Older Android devices

[KMatle]

Right now I have several old devices with small RAM (512 MB - 1 GB) which makes them quite unusable. Any ideas? Rooting is not always possible (here I could delete most stock apps).

 

[Sandman]

Any ideas?

Sure, you could put them like this under a door - great on a windy day.

 

[Star-Dust]

Some use dated devices for burglar alarms and warnig alert.

For example, my friend connected to the network charger. Check if your mobile phone is charging. At the moment he doesn't receive electricity he considers it a blackout, and device send him a sms to warn him. this is because it has an aquarium with a hydraulic pump connected to the electric current which if it gets stuck die fish

Others use it to connect to Arduino.

Another friend of mine uses an old device inside his tractor with the GPS on to find out when his neighbor borrows your tractor without telling him anything.
Read the GPS position once every 30 minutes and check that you have been moved

still connect it to the PC so that through the PC you can send confirmation sms to users who subscribe to an online service.

You can rattle off many uses that would save you from buying an arduino with a built-in GSM card…

 

[ac9ts]

I pulled the SIM from an old phone, put it in airplane mode but turned the WiFi on, and I use it as an audio source for some portable speakers in the yard. I also have a Motorola Xoom tablet I use for web browsing, book reading, and now video conferencing.

 

[Peter Simpson]

My whole house is setup with Sonoff smart devices, they are all connected through eWeLink and synchronise with Google home. I once found the following app on the play store, it turns your old smartphones into CCTV cameras. I though that it might have been a good idea but there were a couple of downside that I didn't like. One of which is that you sign up to the eWeLink app account (I already had a eWeLink account) but you can only access the video feed from within your home, another downside was that it didn't synchronise with Google home or Alexa which the standard eWeLink smart devices app does perfectly fine.

This app is good if you want to use your old smartphones as CCTV cameras and you are on the same WiFi. Actually they might have updated the app since I last used it so you might be able to access video feeds whilst not on the same WiFi now, but you would have to test that out for yourself. When I first tested this app it only supported WiFI and not 4G, hopefully they have changed that now.

eWeLink Camera - Home Security - Apps on Google Play

With an old, unused Android cellphone, you can have video surveillance anytime.

play.google.com

 

[rabbitBUSH]

I know that there is someone out there who uses donated phones and turns them into listening devices for use by forest rangers to detect illegal logging operations. they take the phones and canablise / modify them, package them, and they then get mounted in the forest, the rest is apparently obvious......

how about GPS logger (hiking, cycling, driving, geocaching etc)?

there are a number of ways that those could be adapted for use in workshops : small apps could detect speed of spindles and lathe, measure items blah blah.

i know one group who use that sort of phone for citizen science projects where they have data collection points in remote-ish places who capture data regularly and then post to a data collation point.

some of these ideas would mean finding somewhere to donate the units to.

then there is simple IOT data logging, (something similar to @Peter Simpson suggestions....) wouldn't need too serious an app or data space on the phone.

a neighbour here uses one to monitor his automatic gate, don't know the details of how, but ... . ... . ... .

 

[josejad]

it turns your old smartphones into CCTV cameras

Another option:

Android Apps by Alfred Systems Inc. on Google Play

Introducing our first ever hardware camera, AlfredCam. Take your Alfred experience to the next level. (Now available in the US)

play.google.com

 

[sorex]

how about GPS logger (hiking, cycling, driving, geocaching etc)?

I was going to answer the same thing.

I've used Endomondo for years with such low spec phone and never had issues.

Now 2 rides with Strava on a 2 year old huawei phone and both rides stopped tracking halfway after an hour or a bit more.

Even when protecting the app, tweaking battery saving settings and other common things it keeps stopping the tracking or even closing the app.

If the phone is old enough it doesn't come with Google Play and that is what takes away most of the space on such phones.
not sure if a recent build of a sports app like Stava will work on it but maybe it's a nice project to write your own tracker that
logs to gpx data files which can be imported on a lot of sites.

 

[rabbitBUSH]

doesn't come with Google Play

i guess new versions of Huawei from now won't have Google Play, they already have set up an alternative to do updates etc and signed up companies and banks and so on here, to serve apps from their new site. which is going to be interesting from an android point of view. suppose they will bring their own OS as well.

which begs the question about even "slightly" old phones from huawei being useful if you insist on Google services. (because the updates might stop working, my old and current one still update but I will move to another brand soon on two of the phones).

all of which means, as well, that, these old phones (tw0 yr +) become interesting for developing all sorts of apps for fun or learning new techniques etc etc....

there again trump will be out in november so maybe all the above is moot.......

 

[sorex]

with old devices I'm talking about Samsung Galaxy Apollo & Samsung GIO 5880 or whatever it was

when google play installs on it or updates when it is already on it the 'disk' is immediatly full even if you don't use most of that stuff.

besides that the os itself is rock solid and without all the add-on that come by default these days.