5 things you can do to make your old smartphone useful again

We all have one old smartphone lying around the house collecting dust somewhere.

Though, we use our latest and greatest smartphones in everyday life, that old hunk can still be useful in some ways.

So, it’s time to pick it up from its thick slumber and get ready to squeeze some use out of it as I am going to tell you 5 quick tips that will make your oldie, well, a Goldie!

Wifi Hotspot

I know what you are thinking. Yes, you can use your current smartphone as a wifi hotspot.

But, Wifi hotspot burns through the battery of your smartphone pretty quickly. Now that can be problematic for some people as smartphone batteries are already not keeping up with our expectations.

However, using an old smartphone as a wifi hotspot doesn’t hurt anyone. Simply connect it to a charger so it stays charged, turn on the hotspot and you are good to go.

Table and Alarm clock

Time is important to each of us. Sadly, smartphones have reduced the number of people who used to wear wrist watches significantly.

Nevertheless, you can take the revenge through your old smartphone, by using it as a table clock or better yet, as an alarm clock. There are apps (Night Clock, Alarm Clock free and more) which will put a giant analogue or digital clock on your smartphones screen and turn it into a beautiful table clock.

Put it on your desk, change the watch face everyday and experience a new table clock every time you look at it.

Use it as an External Hard drive

Smartphones are powerful devices and Android devices in particular can be used for this purpose.

As Android devices can easily be connected to a PC and many of them have the luxury of SD card slot, they perfectly fit the criteria here.

Simply pop in the SD card and you have your very own external hard drive. Store your music library or stock up on your photos. Bigger the SD card, the bigger is your storage space.

And this homemade external drive can also go an extra mile in the way that you can transfer these files from one device to another via Bluetooth or Wifi.

Use it for media consumption

As smartphones are becoming more common, media consumption has gone through the roof.

People don’t need laptops or dvd players to watch a movie anymore. They don’t need to buy a point and shoot camera when the one on their phone can do the job.

Mp3 players have gone out of existence and as book readers are available in abundance on the app stores, even book reading has multiplied on smartphones.

So, while you store all your movies, photos, music and books on your aged smartphone, why not use its screen to watch and read them as well.

Actually, it really depends on the screen size of your phone but still, something is better than nothing, right?

Photo frame

Last but not the least, you can use your vintage smartphone as a photo frame and put it on your desk or bedside table.

Many Android devices now support a daydream feature which streams your photos to the home screen. Or you can also download an app (Dayframe) from the Play store serving the same function.

Put it on your desk and view those incredible memories flow right in front of your eyes.

So, what are you waiting for, pull out that smartphone, you used years ago and put it to to some good use.

Or if you already do it in some way that I didn’t mention here, do share it in the comments.

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Originally published at www.techreviewpk.com on June 28, 2015.