this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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44
What cool things could I do with an old phone? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hi, everyone!

I have an old ASUS Zenfone Max Pro M2 laying around getting some dust, and have no idea what interesting things could be done with/to it. Well, its display is broken and it's impossible to use it conventionally due to ghost touch, but a fix for this is to mirror its screen onto my computer using scrcpy.

I searched the web to find some ideas on which uses I could give to it, but none sounded good. I was thinking about turning it into a self-hosted file storage or something of the like. Is it possible to do so on with a phone? I'd love to hear from you guys about this or any other suggestion you have!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

During the pandemic, I actually did a couple projects with old, broken phones for fun.

One was, I ran Kubernetes on them. Why? I was on lockdown and bored and lonely. Another was, my son and I experimented with using them as robot controllers, instead of RasPis. We sort of got this to work.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

You could turn it into a Pihole or AdGuard.

Turning it into a NAS would be limited by how much storage it has, so it could just be a fun project to do for the purpose of doing it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Running Ubuntu Touch because Linux lol

RetroArch gaming console "we have a DS at home"

Lineage OS?

owotrack VR fbt tracker?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Love how the ubuntu touch website has the Nexus 5 as a featured phone. Was probably my all time favourite phone... also it's about 10 years old.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

I've still got a Nexus One floating around somewhere!

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

There are some apps that allow you to use your phone as a webcam, either via USB or wifi.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

If you are "forced" to use WhatsApp because many of your contacts are using it, you could use it to run WhatsApp and set-up a bridge to Matrix: https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/setup.html?bridge=whatsapp

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Folding@home

Boinc

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I'm in the process of trying to make some old phones work on Linux mobile and truly check what is the state of things there (considering they have been reverse-engineered to work there, not ideal).

postmarketos.org

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Does the camera still work? Could do some time lapse stuff with it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

See how many times you can skip it on a lake.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I bet you throw garbage out of your car too

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

About as often as I skip electronics on bodies of water.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

If you do home automation you could hook it up to a cable permanently and use it as a Home Assistant dashboard. My brother in law used an old tablet for this.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

If you have a 3d printer you could use it for octoprint instead of a raspberry pi

[โ€“] [email protected] -4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Recycle it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It's called "reduce, reuse, recycle'. OP is asking about step two.

[โ€“] [email protected] -4 points 5 months ago

This