cross-posted from: https://packmates.org/users/Wander/statuses/111280488886937575
The future of selfhosted services is going to be... Android?
Wait, what?
Think about it. At some point everyone has had an old phone lying around. They are designed to be constantly connected, constantly on... and even have a battery and potentially still a SIM card to survive power outages.
We just need to make it easy to create APK packaged servers that can avoid battery-optimization kills and automatically configure an outbound tunnel like ngrok, zerotrust, etc...
The goal: hosting services like #nextcloud, #syncthing, #mastodon!? should be as easy as installing an APK and leaving an old phone connected to a spare charger / outlet.
It would be tempting to have an optimized ROM, but if self-hosting is meant to become more commonplace, installing an APK should be all that's needed. #Android can do SSH, VPN and other tunnels without the need for root, so there should be no problem in using tunnels to publicly expose a phone/server in a secure manner.
In regards to the suitability of home-grade broadband, I believe that it should not be a huge problem at least in Europe where home connections are most often unmetered: "At the end of June 2021, 70.2% of EU homes were passed by either FTTP or cable DOCSIS
3.1 networks, i.e. those technologies currently capable of supporting gigabit speeds."Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/broadband-coverage-europe-2021
PS. syncthing actually already has an APK and is easy to use. Although I had to sort out some battery optimization stuff, it's a good example of what should become much more commonplace.
Saw this post on [email protected], want to get some thoughts on it, because the idea seems a bit crazy to me.
Android is great as a general use phone/TV/watch etc OS for running apps but it's fundamentally not designed for this use case. Installing ProxMox on an old computer is going to simply work better for every self hosted use case. Most people that are remotely interested in this probably have something laying around that could be used. For those that don't, decent x86 machines can be had for super cheap second hand.
I get the point of this is hardware reuse since people have old phones laying around but it feels the same as all those "turn your old phone into a security camera!" posts. Nice idea but ultimately impractical.
Hopefully Google is promising 7 years of support will start a trend that leads to people having less old phones in the drawer collecting dust.