Another use you can give it is an offline, turn by turn navigation gps. OsmAnd is an excellent app that provides you with offline navigation. Install something else, like a modded Youtube Music/Spotify app or even AntennaPod if you’re into podcasts and you pretty much have a cheap, budget Android Auto unit. Sure, it will not be the best of all, but it’s pretty much free at that point, and it will get the job done.
I’m actually using an old Android I had laying around and collecting dust (Huawei P20 Lite), battery was pretty much flopping, but as a Linux user tried to give it a second life and made a sort-of Android TV box of it.
I installed a TV launcher and 2 main apps (SmartTubeNext and Cloudstream), then connected it to my main Linux laptop through cable and run a program called scrcpy which let’s me duplicate the image/audio to a separate window in my laptop. Cheap and dirty, but it works flawlessly.
Get one of those telescoping type-C game controllers and turn it into a poor man’s Logitech G Cloud. Those controllers usually have a battery in them, to top up the weak battery in the old phone. Use it on Wifi for Xbox Streaming or Moonlight, or put a SIM card in it for Xbox Game Pass or Geforce Now on the go.
Got a recommendation for something that has a battery? I think the Gamesir one is nice but I’d like one that can charge the phone like you’re suggesting!
I use my old Galaxy S9+ to run all my smarthome apps. There’s so many janky apps for various smarthome devices that I don’t want on my personal phone. I created an entirely seperate google account for the phone and have all the awful apps running on it. The goal is to have it also power a display with a Home Assistant dashboard. I also have it on a separate vlan so if it gets hacked/compromised they can’t access the other computers on the network.
The re-usability of a phone is almost nonexistent thanks to the battery, that is a fire hazard. You leave it plugged in as a surveillance camera? Your home burns.
If you can actually remove the battery and power it on without one. Just then is everything back on the table.
We have a Moto G7 Power which we turned into an e-reader for my wife. She was constantly chewing through her primary phone battery doing this so I offloaded it to the Moto which has been great. With the 5000mah battery (I know, that’s standard these days), and it’s primary responsibility of displaying text on screen, ti’s made a good stand in.
As other’s have said, Android webcam, there are plenty of apps out there, I use “IP Webcam” by Pavel Khlebovich from the Play store which is no cost and does the job quick and dirty.
If you are into home automation, some people have placed old phones near windows and taken advantage of the light sensors built in (Which regulate the auto screen brightness), and used those to trigger indoor lighting events based on the light level where if it’s darker inside, then lights on or gradually turn lights on accordingly. . Or, use the proximity sensor used to turn screen of when near your ear and create a trigger if something came close to it, IDK what you’d want to monitor being close by, but let your imagination fly! Home Assistant is great for this, their companion app, reveals soooooo many sensors on the Android device which can it can act upon. It’s crazy.
Use older apps on the old phone which aren’t compatible with newer Android OS api’s. For example, Prior to them yanking the app, I used an old Samsung phone to use Rockstar’s Ifruit appa as it wasn’t compatible with newer Android phones, to take care of my dog in GTA V.
Do try to see what custom ROM you can load it on, I'm pretty sure you'll need to run a fairly recent version of Android for it to be moderately useful.
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