the best ideas to give it a second life

Christmas is coming and with it the time that many people take advantage of to change their mobile phone. Whether it’s because the Kings have been hearing you say all year that you want to renew your old smartphone or because you’ve taken advantage of Black Friday to treat yourself, the truth is that right now you may find yourself with two cell phones on the table: a new one, ready for action; and another old one you don’t know what to do with.

For this reason we are writing this article, to give you some ideas that will allow you to take advantage of your old terminal and give it a second life.

The classic: sell it, give it away or donate it

Let’s start with the basics. If, rather than reusing the phone, you prefer to get rid of it, money ahead or not, the easiest thing is to sell it, give it away or donate it. In any case, the first thing will be to make a complete backup and factory reset it so that the new owner does not have any type of access to your personal information. A “thorough” cleaning to remove fingerprints and dirt never hurts either.

To sell it, you can use platforms like Wallapop, Milanuncios, forums like HTCMania, the always reliable word of mouth, direct sales via social networks or, if you prefer, go to a second-hand store and sell it in person. However, before this you may want to check if the brand of your new mobile offers some kind of Trade-In program. Maybe you can save a few euros if you hand in your old cell phone.

Turn it into a retro console…

Unless your previous mobile phone is extremely old, it most likely has more than enough power to run retro games and emulators. This will allow you to take advantage of your copies of old games and play them anywhere. A good option may be to Buy a controller like the Razer Kishi or an economical model from GameSir to turn your mobile phone into the closest thing to a Game Boy.

…or in a cloud console

Call of Duty: Mobile | Image: WorldOfSoftware

And although retro is very good, newer is also quite cool, and here I speak in a personal capacity: I have an old mobile phone dedicated solely and exclusively to playing in the cloud. It’s like a Nintendo Switch, but with ultra graphics, ray tracing and 120 frames per second. It is, without a doubt, one of the uses that I like the most.

Playing in the cloud is very good, but it also means having the mobile screen on for a long time, high battery consumption due to brightness and real-time streaming, etc. That, in the long run, can damage your brand new mobilebut if we talk about the old mobile phone, this matters little to us.

My personal recommendation if you play in the cloud is that you uninstall and deactivate everything unnecessary, remove all notifications, leave the phone in airplane mode with WiFi on, download the streaming apps that you use and buy a controller that connects to the mobile via USB (to reduce latency). I have a Razer Kishi (89.99 euros) and a GameSir X2S (59.99 euros) and both work great for me.

Use it as a webcam or security camera

An ASUS smartphone converted into a webcam | Image: WorldOfSoftware

If you prefer less idle use, it is likely that the camera on your old mobile phone has better quality than your laptop webcam or the one you bought ten years ago on Black Friday. Some phones allow you to do it natively by connecting the phone to the PC via USB, but since it is not universal, the easiest way to turn your phone into a webcam is using an app like Camo or DroidCam. Here we teach you how to do it.

Another related option is to turn your cell phone into a security camera, ideal if you are going on vacation and want to keep an eye on it at home. It can also be used to see the printing status of our 3D printer, for example. There are several applications that enable this use, such as IP WebCam or AtHome Camera. You have more information in this article.

Turn it into car GPS…

Imagen | AS Photography

Although Android Auto / CarPlay is increasingly common in cars, not everyone has to have it. Fortunately, our old cell phone can act as a GPS and, if the car has Bluetooth, even a multimedia center. Something similar happens with this use case as with cloud gaming: the mobile phone will spend a lot of time with the screen on and connected to the GPS, which can cause the temperature to increase and quickly run out of battery. Better for that to happen to an old cell phone than to a new one.

For the case at hand, it is enough to download Google Maps and, in turn, download the maps that we need offline. To start, we can download the map of our city or, if we prefer not to mess around, that of Spain. This way we can obtain the route and instructions to get anywhere knowing, of course, that we will not have updated information in real time, such as traffic or possible accidents.

It would be advisable to place the mobile phone in a car or motorcycle holder and, if the battery lasts a short time, connect it by cable to a USB or the cigarette lighter port. There are dedicated adapters. And a note: Never, ever, ever, let’s forget our cell phone in the car.. Not because they don’t get stolen, that too, but because the cabin can reach very high and/or very low temperatures and play tricks on us.

…or even in a dash cam

Another option is to convert the mobile phone into a dash camthat is, in a camera dedicated to recording everything that happens in front of the car or bike. To do this, we can use a dedicated app that records information such as speed, although we can also use the mobile camera app and record video as we normally would. Now, it is important to take into account all the legal aspects of these images, not manipulate the mobile phone on the go and place the terminal in such a way that it impedes vision as little as possible.

Let’s remember: safety always, always, always ahead and even more so behind the wheel.

Use it as a music, movie and series player

Image | WorldOfSoftware

If we have a long trip ahead of us and we don’t want to risk our cell phone reaching the end of the trip without battery, one option is use the old one as a multimedia center. Thus, we can use our music, movie, series and anime apps to download content to watch offline and without sacrificing the battery or storage of the mobile phone that really matters to us.

The reality is that on a day-to-day basis it may not be practical (it is not, in fact) to carry two mobile phones because we use one as MP3 and the other for everything else. However, for long journeys it can be interesting. Unless we have a tablet, of course, in which case where the tablet with its larger screen is placed, the rest should be removed.

Talking about journeys

Now that we talk about trips and journeys, I, personally, recommend always carrying a spare cell phone when you travel. You never know what series of catastrophic misfortunes can happen to your cell phone during a trip and it never hurts to have a plan B, just in case. I always take my cell phone, but I keep another one in my suitcase fully charged. Do you remember the cell phone that I told you I use to play in the cloud? Well that one.

Turn it into the brain of your house

Image | Jonathan Borba

We are approaching the end, but not before commenting on a couple of additional uses. If we have a connected home, converting an old mobile phone into the control center can be a good idea. For example, we could leave that mobile phone in the living room with the Alexa, Google Home, content apps, etc., activated to turn on the lights remotely, activate routines, turn on the robot vacuum cleaner, send content to the TV without having to use native apps… Everything you can already do with your mobile, but within reach of all cohabitants.

This use may make more sense on a tablet, due to the size of the screen and autonomy, but if we do not want to install a smart speaker at home, the mobile phone is perfectly valid.

Sacrifice him (probably) and use him as a guinea pig

Image | Samsung

And finally, a use that can be interesting if we have some curiosity, time and certain tools is to turn the mobile phone into our guinea pig to do all kinds of tricks on it. If you’ve always wanted to try flashing a ROM, rooting, experimenting with third-party software, and more, now is the perfect time. The truth is that it has to be very bad for the mobile to be unrecoverable after a faulty installation, so if you want to play a little with it you should be able to do so without many problems.

A step further would be to use it to learn how to open it and do things like change the screen or battery. What’s more, you could disassemble it and put all the pieces in a decorative composition like this. That will require specialized tools and it does imply a greater risk because, well, you are opening a cell phone and if you break something it will not turn on again. However, there is something nice about taking a machine apart, understanding how it works, fixing it, and putting it back together.

Cover image | WorldOfSoftware

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