Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Best Use For an Old Smartphone?
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?"
to underpriviled inner city orphans in a homeless shelter.
For science, of course.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The batteries aren't as hard to replace as some non-techies make you believe. Buy the parts from chinese retailers, do the work yourself and the phone will perform like when it was new. There are a lot of people with worse phones, who would appreciate even an old smartphone.
Actually, for real. Has anyone considered networking a couple hundred old iPhones or Android phones together to form some sort of beowulf cluster of them?
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
Try to crack them to put a new OS on there and see where that takes you.
Well, if they still work, use them when traveling outside the US, as they can be unlocked, so you can just pop in a local sim card.
And, as a backup for your current phone, since if you break it, repairing it or replacing it outside your subsidized price window will be expensive.
Plug it in and use VNC to a separate session to make it a mini-head for monitoring things like email, tweets, system sensors, etc. For example, what I did with my tablet.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
For Android phones, use it as a Web/FTP/DNLA/DNS/Email/Proxy server.
Leave them plugged in if the batteries don't work. Have one do call forwarding to the others when the line is occupied (as opposed to call waiting? Is that possible?)
With a couple of phones that have user-facing cameras, you could set up a sweet touchscreen video intercom at your frontdoor. If you're worried about them being thieved, you could conceal all but the camera lense and make it a one-way experience only.
For that matter you could use them as wireless CCTV security and potentially check in on them from home, the office, while on holiday.
Donate the phone to the elderly http://www.securethecall.org/. Oh wait, this is slashdot. Root the phone and then donate it.
I use old phones over wifi to control my XBMC media boxes. When I build my new house in a few years, I'll probably incorporate them into home automation since I'll have around 10 lying around. Most phones in airplane mode with wifi will last at least a week, and it lets me have chargers around the house to keep them (or my current phone) plugged in most of the time.
... is vaguely mind-boggling to me.
I must be getting old.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I believe I bought my iPhone 3G for $300 on launch day and I sold it about 3.5 years later to a friend for $125, which was well under the asking prices at that time, most of which were around $150-175 if memory serves. I was shocked to see that it had held its value so well, despite being two generations outdated at that point (and feeling like it too).
The scene might be a bit different these days, now that Apple has started offering older models for lower prices, but considering your phone can be purchased without needing to commit to a contract, that alone makes it more valuable than you may realize.
mp3 player, of course a good rom would permit FLAC and other formats... however you would probably need a good capacity SD card (if the cell supports it) ...just keep it in airplane mode to improve battery life.
Plug the phone into a wall outlet and install one of the numerous free Android apps that turns the phone into a wi-fi IP video camera. Mount it on your front porch and see who stops by when you're not home. Integrate the camera into an external Zoneminder server if you want motion detection, alarms, and recording.
I use my old iPhone 3g as a dedicated client or "remote control" for Pandora or Spotify around the house (coupled with Airport Express base stations in the rooms with speakers). Yes, I know I could do this with the phone in my pocket, but damnit that thing spends more time in its charging cradle than in active use.
Mount it near your toilet for easy access to Angry Birds or whatever when in the toilet, or set up a small speaker set in your shower room and use the smartphone to play music from online streams over WLAN or similar.
Build a cool ass steam punk enclosure for it. Make it a table top phone with a handset using a mic and headphones (hide them inside the ear and mouth piece). Keep the display but root it and get some brass typeset graphics for the number keys, etc.
If it can do Skype or video chat try that too.
Make the enclosure big and brass with lots of adjustable levers for positioning it (3 arms would do).
OR
Make a Jukebox out of it and enclose it in something with cool speakers.
Maybe even both.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Use my OG droid + dock as a bedside alarm clock.
Are you unsure if you can completely wipe the phone?
Anyways, put it on craigslist. Or ask around. I'm sure someone will be willing to take them. I use Android devices as scoring devices for quiz meets, so if someone wanted to give me a pile of Android phones, I'd be happy. Or if someone wants to get into development, having a range of phones is always helpful.
I gave one of my old android phones to my toddler so she can download games and such without harming mine or my wifes phones. I also have one loaded with stuff like faceniff, shark, wifikill, pixie, and stuff like that, basically a simple pentesting platform.
If you have a Mac Mini or other living room media center setup, use this Logitech app or a similar app to control it.
Ebay it and buy a bottle of wine. Then drink the wine with a friend....
I always keep my previous Android as not only an emergency spare, but use it in a dock in the bedroom as an alarm clock and weather station.
The only thing annoying is that you can't use NTP with it, unless you are rooted... so since there is no cell connection, time will drift.
There are several apps you can use to turn them into IP cameras that operate over wifi. You'd just need a plug to keep them powered and wifi, and can then use a computer to record when they detect movement, making them a handy security camera.
Compared to the price of your usual IP camera's its a bargain solution.
and run it in a chroot jail. Then benchmark the processor with Povray 3.6:
Debian 7.0(armhf), gcc 4.6, -mhard-float -mcpu=cortex-a9 -march=armv7 -mthumb
-mfpu=neon -funsafe-math-optimizations
Parse Time: 0 hours 0 minutes 4 seconds (4 seconds)
Photon Time: 0 hours 1 minutes 30 seconds (90 seconds)
Render Time: 1 hours 20 minutes 38 seconds (4838 seconds)
Total Time: 1 hours 22 minutes 12 seconds (4932 seconds)
Debian 6.0 (armel), gcc 4.4, -mfloat-abi=softfp -mcpu=cortex-a9
Parse Time: 0 hours 0 minutes 4 seconds (4 seconds)
Photon Time: 0 hours 1 minutes 43 seconds (103 seconds)
Render Time: 1 hours 49 minutes 59 seconds (6599 seconds)
Total Time: 1 hours 51 minutes 46 seconds (6706 seconds)
Here are some results compared to other processors:
Ordered by pps/GHz:
Core i5 2400S (2.5 GHz): 235.17 pps ; 94.07 pps/GHz
Athlon II x4 (2.8 GHz): 179.82 pps ; 64.22 pps/GHz
Celeron 220 (1.2 GHz): 81.15 pps ; 67.62 pps/GHz
Pentium 4m (1.5 GHz): 36.24 pps ; 24.16 pps/GHz
Exynos 4210 (1.2 GHz): 29.90 pps ; 24.91 pps/GHz (-mfloat-abi=hard)
Atom N270 (1.6 GHz): 28.96 pps ; 18.10 pps/GHz
Exynos 4210 (1.2 GHz): 21.99 pps ; 18.32 pps/GHz (-mfloat-abi=softfp)
PowerPC 750 (700 MHz): 20.47 pps ; 29.25 pps/GHz
Pentium !!! (450 MHz): 12.43 pps ; 27.62 pps/GHz
seeing you and the wife clearly have money out the ying yang to piss away on that many smart phones over such a short period of time that the only reasonable thing for you to do is throw them all in the trash.
Perhaps, the most fun use of an old smart phone is the mobile phone throwing contest
The first 2 that come to mind are Paper Weight and Skeet. There likely better re-uses than Skeet but, I doubt they are any that are more fun. First you call someone that bugs you, Your boss, your Ex, the IRS or DMV then you yell pull, and blam. That's how you drop a call.
Robot
You could also turn into a web cam or, with appropriate sensors, a weather station.
A few months ago, a co-worker had setup an improvised security camera for our by using an old iphone, a power cord, running a free app and some tape.
It was mainly to protect the room which was full of computer equipment (that was going to be deployed at a convention, for a brief time and then brought back).
It was much more amusing to see us going in and out with carts of gear then it was an effective security device, but it would could be used for a lot of fun art/photography projects.
Super easy to setup, free (if you already have the phone) and it's easy to get the pictures/video off it.
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?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have any plans to do mobile development? If so save them for debugging and testing. You may want to leave old operating systems on them for this purpose.
If you have no interest in mobile development do you have someone among your family and friends who does? Give it to them for debugging and testing.
Old second gen iPod touch + clearance dock for $10 equals 32 GB music system. though I have been contemplating a permanent hook up for my van.
Give it to one of the Open Source mobile distribution developers! For example: Replicant, SHR, Debian:
http://replicant.us/
http://shr-project.org/
https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile
make great secondary mp3 players. For the car, for the exercise room, whatever.
Didn't they just do that with 500,000 Android phones in China?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
fuck beowulf clusters... think an array of LCD with built-in controller and wireless communication!
For light usage it should be fine.
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/
http://developer.android.com/tools/adk/index.html
http://www.instructables.com/id/Androino-Talk-with-an-Arduino-from-your-Android-d/
http://code.google.com/p/androuav/
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Yes, the hot grits prevent scaling beyond exponents of n+2 without Portman compensation.
I have an original Motorola Droid that I'm going to see about turning into a smart thermostat. When I get the time, I'm going to try to interface an HID chip like the U421 with it. Once I get those two talking, it should be trivial to interface with the furnace and AC units and a few 1-Wire temperature sensors around the house.
True, that phone is probably more powerful then my first two or three computers combined (TI-99A, C=64 and a whopping Turbo (4X) XT compatible), but it's just sitting in a drawer anyway.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
compare how long it takes for each old smartphone to asplode. hilarity ensues. maybe do it outside. and stand behind a lead wall.
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
My old Droid 1 has come in handy many times with this. You tether your internet connection to your computer through USB, then have your phone connected to the WIFI. Works great. Played games through it too with little issue.
For Android, install Debian Linux in parallel using LinuxInstaller (not on the market but I'm sure you can track it down using google) and run whatever the heck you want on it.
PS: I'm working on reimplementing the functionality of that app at https://github.com/sgnn7/Android2Linux which can help you figure out how to do it manually if you can't find it.
Like Treo 680, Vx, etc.?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It's like an iPod Touch; it's a pocket-sized Android tablet. They're handy for kid-entertainment (install a bunch of games), and worth little enough that eventual loss / destruction is no big deal. They don't have to be the latest and greatest; an old Droid 2 runs most games just fine. They also run Kindle really well, as a truly pocket-able e-reader (again, for kids, etc) They're particularly handy when "quick entertainment" is desired, but an iPad is really too big to carry around.
ERROR: Null
get a pleeb real drunk, shove one up his ass while on vibrate AND ring, and send him to the ER to get it xrayed.
If it's in good shape and still works, you can still get a decent price for them.
It's still quite a usable device.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
(Posting anonymously since it might blacklist my username in the future...)
If I'm in the mood for some real-life trolling, I'll take an old phone, charge it up and throw in an old pre-paid SIM which I still have some credit on. I'll then leave the phone on a table or chair or some other sort of platform in public view. I'll ensure that the phone is placed a reasonable distance away from anyone else, such that it looks as though the phone was forgotten about rather than the owner being within arms-reach. I'll then observe it for a while at a distance (say around lunchtime, eating food at another table).
When someone notices, picks up the phone and decides to walk away with it (and they will, given time - generally less than 5 minutes), I'll come up to them shortly afterwards and accuse them of pinching my "friend's" phone. Most of the time they'll lie through their teeth, saying I've got the wrong person and sometimes getting angry that I've even accused them of theft. Once this happens I'll just whip out my regular phone and call the spare/decoy phone. It'll be preset with a specific annoying pop music ringtone set to maximum volume, which I'll warn the thief about that if it rings and plays such a ringtone, it's definitely my phone in question and not theirs by coincidence.
The look on their faces when they realize they've been publically caught out as a thief is priceless. Lots of apologetic "sorry, was going to find the owner" form of responses and other shit is highly entertaining. I'd never use a good phone for such a prank just in case it cannot be recovered for any reason (e.g. the thief is too physically aggressive, the phone doesn't ring for some reason, I lose sight of the thief, etc).
So yeah, good fun. But only in small bursts. :)
Mount all of them on a belt and wear a bluetooth ear clip on each ear. Also wear Birkinstocks with socks and a t-shirt that says "Municipal Emergency Response Team" with a day-glo orange vest and a hardhat.
Chick Magnet.
I've been using my old faithful G1 as a streaming music player for my stereo setup. Some other uses I've toyed with include using the android ADK board to create a poor man's AMX equivalent for home theater control, robotics projects, and even as a touch screen interface for a Rep Rap printer. These applications don't require the latest and greatest versions of the android OS, or the fastest processor. To keep the phone from slowing down I usually don't load more than just the target application I need. Also I'm running CM5 to help things along. I'm afraid I don't know what you could do with the old iphones. If you decide you don't want these devices I'm sure some makers would be happy to take them off your hands. Blanking the devices is quite easy. A quick google search for each device should give you the procedure.
Coffee: The lifeblood of intelligence in civilization.
Actually, KAAPI (I distributed memory workstealing programming framework) was ported to Iphone/Ipod touch a few years ago. It still appears on their website http://moais.imag.fr/membres/thierry.gautier/TG/Kaapi.html
Not sure if it still run...
If you're thinking of making one giant LCD display out of them (to connect to your computer), it's a LOT harder than you think. Many people that start such a project overlook the bandwidth requirements of what-ever computer is generating the content for all the displays. Even physical links (DVI, etc) can't handle a whole lot more than an expensive computer monitor without needing a second cable to handle the additional bandwidth.
I believe this is what you're looking for:
http://slashdot.org/story/12/08/20/0216225/finland-hosts-mobile-phone-throwing-championships
nuff said.
Easy.
I went from using a crappy CD player clock radio to using an old rooted Android phone. It's overkill, but benefits include picking whatever MP3 I want whenever I want... including pulling it over the network with ES File Manager, over wifi, from bed... checking weather, ebay, woot, random browsing, etc... The alarm settings, being software-based, are much more flexible and intelligent than most hardware clock radios... I get Monday-Friday how I want, weekends how I want, and one-off alarm changes are no problem. I can change the brightness and color of the time display that shows in screen-saver mode. It's a huge improvement over every hardware bedside clock I'd ever seen. And unlike using my production phone, I can leave this where it sits and keep my production phone in a convenient place for charging and grabbing as I leave home.
With a little effort, you can probably chain apps to do even better... make alarms trigger a Text-to-Speech app that does some RSS headline reading, email subject reading, announcing of the weather, etc...
I keep mine because WMWifiRouter is better than, well, anything out there for what it does. Don't need to worry about software updates killing a jailbreak or any manufacturer lockdown or anything.. just switch my sim
But do they run linux? build a Beowulf cluster.
I'd use them as a device to stream music somewhere in the house. A bathroom stereo system, maybe put one out in the shed, with the added bonus of it having wifi ability to connect to the net if required.
... wait, what?
I'm pretty sure all that counts as more of a life than going to a bar and getting wasted on the weekends. Really. Don't put yourself down just because you do something with your life.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And run an 8-bit computer emulator on it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
man I feel old all of a sudden
I just bought a new nokia C2-01 as my primary cellphone! and now THIS?!
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
My old S60 series Nokia - it has offline maps, with driving instructions (and voice guidance) and a working GPS. I got a car-window mount and a recharger for that (cost about â 10) and now it serves as a navigator in my car. I connect it via USB every few months to load in the latest map data, but other than that, it now lives in the glove compartment when not in use.
Or just put a very basic plan on it and hide it somewhere in the car hooked up to power, so if anyone ever steals your car you can track it via GPS
-Slurrey
There are various ways to get offline Wikipedia on some quite old smartphones. Then you can maybe find a charity to pass it to someone in the developing world.
Another option, as long as it has WiFi and the battery is not too bad, is to turn into into a VoIP phone for use at home.
I am using one of my older 7" tablets as a bedside clock at the moment, always synched and accurate
No Coffee, No Workee
Unified remote is great for controlling multiple computers. Also using it as a media device is great. A simple weather app can be handy by your mirror. A fancy alarm. An intercom system. A dedicated allrecipes/epicurious recipe ... thing. You could write a simple program that checks for motion and make an alarm system out of them (attach one to each door, wifi link). Use it to interact with andruino for a better project. A dedicated GPS for your bike/car (bike might be hard for getting power). http://lifehacker.com/5870378/use-your-ipad-or-android-tablet-as-a-second-monitor-for-your-computer add monitors. Turn them into some modern art piece. Let kids play with them for pretend.
That's all this AC can think of.
Seriously the best and only use for old smartphones is to try and break the world record for throwing smartphones:
http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/20/phone-throwing-contest-2012-finland/
From the BGR article: "Well, the Finns have to do something with all those Symbian devices, don’t they? Parity News reports that Finnish citizen Ere Karjalainen smashed the world record for phone-tossing last weekend when he chucked his handset 101.5 meters (333 feet) during his country’s annual mobile phone-throwing contest."
I'm going to enter the Trebuchet class... pretty sure I can get one of those Nexus phones out to at least 200+ meters.
On the other hand the potato canon gun is an attractive option.
As someone with a similar issue to the OP, I would like to thank you. I too was wondering what to do with my old smart phones that me and my wife had laying around the house, and was contemplating asking slashdot this. To my surprise, there was already a post just like the one I was about to make. Skimming through all the responses yours proved the most helpful and I am now rid of my dilemma and can move on with my life. I am very thankful for your helpful comment, do you have a phone number by any chance? I don't want to be of nuisance, and I understand if you don't want to give it out, but it would be nice to have someone like you around whenever I have a problem to find the quick and easy logical solution. No worries if you don't want to give it out to a stranger.
Again, thank you so much, you changed my life.
I would like to put my old Android mobile/tablet into my Car, and use it as a GPS logger. It would charge from the car battery. I would be able to access it from the web if my car where to be stolen, and see where it is, and see who's in my car via a tiny camera. There also would be a camera facing outside front and back (or omni) to catch other events while parked.
So basically, is there an app that turns my old android into a dedicated Car GPS logger + CarCam unit?
Hivemind harvest in progress..
lol....
1) Serval mesh networking (or WiFi repeater?)
2) Avoid getting mugged
3) Asset tracking
4) Failover tethered connection / dial in to control a failed link?
A blog I run for the wealth
Get a Beowulf Cluster of Smartphone and start mining Bitcoins... you will be rich I tell you... RICH!
www.ecoatm.com
I have my old iPhone 3G mounted in my Land Rover. Its mounted on the dash and hooked up to the OBD II port. Charges while my LR1 is running. I use GOPOINT's cable and software to monitor my systems. I have WiFi installed so I have GPS and stereo functions (use the headphone jack so the iOS is not captured by the stereo). Doesn't matter if it's a iOS or Android. Better functions then all but the big screen GPS and entertainment systems. Install your messaging apps of choice and you will never be out of touch if you forget your phone at home. lastly, take some thought as to what data is onboard. It's a lot higher profile if somewhat permanently mounted on or around your dash. Not an issue for me. No one would ever think to break into my overland LR1 just based on it's slightly intimidating looks (I know it could still happen, but....)
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Whatever. Well make an animated picture frame then, so we don't need a shiny 30fps.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Junkyard Jumbotron
http://jumbotron.media.mit.edu/
Obviously... What else?
DistCC cluster for native arm/android compiling
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Something like the MIT junkyard jumbotron then?
http://jumbotron.media.mit.edu/
Any ideas for old Palm smart phones? All I've managed so far with my 700p is to use it as a portable alarm clock because the speaker is so loud.
Put two or three in the glove compartment of your car. Keep them fully charged and with non-expired prepaid sim-cards. You never know when disaster strikes, and YOU need to make a call, out there on the road. All alone, and you forgot your current phone at home or somewhere else. In Norway, this can be the difference between life and death when out driving in blizzards (which we do often).
I use mine for streaming radio, but my battery is still good.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's interesting that in this story there aren't many comments saying how a device released in 2007 isn't actually that old and doesn't need to be replaced. Then a story about a new generation CPU or GPU comes out and there are plenty of comments about how people are still running Pentium 4s (from 2002 or so).
I don't really have much of a point here. Actually I'm looking for a better job so I can afford the latest toys as well.
Two years ago I wrote a SIFI story set about 5 years from now in which a geneticist wanting to do a secret study away from work built herself a supercomputer out of old smartphones.
Granted in the story phones had completely replaced PC's, when not used mobile they had 3-D projectors and laser-scanners to create large 3D displays (with the phone lying flat on the table) and a full-sized projected keyboard as well as voice operation where useful. :P
Ubuntu's phone-dock idea is effectively the same idea except without the 3D part
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
When my wife and I bought Android phones, we put our two Nokia S60 phones, an E61i and an E66, to work. Both no longer are on cell phone networks, but their SIP capabilities are used to connect to my Asterisk server. As such, they make wonderful cordless phones, with a very long talk time compared to most consumer phones. I believe the iPhone can do the same thing.
use my old android phone as a wireless webcam
sag
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.
PirateBox
Agreed. Nokia 5800 for GPS track logging while out walking or mountain biking. 18 hours runtime with the GPS on. No other Smartphone OS comes close to this battery life.
They're really useful as high quality Skype based baby monitors.
I think bandwidth is a problem for one computer driving a shitload of scavenged LCD's, but in this case each screen comes with its own computer. All you have to do is tell each one where it is in the big picture, so it renders its own little window simultaneously with all the others.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
I'm in a Lions club and dabble in IT for the visually impaired.
If you want your smart phone to make a difference in the world, put some apps on the phone, connect to a TV, set it up and help a visually impaired child or adult who struggles to read their mail or a book. Best of all, it's free. Visually impaired people are the most financially strapped people you will meet.
A smart phone with a camera that can be attached to a television works much better than magnifying glasses. Besides zooming in and out, smart phones have accessibility options that can change contrast, colors, and other useful functions that work very well for the visually impaired.
Without cell or wireless you can sometimes manually install apps that are helpful. Unfortunately some apps I really like will not function without service.
My experience is droid (hdmi capable). Not sure about discarded iPhones but somebody else probably has experience with that.
You can do this in any community, anywhere in the world. You are guaranteed an endless supply of old smart phones and a lot of appreciative people.
Lots of organizations donate old cell phones to the underprivileged. The point is that the telcos are required to accept calls from cellphones dialing 911, regardless of whether they have a plan or not. As long as the old cell phone has a charge and a signal, it provides security to folks who might have (say) a problem with spousal abuse, or...
Some smartphones that are coming off of 2 year contract have mini-HDMI ports on them. I just sold a DroidX that did.
If so, install the XBMC apk, and use it as a home theatre PC!
You can use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and have the perfect home theatre experience.
Install a bunch of learning apps for toddlers / children. They love the touch interface games
I use my Nook Color running CyanogenMod as an XBMC remote. Also my wife's & my current droid have the app on them. So when we crash on the couch to watch some shows or movies you cant beat the setup.
If you are one of those people who want to control their media, not the other way around.. then this is a great use for an old droid w/ wifi capabilities.
See if you can mod your device.
NAVI-X should be added to XMBC
Thats fantastic! Thanks for the link.
OK, great question, but I have a slight variation here... I have a Galaxy S - brilliant phone, still has a decent battery, but my LCD has cracked and I just get a black screen. It still turns on & off (menu keys at the bottom light up, react to my touch). I haven't tried plugging it into my TV, but I'm assuming it'll work. Will the Android OS be of any use as a media server, controlled remotely? Any other more useful ROMs anyone can suggest (I've rooted it already)?
how does it count more? Its all just doing stuff.
If you're doing it with non-realtime content as a form of public performance art of finite duration, it's fairly straightforward: stream it slowly in advance, with each phone buffering its individual pixel value for each frame along with a timecode, then use the network to just transmit the clock & timecodes and have the phones step through their pre-buffered values on schedule.
It's kind of like an orchestra with a director -- unless they're all spontaneously improvising jazz, they have sheet music in front of them that was given to them (and well-practiced) long before the actual performance. The director isn't communicating the note and duration to each individual musician in realtime -- he's just conveying timing info to keep them all in sync.
Wow, I'm actually shocked at all the snarky non-answers. At least for a question as geeky as this I expected better, I guess Slashdot really has gone downhill.
You could build a Pirate Box! I did that w/ my old Android.
One other tip... Ask this on Hack A Day, not Slashdot!!
So, what the heck is an LR1?
That's an insanely good idea. Thanks!
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Please excuse the crappy house "music" in some of the below videos. It's not my fault idiots on youtube don't know good music. ;)
For Android phones and smaller tablets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9H54r6AUNA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTDd5BrKL4k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65f84mjN_8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhPtHkAkIFU
For iPhone:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dashcommand-obd-ii-gauge-dashboards/id321293183?mt=8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOtcg5lg6_k
(and of course, TomTom GPS on a windshield mount is another excellent use)
for iPad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiKNLBD2tmA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB53-6SWEOk
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
seriously, there are plenty of people that don't have iphones. Some of them even want them. So, give it away. If you had bought an android phone, i'd say r00t it and make some cool device out of it, or perhaps a wifi home security cam, or something similar.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/08/20/0216225/finland-hosts-mobile-phone-throwing-championships
I am amused that you say "laptops with much larger screen, keyboard and USB ports are far more cost effective" than using an old Android phone. If he doesn't have said laptop and DOES have said android phone...how exactly is it more cost effective to throw away the phone and buy a laptop?
Something like the MIT junkyard jumbotron then?
http://jumbotron.media.mit.edu/
Damn, my mod points just expired. +11, Awesome. I've got a bunch of tablets and old laptops. I definitely need to try this.
sudo eat my shorts
With multicast, this probably wouldn't be an issue. It's not like you'd really need the phone to reply.
buy dock, install tune in radio, convenient cheap internet radio
I've always wondered, could you attach 2 smartphones on either side of say, a stick, in order to create a guitarlike instrument.
Plug it into the wall, get a couple cheap bluetooth receivers or just a wired audio switcher. Add some midrange Logitech powered 2.1 speakers and you have yourself the poor man's version of a $2000 Sonos setup.
In Soviet Russia, old iPhones make a Beowulf cluster of YOU and Natalie Portman! With hot grits down your pants.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Wipe the memory.
Update it to the latest iOS.
Pass on to someone who will appreciate it.
Either in the family, a friend or sell it on eBay.
A short battery life may still be plenty of time. Short is generally a day or half a day which is enough to still be able to enjoy it. If you want more battery life then it is only about $50 to $100 to upgrade the battery with a new one. Less if you do it yourself.
My car has an interface for an iPod/iPhone in the glove box, so my G1 iPhone is now a dedicated MP3 storage device.
It gets charged through the cars battery, so the only time I take it out of the car is once a month or so to pull songs out of the rotation.
I don't need a cellphone, but I do need a PDA.
I used to have a Palm Tungsten 3 until it died. I have serious organizational issues, and having a to-do list with multiple alarms, programmable repeats (daily, weekly, every 17 days, etc.), as well as countdown timers, made my life significantly better.
Now, no one makes PDAs because 'everybody' has smartphones. I need a smartphone that I don't use as a phone, I guess.
I gave my kid a 1st gen iPhone with no cell service. Installed a few games. Now I hardly hear from him. The great thing is the battery can't hold as much of a charge so his playing time is somewhat limited.
Why not give it away or sell it for cheap? Not everyone can afford one and one could maksome kid real happy
Opera Mobile is far superior to the browser on the iPhone. In fact, it's better than any mobile browser.
http://www.whited00r.com/
I have an old Android phone that I use exclusively as a Skype phone. By loading Skype on startup, it becomes a full-featured phone -- especially when combined with a Skype To Go number. This just stays at home, and basically just takes the place of a land-line/office phone.
If it's worth the $25 a month to you, you can buy a data only plan from Simply Mobile, plug the phone into your 12v line and hide the phone in your car. If your car gets stolen, you'll be able to locate it. That all assumes of course that the phone has GPS.
I stripped apart one of my older FIDO phones with the extendable antenna and turned it into a glove phone with the help of an old ski glove. I wired the speaker and the antenna into the thumb and the microphone into the pinkie and put the display and keypad on the back of the glove. It looked very inspector gadget style. I bought a cheap SIM with $20 on it and had people taking a double take all day while I talked with my hand.
Get an old microwave from a thrift store or pawn shop. Stick your smartphone in it. Turn it on high for at least three minutes. There'll be nothing left on the phone to be stolen. Then just recycle it and the microwave you probably killed as well.
i take my old smart phones and hard drives to my gun club and shoot the shit out of them.....
When the GP said "Intelligent people don't even HAVE a TV" I think it's fair to say "If intelligent people have a TV, they just use it as a monitor, they don't watch 'TV programming'" on it.
If you don't count PBS, and the occasional cable or satellite channel that is worth watching, then there's not much "TV" to watch.
I don't count NetFlix, DVDs, and the like as "TV" since they don't require any kind of "TV tuner."
In the late '70s I knew a family who didn't have TV for religious reasons. But to be fair, without cable they would only had 3 channels - the local ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates Cable-tv only brought in another 8 or 9 TV stations from cities within about 100 miles.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://hackaday.com/2011/05/04/applecrate-ii-doubles-the-cluster-computing-fun/
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
with the added bonus of it having wifi ability to connect to the net if required.
and a camera...?
Cheap storage VM.
Don't know if anyone still does the x-10 thing anymore... but if you aleady have a server set up to turn lights and appliances on and off in your home, you could mount the old phones in various places around the house to act as control pads to a web-based front-end.
But really, what I would do is just use them to entertain the children. Put in a cheap microSD card filled with content, such as:
Nope, I can safely say that I haven't read a slashdot headline (or any headline for that matter) that made me feel old... until now.
Look at the iFanboi accusing someone else of "doting" on a phone.
No, it's not. Opera Mobile is next to useless. It may be a marginal improvement over the bundled browser in Symbian, but it's much, much worse than every single version of mobile Safari or Chrome (on iOS/Android respectively). I say this having used it on a Nokia N8 and a Nokia C6-01; it's faster to enable the hotspot software and take out my iPod Touch to use Safari than it is to use Opera Mobile on my Nokia.
I have used some old Android phones as vehicle GPS tracking devices. The project is described here: http://www.poolhem.se/gps-tracker/
I have an old laptop with a large external hard drive, running iTunes, hooked into my home audio setup. The laptop itself is tucked away out of view but always left on with iTunes up.
My iPhone 3G is a dedicated iTunes remote. If I have guests over (or even if it's just me), I pick up the remote and pick a song, change the song, adjust the volume.
Integrated controller for a robot? There used to be many DIY kits for small bots that required notebook computers. Downside would be you would have to write your own software.
Actually, this is not a half bad idea if you scrape the "Assholy" off it. If you could get your hands on some LOX, and a wee bit of kerosene to get things started, this could be a very exciting barbeque! Analogous to the "Does is blend" series you could do "Does it vaporize!". That would have to be good for a couple million Youtube hits and an all expenses paid vacation to the Mediterranean.
Pull!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Mom does not have a smart phone and prefers not to have one. But she does need a smart phone at work (a farm and feed store) at least connected to wifi to scan QR codes on coupons sent to customers by Purina. She is the only cashier that does not have a smartphone. I'm planning on sending her my old android phone now that I saw a note that google goggles can now use phones with non-autofocus cameras. If that doesnt work, I might give up my ipod. I have just too lazy to move all my podcasts to my android phone.
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
Be Chinese: use them ALL to build an uninhabitable building then claim you are a contemporary iconoclast artist bent on modernity and technological advance integrated into cotidianeity.
Hey! I already placed a signed comment: build a computer a day EACH. Internetwork them as drones. Solve easy problems like calculating all proteins in the nose (for home grown OTC facials), or forecasting who will be the next Justin Bieber lookalike. Teraprocessor. You should be able to search for it in these comments. ;)
After beating off my grandkids for the better part of 2 yrs, gonna wipe it and reload all those cool games, and let them have at it.
I dash mount my old Nexus One and use it as a GPS using both Google Maps and Waze. I just wifi tether it to my newer phone. Takes 18 seconds to setup and serves me great for hours at a time. Works great for keeping my primary phone available for calling/email/texting/all the stuff that makes people cringe. Google Maps is even getting better about caching offline, so the setup still works fine when I drive to areas without cell service. Makes for an excellent setup.
I use my iPhone (first generation) as an alarm clock next to my bed. If you put it into airplane mode and turn off the wifi, the battery actually lasts a couple of weeks! Plus I use it when traveling in places where my current phone doesn't work (it's frequency isn't supported in some countries).
Great link. Made my day ;-)
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Why would you use multicast in a system where each receiver needs different data?!?