WTF should I do with my old Android phone?

Hey y'all. I just recently upgraded my phone and ditched my old Galaxy S4. The S4's only flaw is that the SIM card reader doesn't work properly, despite replacing it and fiddling. Other than that, it works great. It's basically an iPod Touch sort of device (except Android) now. It's running Android 5.0, but I would love to experiment with other ROMs a little since I'm off contract and it's not my daily driver. What should I do with it? Can I flash it with Android 7? Can I make it into some kind of a portable Linux PC? Can I make it into an offline car GPS? I just want ideas.

If you travel a lot, look into getting a ton of console emulators for it. Gameboy, SNES, Nintendo DS, Dreamcast, etc.
Then, pick up one of these.
http://www.8bitdo.com/snes30/
And one of these.
http://www.8bitdo.com/snes30/xtander.html

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Good idea, but I have a Raspberry Pi as an emulator already...plus I'm in high school so not doing much traveling lol

Fair enough, but your raspberry pi isn't portable.

This reminds me that I have an old LG G3 laying around. I use it as a secondary alarm clock in case I turn my other alarm off in my sleep (yes, I've done that several times before.)
It just feels weird to carry around 2 phones anyway.

The samsung galaxy s4 has expandable storage right?

I bet you could shove in a pretty sizable SD card and turn it into the absolute most ghetto media server

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That thing has NFC and IR blaster. Also the sim card port is easily replaceable (You can buy it for ~$10 and replace it yourself) You can make a sweet IoT controller for arduino/raspberry shenanigans that you can leave at home.

Or I can haz it if u want to sell it to me haha. :angelemoji: My zenfone 2e can't IR or NFC u.u but at least I can control the pc on my living room with it via wifi. Windows XP ofc. :v

Network camera for making sure your pet parrot doesn't peck your grandfather clock whilst you're away: http://www.howtogeek.com/139373/how-to-turn-an-old-android-phone-into-a-networked-security-camera/

Alarm clock and or TV/home theater remote.

Use Roccat Power Grid and Logitech Arx as a dedicated second screen gaming device. There are some game specific apps that are pretty neat too.

The Galaxy S4 has one of the better DACs ever used in a phone so it could be a dedicated music player as well.

Root the thing and use it as a Tasker server.

Mod the bejesus out of it. Custom android and kernels can do a ton for the phone.

Get it running a nice version of android, not necessarily the newest one but the one with the most custom support. I have a note 2 on 4.4.4 and it will outperform anything I have seen stock in stores.

4.4.4 had great exposed framework modules, custom kernel that I had both the CPU and GPU overclocked and undervolted, it had wireless charging any way and NFC for all that was fun for. It was running a custom DPI mod to allow tablet games on it to run correctly and also a 13*9 grid of icons on the home screen. Custom sound and display drivers and settings from the kernel to get better sound and set the colour saturation/balance how you liked.

I never did but tasker is another thing you can set up to automate a lot of the phones settings and running like switching on and off WiFi/GPS based on time of day, location of the phone and any number of other factors.

Also you can look into after market batteries that are twice the width of the phone and last for about 12 days. With all the tweaks above the note 2 on its stock battery could idle for 9 days easy.

Go bananas on it. If it were not for the failing sim reader I would say never bother upgrading phones again really unless the have some new physical feature. The soft ware modding on old phones can keep them ahead of new phones performance and capabilities.

Edit: more stuff I did was had a PS3 controller with a paid app called sixaxis controller or something. It allowed all the standard controller stuff but also configure touch inputs to buttons and a few other things.

Use it as a chrome cast/streaming device with root and you can get lots of extra apps that normally would not cast or even just more options on how you cast/stream stuff. Like better file formats and qualities from other non official apps.

You can make a PSP out of it.It has a pretty good CPU for PSP games,sadly my S3 is too slow for them.

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OP just send it to me. That is what you should do. I will put it to good use.

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offline password manager

Install dashclock on it and set up Android Daydream. Put the phone wherever you want, add power and let the screen time-out(I just use a dock sitting on my nightstand). And now you have a Clock, and potentially weather, calendar events, and/or email if you set it up.

It's not going to destroy your eyes if you have it next to your bed because the S4 has an amoled display, and as long as you have it set to an option that moves the content around you don't need to worry about burn-in.

which rom and kernel are you using? i myself have a note 2 and barely manage to get a day's worth of battery life.

Ubuntu Touch or Debian Mobile.

Tried that, didn't fix it, unfortunately.

It's already rooted, so tell me more...what is Tasker and why would I need a server for it?

Yeah, I wouldn't have gotten a new one if the SIM reader had kept working. Unfortunately that's too big of a feature to just fail all the time...but other than that the S4 was pretty awesome.

This sounds fun...I didn't know Debian had a mobile version...how can I go about installing this?

American note 2 or European note 2.

For me it was Omni ROM and Devil Kernel on the European n7100.

The american version has a different processor because the moile towers are farther spaced out in the US or something to those effects and the cellular antenna has to work much harder and drains the battery faster. It has the Qualcomm Quad core where an the EU n7100 uses the Samsung Exynos 8core. The European version so supposed to be much more efficient on battery.

tasker is automation tools for android

you can have it use apps to have them talk to each other and set up if/then/else triggers.

http://tasker.dinglisch.net/

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With my old android phone I rooted it, installed CyanogenMod, stripped all the bloat, installed all my productivity software, then underclocked it as low as I could to turn it into somewhat of a PDA for when I'm on my college campus. Allows me to do all my stuffs without draining the battery on my actual phone.

I also setup DriveDroid so I can boot linux off of my phone. Can't say enough about how awesome that is.

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i too have the european version , will check out the rom and kernel and any other mods you think a not so tech savy person like me can do to improve battery life or the functionality of the phone? anyway thanks