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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?"
For science, of course.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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?
Donate the phone to the elderly http://www.securethecall.org/. Oh wait, this is slashdot. Root the phone and then donate it.
I suspect AC throws away his TV when the remote batteries die.
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.
to underpriviled inner city orphans in a homeless shelter.
No one underprivileged would be able to afford the AT&T iPhone plan.
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)
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 believe this is what you're looking for:
http://slashdot.org/story/12/08/20/0216225/finland-hosts-mobile-phone-throwing-championships
I am using one of my older 7" tablets as a bedside clock at the moment, always synched and accurate
No Coffee, No Workee
I did a total reversal on this several years ago. I'm 22 now, but when I was in high school, my parents got blackberries with gps. There was an app that pinged back the geocoordinates at regular intervals when a specified SMS was received as well as immediate updates when I logged into them. I set the SMS up to be innocuous, like "I just fed the dog" or whatever. Whenever they were going out with friends, I'd SMS them to start up the tracker, and feed the coordinates into google maps, and know exactly where they were.
It was a pretty sweet deal. I gotta lot of 1:1 secret bouncy funtime with my gfs/bfs those years due to my careful planning, and ability to always track where my parents were and their ETA to home.
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
I throw them at the kids on my lawn. But the lil' bastards just keep coming back for more, so I keep the .410 with rock salt loads handy.
The cell phones are rich in rare Chinese vitamins and minerals, and eventually get buried beneath all the beer cans, and other trash. So I am effectively building a rare earth heavy metal mineral mine for my great-great-great-grandchildren.
I am also hoping that some of the kids might port Openwrt to the phones that they pick up.
Sometimes Da Ranch gets visitors from foreign countries, who ask if they can borrow a phone that works with the bands in the area. I just tell them pick one up of their liking off the front lawn.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.