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?"
iPhone dream (Score:3, Insightful)
Phone, camera, mp3 player and data all in one device
Older Symbian s60 devices did the same for a much lower price and IIRC better battery life
It wasnt a dream come true, it was a feature phone dressed up as a smartphone
Re:iPhone dream (Score:5, Insightful)
They really didn't do the same thing. The killer app for the iPhone was a decent touch-screen web browser and a very stable OS, neither was available on the S60 devices. It also shifted away the phone app from being the centerpiece to just being another app amongst others, which resulted in a paradigm shift. Battery life on Symbian phones was also quite awful, if you actually used any radios instead of just keeping the phone in stand-by. Symbian phones were also very crash-prone, unlike the iPhones, and you wouldn't get any major firmware updates, merely some hotfixes to some of the serious bugs.
You aren't just comparing apples to oranges, you are comparing a mid-90's low-end keypad-controlled handheld system design to a modern, touch-screen-controlled Unix-based system.
Re:Replace the batteries (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligent people don't even HAVE a TV.
Intelligent people have a TV but don't watch what you watch. You're confusing the device for the content.
Re:Replace the batteries (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Burn them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Burn them (Score:1, Insightful)
Just fuck off and die, ok? He's looking for ideas. There is nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with being a misanthropic trolling pile of turd though, which you are doing a stellar job of.
They don't need a plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Burn them (Score:4, Insightful)
how does it count more? Its all just doing stuff.
Re:Burn them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Donate it (Score:4, Insightful)
Got to love the demonisation of the poor. It's much cooler than being racist. SImply change the word "black" for "welfare recipient" in all of your rants and no-one will bat an eyelid.
It's not like we're in the middle of the worst economic crisis for decades, with many people being laid off and needing society to help them get by while they try to be the one person out of the two thousand who applied to actually get the menial, low-paid job that is all that's on offer in the ex-industrial town they had the misfortune to be born in. Heaven forbid anyone would aspire to owning a consumer good which the constant saturation of advertising states is the only way to validate yourself as a person.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chavs-Demonization-Working-Owen-Jones/dp/184467696X [amazon.co.uk] might open your eyes (UK context but applicable to many western countries)
Re:Replace the batteries (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, what do intelligent people watch on TV? The Learning Channel hasn't been about learning in a decade. Same for Discovery. The "news" networks are atrocious. CSPAN is pointless. CSPAN2 on the weekends is good, but that's BookTV so why not just read? Charlie Rose is on past my bed time.
I like the Daily Show and Colbert, but let's be honest that's not exactly smart TV. Smarter than average, but still a guilty pleasure.
If you want to watch something smart, skip the TV entirely and check out Academic Earth [academicearth.org]. Why can't we have a cable network this good?