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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?"
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.
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.
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."
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...
how does it count more? Its all just doing stuff.
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?