Running BOINC on an old phone

I have this fairly old phone: a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in "Lavender Purple". I got it at a thrift store for $20 untested, and it ended up working fairly well for my needs (communicate with people when needed).

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 on Wikipedia

While the Note 9 was a great device, I ultimately left it when the screen started acting up. When I got it, the screen had a fairly small dead pixel blob on the side, and touch was a bit finicky, but acceptable, and the parts of the screen that didn't accept touch I could interact with using a fairly cheap replacement S-Pen I had gotten previously. However, over time, the dead pixel blob grew (mostly from me messing with it :) ) and the lack of touch got to an unacceptable point, so I had to ditch it for something else.

For the most part, it's been sitting there unused, since it's carrier-locked and therefore bootloader-locked. That's when I thought of using it for BOINC, a project that lets you donate unused computing resources to scientific projects.

BOINC

I started with wiping the device from what I had before and setting it up from scratch. After going through the fairly tedious factory reset process, I was dropped into the default home screen.

Of course, being a free software activist, I immediately copied some APKs and installed them (not necessarily in this order):

• Material Files (so I can install apps through there instead of the crappy, proprietary official file manager),
• F-Droid (of course),
• Batch Uninstaller (just in case I would be allowed to uninstall any apps; I couldn't :( ),
• KISS Launcher (to replace the crappy, proprietary official launcher),
• Unexpected Keyboard[1] (to replace the crappy, proprietary official keyboard),
• Karma Firewall (my typical firewall app, because there's no way I'm letting all the preinstalled crapware phone home), and
• Athena Firewall (I wanted to try it out after hearing about it on a This Week in F-Droid).

Material Files

F-Droid

Batch Uninstaller

KISS Launcher

Unexpected Keyboard

Karma Firewall

Athena Firewall

This Week in F-Droid page mentioning Athena Firewall

I normally use Karma (and before that, Rethink) as a firewall. I just wanted Athena to try it out. However, I ended up using it here because Karma was inconsistent (not working on boot, sometimes not blocking apps, etc.).

Rethink

Setting up BOINC was pretty simple:

• Install the BOINC app (available on F-Droid)
• Sign up with whatever project you want (as a free software activist, I went with Einstein@Home, as that was the only one I could find whose application was free software).
• Log in to the project in the app, then you should be good to go!
• (Optional) Configure settings. Since this device will be used purely for BOINC, I allowed it when the screen is on/when on battery, I set the minimum battery percentage to 40%, and the maximum battery temperature to 55°C. I also turned off "Transfer tasks on WiFi only", as otherwise it wouldn't download the tasks through the firewall, despite being on Wi-Fi.

BOINC on F-Droid

Einstein@Home

Ideally, I would like some sort of cooling setup so the phone isn't so hot (I got a notification from the phone's stupid "Device Care" app that said BOINC was using too much CPU), but it's fine for now. I would also like it running 24/7, but that'll take a bit more work.

I'm pixelo789 on Einstein@Home if anyone's interested:

https://einsteinathome.org/content/pixelo789

[1]: My normal keyboard when I have to use Android is FlorisBoard, but I wanted something smaller and lighter.

FlorisBoard