Ask Slashdot: Best Use For an Old Smartphone? 301
zaba writes "The original iPhone was a dream come true for me. Phone, camera, mp3 player and data all in one device. It had more cpu and memory than my first computer! Several generations of smartphones later, my wife and I have some random smartphones (some iPhone, some Android) lying around. Between privacy concerns, bad batteries, etc. these phones are not worthy of donation. So, I ask you, Slashdot readers, have you done anything fun with an old smartphone? Any suggestions/ideas?"
Donate it (Score:1, Informative)
to underpriviled inner city orphans in a homeless shelter.
Re:Use it as a server (Score:5, Informative)
This package actually does a few more things as well ( DLNA, DNS, Dynamic DNS, Email, FTP(S), Proxy, SMS Gateway, Time, HTTP(S), (secure) WebDAV), and the performance seems pretty impressive for what it is. Of course, the power consumption is really low as well. I'm pretty damn impressed by the app in general.
What I've done.... (Score:1, Informative)
I upgraded from an iPhone 4 to a 4S last year The 4 is still working beautifully and I keep it up-to-date because it will be my backup phone in case my current phone is put out of commission. The way I manage this is as soon as I get home, my main phone goes on the charger and the rest of the stuff I do (email, web browsing, etc) is done on the old 4. I could flip over to the old phone in a jiff, should the unexpected occur, and not feel like I'm using a foreign device.
I have an older 3G phone that I still keep around. I will not donate it because I'm not convinced I can wipe it securely. I never got around to it but I wanted to turn it into a clock. I thought it'd be handy to have that sitting under my computer monitor so I can keep a eye on the time while I'm playing games. Bonus points for showing me email notifications .
I found a $1.00 app that takes photos at certain intervals and uploads them to an FTP space. I was going to use that as a poor-man's security system.. well really I just mean a "what does my cat actually do during the day?" cam. The only thing stopping me there is I haven't figured out how to mount it somewhere. I imagine some velcro-tape will do but I haven't taken the time to try that out yet.
On a side note: I do agree with you about NOT donating it. A friend of mine sold me his iPod Touch several years ago. He did a factory reset on it, but when I installed Pandora on it his preferences came up. I guess he had it before and I was logged in as him (For fun I ran a bunch of Britney Spears songs.. I never did find out if I succeeded in polluting his playlist.) I need to be clear that this is a first generation iPod Touch and it's possible that Apple has since fixed that. But it was enough to make me wary of handing any of my old devices over to someone else. It's also the reason why I enabled encryption on my Galaxy Tab the moment I fired it up.
I have an old WinMo phone that isn't doing anything. Is there anything useful or fun I can make it do?
Open source! (Score:2, Informative)
Give it to one of the Open Source mobile distribution developers! For example: Replicant, SHR, Debian:
http://replicant.us/ [replicant.us]
http://shr-project.org/ [shr-project.org]
https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile [debian.org]
Re:Burn them (Score:5, Informative)
Burn the mother fuckers already, and get on with your life.
Yeah, but those of us who don't have a life can use half-dead Android phones as Arduino controllers.
Or we could use them with AndroUAV to control our own drones.
http://www.amarino-toolkit.net/ [amarino-toolkit.net]
http://developer.android.com/tools/adk/index.html [android.com]
http://www.instructables.com/id/Androino-Talk-with-an-Arduino-from-your-Android-d/ [instructables.com]
http://code.google.com/p/androuav/ [google.com]
Still usable, and still worth a bit (Score:4, Informative)
If it's in good shape and still works, you can still get a decent price [ebay.com] for them.
It's still quite a usable device.
Re:Burn them (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GPS Logger + CarCam (Score:4, Informative)
Here ya go! [androidacademy.com]
Re:They don't need a plan (Score:4, Informative)
Why isn't this comment modded up more?
Plenty of charities will accept phones for exactly this reason. They can refurbish old phones well enough so they'll keep a charge and be able to dial 911 for emergencies. Even if your phone has a single fatal flaw, they can re-use parts of it to get other, identical models working.
If the phone currently works (even if you have to use the charger to get it to power up), just remember to scrub your data before you send it in. Many smartphones have this ability as a built-in feature so the phone appears to be "factory fresh" from a software and data perspective.