5 Fun Things Do With Your Old Smartphone

If you're anything like me, you probably have at least one old smart phone not being used somewhere in your house. In my case its my old LG Ally, that I replaced over a year ago. I had been considering getting rid of it, but couldn't quite muster the ability to throw something out that could be potentially useful. So instead I turned to the internet to discover the best way to repurpose my old phone to give it some new life. These 5 things are what I came up with.

Mouse pad and Keyboard

I'll start out with my new favorite use for my old phone. As my wife and I don't have a TV in our house, we tend to do any of our movie watching on our computers. The problem with this is that we really didn't have much of a way to control the computer from the comfort of our couch. It wasn't a huge inconvenience, but since I had the phone out I decided to see what I could do. I installed the free version of a program called Unified Remote and made my Ally into a wireless mouse pad and keyboard for my computer. You have to have their software downloaded on your computer and your phone, and have access to wireless internet, but if that's not a problem this program will let you use your phone not only to navigate on your computer, but also as a wireless media remote for things like Youtube and VLC Media player. Pretty awesome.

Media Center

I like to be able to listen to music or watch tv while I'm cooking or cleaning in the kitchen, but we have a pretty small kitchen. My computer is just a tad bit bulky for putting on our counter, and I don't really want to risk it getting wet. so I decided to put my android device on our shared network and be able to watch our movies and listen to our music from my tablet. All I used to do this was ES Explorer (to connect to my network) and MX Player (to enable video streaming) It requires a bit of tinkering with network settings to make sure you are sharing your media on your LAN, but it isn't too hard, and is totally worth the effort.

Portable Gaming

One of the more popular uses for old Androids is to make it into a gaming machine. If you have any ROMs of your favorite old games it is totally worth it to load up an emulator for your Android and play them. Its even better if you also have a bluetooth controller that you can use. While I don't have one, the iMpulse controller recently caught my eye, mostly for its portability.



Camera

My wife has recently begun doing Youtube videos of some of her stories from Papua New Guinea for our supporters who would rather watch a video than read through a blog. But to get that started we had to figure out how to record video. We ended up using our tablet as a camera since it has the best resolution of any camera in our house, but the search for the best camera is what actually made me get out my old phone. It has a camera button on the side, and since I have it linked to my dropbox, it uploads my photos without being prompted so I can view them from any of my devices. You can also use photo sharing apps to do the same thing, but I use dropbox because its automatic and works with all of my devices.

Automated Household

This is one that I haven't actually done, but there are a number of people out there who have. Using Insteon products, or other like products, you can link up pretty much anything to your Android device. Some of the more popular uses are to link thermostats, lights and security cameras with your phone for easy access. If you're willing to go all out, this could be a fun project to do with your old phone. If not.....well, there's a reason I haven't done this.

Bonus! Flashdrive/Paperweight

I don't actually use my android for this. I do however use my old classic ipod for this. *shrug* I wasn't using it for anything else..... Anyways, hope you enjoyed!