I kept my old phone (an AT&T-locked Samsung Galaxy S7) going for 10 years, replacing the battery midway through and using it well into unsupported territory. I like to keep things working as long as I can within reason, and I also know that this phone is destined to become e-waste as soon as I get rid of it.
But with more apps losing support, and electronics prices on the rise, it felt like now was finally the time to upgrade (to a refurbished Pixel 8 Pro). So I got a new phone…
Still, I don’t want my old locked Galaxy S7 phone to go to waste just yet while it’s still roughly working!
So does anyone have any idea of things that I can do to reuse or repurpose my old phone?
I have some ideas in mind myself, but I’m curious what you all think and if anyone has experience with repurposing old phones in interesting or useful ways.
Dedicated mp3 Player?
I put LineageOS on my old phone, put adblockers on it and added a few streaming sites to the home screen and gave it to my parents to use as stream caster to their smart TV. They freaking love it. “How is this free?! We’re cancelling Netflix!”
A lot of streaming sites are getting shut down left and right, sadly.
When I worked in skilled nursing I had lots of patients who loved to listen to music. Fewer and fewer families had radios or cd players to give them. Perhaps donate it to a skilled nursing facility loaded with Elvis and Neil Diamond mp3s
Pipboy!
Personally I prefer to give mine to charities that help women escape domestic violence households and need help setting up their lives again. Many leave with nothing, including their phones which are usually being tracked by their abuser. Have a look around to find one, or a local homeless shelter. Or, if you’re worried it will become ewaste, send it to a recycling centre - many parts can be stripped out and made into new products.
Maybe root the device and turn it into a pi-hole server, may not be the best way to do it, but it’d be a fun project and you can limit the ads on your network while just leaving it sitting near your router
Use it as a security camera.
TV remote
Media streamer
Media player with apps like media monkey
Media player with apps like media monkey
Just be aware that Media Monkey has issues. It regularly swaps my track numbers for the play count, and has consistently lowered the volume of my tracks.
I used the volume leveling function, and found out that it was decreasing the volume of all the tracks it had access to. Luckily the originals on the computer were unaffected
Emulator game portable -
install an emulator, load it up with literally every game from atari to gameboy advance , and snap on a phone-attachable controller
A dedicated home phone.
Dashcam.
Security cam.
Offline in-car map navigation.
Contribute to science research by letting your phone process data https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
Have security vulnerabilities
I used an old phone with a broken screen as a webcam since covid untill it totally broke recently.
However it needed some stars to align; I had a 3D printer to make a custom holder so it could sit on my monitor unobtrusively. I also luckily had a phone with a built in method to limit the battery charging so it could be plugged in 24/7. I was able to disable all power saving and permission features, so the app could run 24/7 without being killed by android.
I used droidcam, which works with an OBS plugin nowadays. I got it to the point that I just needed to launch OBS and my webcam was on, no touching or fiddling with the phone at all.
I use mine as an MP3 player. I put Finamp on it, loaded it with music, and listen during the day.
you could always use it for some tech experiments! there’s lots of examples out there. retro gaming console, home server, run your own AI model (at least better than using big tech!), etc
run your own AI model
What AI model could you run locally on a decade old phone though? Probably nothing too sophisticated. It would have to be like ChatGTP 2 or something which doesn’t do a great job of holding a conversation
I always just hang on to them in case somebody breaks or loses theirs.
By the way, I’m all out of old phones and my son’s is busted, so if you don’t know anyone who could use it…
Turn them into like tablets or webcams. If you think to yourself “hey, this would be nice if I had a screen or a device here in this room for me to use…” then there you go.
