Will your phone work?

Most Android phones from the last several years just work.

PhoneRig runs on the spare Android phone you already own. Check the exact phone you're holding in one tap, see the requirements, or search every Android device ever made.

Check this phone

Open this page on the phone you want to use as a server, then tap the button.

The requirements

What a phone needs

🧠

More than 2 GB of RAM

Below that a phone cannot run a full server reliably, so those devices are excluded on Google Play rather than left to fail.

🤖

Android 8.0 or newer

That's most phones since ~2017.

⚙️

64-bit (arm64) processor

Effectively every Android phone of the last several years.

🔌

Plugged in + Wi-Fi

It's a server - keep it charging and online. (Not a hard requirement, just how you run it.)

Green - should work

Meets every requirement above.

Amber - works with caveats

Just above the memory floor, or older hardware - may be slower or get killed under load.

Red - won't run

Fails one of the hard requirements above: a 32-bit processor, too little memory, or Android older than 8.

Under the hood

Two engines, and what each one does

PhoneRig runs a real server on your phone. It does that through one of two engines, and your phone decides which.

🐧

The Linux engine

A full Ubuntu userland running unprivileged inside the app, via proot. A root shell, apt, and the things you would put on a small VPS.

🤖

The native engine

The server runs directly on Android, with no Linux layer under it. The same site, address and app features, without a Ubuntu userland behind them.

Two engines exist because newer phones block the mechanism proot depends on. That is a restriction their system software imposes, not something PhoneRig chose or can lift. Rather than turn those phones away, PhoneRig serves them the second way.

There is nothing to configure. The app probes your phone during setup, picks the engine that works on it, and tells you which one you got.

So every supported phone gets a working server. What differs is how far into Linux you can go.

What every supported phone gets

Your website and the builder. Your address, the free subdomain, your own domain and HTTPS through the tunnel. Photo albums, visitors, backups, alerts, PhoneRig Bot, Fleet, the browser admin panel, SSH from your laptop, the terminal built into the app, Build with AI, and the travel proxy in both its forms.

What needs the Linux engine

Gitea and code-server. VS Code Remote-SSH, whose server binary needs glibc. And anything you would install yourself with apt, which is the honest dividing line: there is no apt without a Ubuntu userland.

Ready-made apps

WordPress and Syncthing run on both engines. The native WordPress build has its own floor above the app's minimum, so on the oldest supported phones WordPress is offered only with the Linux engine. You do not have to work this out: the app never offers a ready-made app your phone cannot run.

The terminal is on both engines, but they are not the same shell. With the Linux engine it is a Ubuntu shell, with apt and the guest's own filesystem. With the native engine it is Android's own shell, and there is no apt in it. Both are built into the app, and the app says which one you are looking at before the first prompt.
Specs do not tell the whole story. Some phones block the Linux engine regardless of how good the hardware is: certain manufacturer builds, custom ROMs, and newer Android system software generally, which has tightened the mechanism proot relies on. There is no way to read that off a spec sheet, which is why the app checks in seconds during setup and tells you which engine you got.
Find your phone

Look up your exact phone

Type a brand, model, or model code / codename (e.g. SM-A528B, beryllium). Verified phones show a real verdict; everything else from Google's catalog shows as not-yet-verified.