Well, this will be my second post. Hope the pictures show up this time.
I'm writing this because I've read so many articles that say you cannot mine bitcoin with a cellphone. In fact, I've heard some pretty nasty name calling for those unfortunate individuals who have asked the question.
The short answer is that you absolutely cannot mine bitcoin with a cellphone with an ARM processor. You would mine forever and never find anything. You also couldn't mine most other types of cryptocurrencies out there either. However, it IS possible to make some cryptocoins using a cellphone. The trick is to pick the right cryptocoin!
Scrypt can be optimized for low memory, high frequency calculations which is why you get hashrates in the billions. A cellphone could never keep up with that. So bitcoin, litecoin, etc are out of the question.
Ethash does well with the high number of stream processors in video cards and your cellphone is lucky to have more than four cores. So mining ethereum is out.
Cryptonight does well with a full scale processor that can perform complex calculations. It does well with CPU's and that is exactly what your cellphone has. True the cellphone can't keep up with a full power PC but then again, it uses very little electricity so its not such a terrible comparison. Monero is the king of the cryptonight coins right now but if you want there are others you could try (Fantomcoin would be my second choice)
Having said that, one little cellphone calculating in a room would take forever to work its way through to make even a small dent in a blockchain so mining solo is out. To make anything work the phone will have to be part of a pool. Also to work on your cellphone its going to have to have an app for it. If your with Android, Minergate has you covered on both fronts.
So for this writeup I have a cheap, cheap, tracfone that I purchased for $9.99 at BestBuy. It is an Alcatel Pixi with a 1.1Ghz Dual Core ARM processor. Its pretty sad but it does meet with the minergate app minimum specs.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9TbtRrZyT0QN0NtYnB4TWRSalE
After getting the phone I put three apps on it:
The first app is minergate. It runs the app and manages a meager 4.5 H/second while mining Monero. In more practical terms 4.5h/s gives me about $4.50 Canadian dollars over a year of mining. Its not much but it IS something. Then there is the electricity cost. Where I live I pay 12.3c per KWh of electricity. In easier terms I pay about $1/year for a watt. The cellphone uses 2.5 watts so I pay $2.50 a year for the electrcity. In short my $10 phone pays out about $2 per year ($4.50 income - $2.50expense).
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9TbtRrZyT0QMDdMWXVMb1N2V28
So, it will make a little money. Whether it is worthwhile or not I'll leave up to you.
For me $2/year isn't really worth it which is why I added two more apps.
Second app is a simple clock and alarm (which is visible in the first picture). Leave it plugged in all the time and there is a continual alarm clock waiting to give you the time and wake you up in the morning.
The third app is Text Now. It connects to the wifi in the house and lets me send text messages and make phone calls. That way there is a free phone doubling as my alarm clock. Turns a lousy $10 phone into a phone and clock that pays me a little more money every year.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9TbtRrZyT0QOWM5M05UZ0MydjA
Hey man, you still alive?
You are right you can turn them into a number of handy devices... However hidden danger. You have a li-po plugged into charger while un attended basically 24/7 while at the same time running a poorly cooled soc at 100% all the time.
So basically, it's no point of wasting time and energy to become poor. Wow
Now I wanna try it.
Small rewards but considering your using a $10 phone is awesome. Really cool that you can use as a clock and mine constantly.
That is very clever of you, I like doing things as cheaply as possible even if I don't have too. My husband and I make a game of being cheap, but not so cheap we end up costing ourselves money. Which eventually happens to a lot of cheapskates. Looks like you avoided the pitfalls!
Hehe, I love being cheap too but understand going too cheap costs money! Might have to blog some money saving tips :)
My first employer after my degree was a lawyer, we fought like husband and wife. He was too cheap and cost himself a lot of money trying to save money. Great guy but not very practical ...hahaha I took care of his office systems, filing in court, building document templates, and caring for clients.
Yeah, too cheap costs you in the long run. The trick is to get the right balance between quality, necessity, and low price. It can be a fine art :)
I've read all the articles telling me how worthless mining with Android was. Well after a few months , I made a few thousand bytecoin, turned it into NAV coin and now I've made 20 dollars. I noticed a few months ago that because bytecoin went up in price it became harder to mine. So I took a break for a while and now I think I'm going to go back at it again. I'm running to Android boxes with octo cores, 1 Android box that might be dual core. And my phone which is about 20 Mega hash... Same as the other boxes.
I think you've answered my question. Just to be clear, you feel that mining from my cell phone is worth the effort?
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good to know. saved me time looking for sth legit. I was wondering about the bitcoin mining apps in the store being all high scored but turns out they are fake because all the reviews are bad. Ill upvote a current post of yours when you are still active
This is a great way of trying on a $10 phone . However another question which I have is , to break even you need 5 years and will the mobile phone last 5 years continuously mining ?
Thanks for details!
@richardterrace Thanks! this article gave me the push I needed to start mining on my old mobile devices.
small coin is upportunity
i get free 500$ bonus not scam
enjoy link :https://steemit.com/upcoin/@miner76/get-your-usd500-register-at-upcoin-com-exchange
Interesting post. I have been using minergate on 4 old Android phones with some success. I'm currently mining bytecoin and achieving a combined 35h/s . I'm approaching it as an opportunity to learn more about cryopto and not for monetary gain.
A cautionary note... I don't leave these running unattended due to concerns of over heating and paranoia of the Lipoly batteries catching fire.
So you have to buy a million cell phone to earn some good money..... Lol....
wonder if using old phones would work?
HTC 10 etc
I call you smart, a man that makes the best out of the worst.😀
In the future all alarm clocks will be connected to the internet.
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