What to do with an old phone? [Poll]
Some of us Android users like to swap out phones pretty regularly (*ahem* Tom… *cough*), whereas others kinda hold on to them a little longer.
If you’re of the type that swaps out regularly chances are your phone is still pretty desirable and that means you could kijiji or ebay it pretty easily (yeah, I just verb’d those sites). The net balance should be pretty good then.
However, with some phones that have been held on to for too long, the desirability would be pretty low, and trying to sell it is almost pointless. Take for example my wife’s old Acer Liquid E.
Since she’s updated to the Nexus, I’ve had it just sitting here and debating on what to do with it. It’s pretty lower quality, and I’d feel bad just ‘donating’ it to a friend with a ‘dumbphone’ as it’s a pretty poor example of what’s available for Android.
So what else can we do with it?
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Set it up as the ‘kids toy’
This was my first thought… teach the little guy to respect the phone. I could set up a quick Gmail account, and just not tie in a credit card. And there’s a ton of great games out there that he would like that are free: Angry Birds, … okay, probably more, but that’s all he’d use.
Gizmodo just wrote an article for a case on using iPads for kids. Partially transferrable to this situation. Only issue is there’s lots of people (mostly those without kids) who tend to show disdain for any child to use a digital device (I get quite a few odd looks when I hand my phone over to my son in a waiting room).
Currently it’s not available in Canada, however… we may be able to find a way around that!
Or other media player app remotes (boxee, xbmc, Samsung TV, Sony remote, etc…)
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MP3 Player
This is pretty obvious, so long as you have a decent amount of space. You’d have to get an extra SD card, many older phones don’t have ample space. Even if you use Play Music, you’re not keeping a data plan on an old device (unless you like swapping SIM cards), and you’d need space for offline access.
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ROM/rooting toy
This is my probable idea. Something for me to learn more about the process of rooting/rom’ing a phone. Only thing is is some of what you learn is transferrable to other models. But a tool to learn on is a tool none-the-less. [Suggestions on ROMs for an Acer Liquid E?]
It’s good then for you to poke and peruse around XDA or Rootzwiki.
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Donate/Recycle
There are plenty of sites out there that would love to get a hold of a device for their own testing purposes or even some for charity.
There’s even a sites like HelloTotem.com that will buy your phone from you, or WorthMonkey that will help you figure out what it’s worth.
Those are some of my suggestions. I’m inclined at the moment to really plunk down and try to wrap my head around the whole rooting / rom’ing thing (yes, I know the irony of saying that and writing for an Android blog, but I understand only specifics for a certain set of instructions, I don’t understand it as a general practice on the whole); however, the phone I’m looking at now doesn’t have a lot of options out there.
Google TV remote would be neat, but it seems like a kind of expensive remote. And to relegate something that was once useful to such a lowly menial task of one job.
What do you suggest?
No unreasonable suggestion denied… will post my findings as they come in.