Just found this awesome subreddit

Thanks to this post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PickAnAndroidForMe/comments/4r9whb/psa_dont_waste_your_old_phones_use_them/

I am glad that i'm not the only one thinking that "old" phones have enough power to do a lot of stuff.

My thoughts so far from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pireThoughts/wiki/pier4r_oc/2017/06/dont_waste_phones

Don't waste functioning 'old' (smart) phones

Actually I am against wasting functioning stuff (from phones to wood shelves and what not) since functioning stuff costed efforts, energy, money and pollution and since it is functioning can be used by someone. Even not functioning stuff can be repaired by the skilled ones that follows the repair manifesto (but I do agree that to repair certain damages the opportunity cost is quite high).

Anyway I never - damn me - organized my ideas about "how to use something that normally would be called 'old' ". This post on r/PickAnAndroidForMe helped me giving the right direction. As usual for those stuff, I should collect ideas as soon as I encounter them and after a while there would be a long list of ideas that can inspire the others.

I focus on smartphones but with a bit of creativity the list can be extended to everything, especially tablets.

What you can do with an "old" phone.

I start to say that "old" is whatever is 2 years old or more. Actually since 2012 phones have really a lot of potential to execute useful apps so if you land on this page in 2017 or later (well unless a global disaster happens) what I'm writing should be valid, of course with adaptations.

Use it.

Head to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PickAnAndroidForMe/comments/4r9whb/psa_dont_waste_your_old_phones_use_them/ for the main ideas. I go with apps. I also assume that the phone is part of an ecosystem that is full of apps like android.

• Timer. There are interesting timer apps that can be useful, for example in the kitchen. Multitimer for example.
• Multimedia. An old phone can run mostly without problems whatever type of video, unless the quality is very high. So one can use it, especially with a casting device (chromecast), to show videos, pictures, audio, music. One does not need ultra quality, especially with a small screen. For example you can use the phone as "spotify" server connected to an hi fi system. Further multimedia is given by apps that shows pics like imgur and so on (or, even, yes, porn sites. Your porn phone if you are addicted).
• Reading . One does not need a supercomputer (note, for the 1995 standards, phones are supercomputers) to read. One web browser to read online pages that are not javascript heavy (for example wikipedia or c2.com/wiki ). There are the kindle app, the google play books. One can load PDFs (that requires a bit of power since are handled as high quality images) or epubs. One can read comics. One can also read reddit , news, quora, stack exchange, and so on.
• Writing. Simple plain text notes, why not. Like a diary. With quick edit for example. Moreover one can also use it for a bit more complex organization with one note or evernote.
• Math. One starts to "feel" the power of the CPU in a phone when math is involved (try to do the same manually or on a simple calculator). Use free42, hp Prime application. Mathstudio express and other math environments to explore math concepts.
• Languages. Duolingo and memrise are two of the many applications that do not nead much power and still are great to learn the basics of languages. Moreover one can use an old phone with digital dictionaries (wiktionary is great for example)
• Programming . Whether using native development kits to program for android itself or iOs or whatever other os, you can use your old phone as testing system. Or you can develop on the phone itself using linux in chroot, or other interpreters (like for python). You can feel how fast a phone is with those environments.
• file sharing. There are many versions of torrent , emule and other file sharing protocols that can use a phone with large internal storage.
• science . Install boinc and let your phone burn for science! (for example, mapping the asteroids in our solar system, we never know when we are going to use that knowledge to avoid a catastrophe).
• learning. there are a lot of apps to let you learn basic concepts
• games. not all the games requires the last phone and not all the "old" games are boring. There are plenty that remain awesome and run on "old" phones. Try r/gladiabots for example. Or chess like lichess.
• To check the wifi . There are a lot of network tools (ping & dns, wifi analyzer are two of them) that let you analyze wifi problems and co.
• tinker. Learn how to load app without the store. Load custom rom, and so on.
• I'll add more as soon as I realize things.

Give it away

Head to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PickAnAndroidForMe/comments/4r9whb/psa_dont_waste_your_old_phones_use_them/ . Craiglist, ebay, amazon, there is always someone that can use your phone, even just as test environment for its learning process.