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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?"
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?
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.
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.
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.
I suspect AC throws away his TV when the remote batteries die.
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.
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.
Ebay it and buy a bottle of wine. Then drink the wine with a friend....
to underpriviled inner city orphans in a homeless shelter.
No one underprivileged would be able to afford the AT&T iPhone plan.
Perhaps, the most fun use of an old smart phone is the mobile phone throwing contest
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.
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)
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."
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.
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'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."
This is Slashdot. Load malware of some sort onto it, then leave it on the bus.
#DeleteChrome
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!
Something like the MIT junkyard jumbotron then?
http://jumbotron.media.mit.edu/
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?