Hi,
Which things can I do with an old android phone ? Like a Xiaomi mi a3.
Take the battery out of it. Put on lineage OS. Use it as a microserver, mine some crypto like monero. Because it’s CPU-based. You could use it as a remote for other devices. You could use it as a webcam for your house. It can do everything it used to do.
Old lithium batteries become a fire hazard, so I would recommend removing it if you can. Or at least replacing it with the new battery. Good practice at least even if you break it
Leaving an airplane mode, don’t use the cellular modem, you’re not getting any hardware driver updates. So it’s security risk. Don’t do anything too sensitive with it. But just for you around home network it’s fine
Thanks for you answer !
Why LineageOS ?
large hardware support portfolio, i think its the single most widely compatible ROM. As long as one crazy maintainer hangs on to your device, you will get lineage updates.
Just because you forgo hardware driver security updates, doesn’t mean you should stop getting android security updates.
Can you run phones without batteries off of AC?
Depends on the design of the phone. Some will work just fine off of USB power. Some will try to detect a battery and then fail the boot. For the ones that are more troublesome you’ll have to Google the instructions on to make a dummy battery load. The important thing is to get the lithium ion battery out of the circuit.
Make it a server/put LineageOS on it.
Depends on the age of the phone and if it is boot loader locked by a carrier.
Backup
I used to use my old android phone to run an octoprint server.
Install Pixel Experience, and use it to upload photos to your Google account without consuming your Google Drive data allotment.
Superb idea !
Music player, bedside alarm clock/weather info, time lapse camera
I use mine as a camera in the garage when I’m working on my car so I don’t get my current phone all greasy.
I use mine as a desktop webcam with droidcam
I do the same thing. The camera on my old phone is much better than the one built into my laptop. And even though the phone’s battery is pretty much dead, that doesn’t matter since I have it hooked up and powered via usb all the time.
Baby monitor or dash cam.
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I am hooking up mine to a projector and using it to drive my home theater. Sound is handled by a bluetooth speaker. Is it perfect? Far from it. Is it a better experience for watching movies on TV? Absolutely.
I use an old Nexus 5 I have as a offline GPS device for cycling.
I use an IP webcam app and run my old S10+ as a CCTV camera inside my garage, viewable in Home Assistant.
Home Assistant, learn about it. You could turn your phone into a camera viewer, light switch, smart weather provider, detection device with Bluetooth. Etc.
You can use it for a Briar mailbox. Briar is a privacy focused messaging with no centralized server.
Instead you can use an old smartphone to act as a server to collect and distribute messages between you and your friends/family.
