2,000 retired Google Pixel phones get a second life as a private cloud

Junkyard Computing: The Engineering Case for Building Server Clusters from Dead Smartphones

Smartphone clusters cut cloud costs by 40× ($1,028 vs $40,404/3yr) for microservices while improving carbon per-operation by 9.8–18.9×. For IT spend decisions: reused hardware eliminates embodied carbon (70-90% of lifecycle); Google's June 2026 deployment (2,000 phones) validates production-scale economics.