Samsung Galaxy S5 rig blew the PC out of the water with 4 watts needed to operate. All the while the computer requires 95 watts. This wattage difference makes the mining done by the rig far superior to that of the PC by over triple. The C-Lab rig boasts 650 hash per watt, while the PC ran 211 hash per watt.
While the mining speed will certainly be slower, it is more efficient to use the rig. The potential to make an even bigger setup is present as well. In fact, one phone can even be used to mine for Bitcoin. Burstein is one example of how to mine via Android device.
This does however differ from how the mining rig was accomplished.
Upcycling
What C-Lab does is called Upcycling. Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is defined as being the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value. They take the older hardware that is unwanted, and replaces the software inside. C-Lab essentially takes the “Android” out for the Samsung Galaxy S5. There are some websites who help users out if interested themselves, however the creative team does intend to release the specific software utilized to unlock the 40 smartphones. They even intend to provide public records for how they accomplished previous projects.
