You Can't Teach a New Phone Old Tricks: Smartphones Resist Traditional Compute Roles

Abstract

The smartphone is an incredible computing platform. Loaded with powerful processing, vast data storage, near-global connectivity, built-in batteries, and a rich array of sensors, these devices reliably service the needs of billions of users every day. However, when tasked to run just a single application continuously without any human interaction, the smartphone platform becomes surprisingly unreliable. Over the course of a four-month deployment of Android-phone-based cellular gateways in Zanzibar, Tanzania, all 16 deployed phones failed despite significant engineering efforts, and six phones became physically damaged. This article examines what went wrong and how mobile computing platforms could adapt to support more traditional embedded computing roles and workloads.