Make Your Old Smartphone Useful

I have previously discussed my foray into smartphones and all the work I had to put in to get a nice, usable phone.  What this meant for me was over the course of four years, I have had four iPhones (2 mine, 2 my wife's) that were no longer being used as phones.  Being an engineer, a tech junky, and just hating to see electronics go to waste, I put my phones back to use in ways that they can still serve a purpose, and don't cost me a dime.  Since I have only had a handful of phones to repurpose, I have also included some other ideas I haven't had the chance to try out.

Sell Your Phone on Ebay

eBay Headquarters in San Jose, California.

This is by far the most obvious way to repurpose your old phone, give it to someone else (for a fee).  For myself, I ended up selling both my wife's and my own original iPhone for more than the replacement iPhones cost.  This is pretty impressive considering my phone had its screen shattered when I dropped it in a parking lot.

If you really cannot find another use for your phone, or just would like the money, I would definitely suggest looking to see what your phone goes for on eBay.  Just doing a quick look, my current phone, the Samsung Infuse 4G, is selling on eBay right now for $50 to $100.  This is pretty impressive considering I paid $36.99 for it after all fees were included a year and a half ago.  Your results may differ, however, depending on the phone and the condition it is in.

Use Your Phone as a Television Remote

The Samsung smart remote
without any teeth marks.

A couple years ago, I upgraded the television in my living room to a Samsung Smart TV.  It is great, and included a qwerty Bluetooth remote to use for navigating around its menu and in the apps.  I discovered when I bought it that it also allows Android and iPhone users to download the Samsung smart TV remote app that turns your phone into a fully functional TV remote.  I thought this was pretty cool, except I didn't really see the point when I had this nice remote that came with the TV.

A few months later my new puppy showed me the value of such an app by chewing that wonderful remote beyond usefulness.  Half the buttons didn't work and a few were completely crushed into the casing of the phone.  I briefly considered buying a new remote, but at $130 for a replacement, I decided to put my old iPhone 3Gs to use instead.  Now I have two smart remotes, complete with touchscreens, to use with the TV.

The only downside I have really seen is I have to press the power button on the television itself to turn it on.  Otherwise, I have gained all the functionality of the smart remote back, plus for certain apps, I can use the iPhone's keyboard to type in searches.  This option obviously only works if you have a smart TV and the company also makes a smartphone app to compliment it, but it does put your old phone to good use for years to come.

The Fisher-Price Apptivity Gym.

Turn Your Phone Into a Baby Toy

Yes, that is correct, a baby toy.  Aside from being a TV remote, my old iPhone 3Gs now double as baby toys.  There are a slew of apps in both the App Store and Google Play designed for babies, from simple touch and hear a sound type apps to matching games and the like.  There are even baby toys you can buy from the store, like the Fisher-Price Apptivity Gym that has a slot to insert an iPhone and uses a downloadable app that is supposed to compliment the baby gym.

It may sound insane to give a baby a smartphone, but when you consider it no longer matters if the baby breaks the phone now that you no longer use it, a baby toy is a great repurposing of an iPhone.  Plus, iPhones are fairly small, and won't easily break as long as your baby isn't playing around a lot of hard, pointy surfaces, which apparently is a no-no.

Use Your Phone as Your Portable Media Device

Now that you have a new phone, it may be a good idea to use your old one to store your music, so you aren't constantly draining your phone battery just to listen to tunes while at work.  This is an easy one, as you likely already have your music on your old smartphone if you used to use it to store your collection previously.  Personally, I hate carrying around more than one pocket-sized electronic device, but if you are one of those people that has two or three or four different devices with you at all times, this is an obvious choice.

Disassemble Your Phone to Learn How it Works

If you are a geek like I am, you may have an urge rooted deep in your brain to take your smartphone apart to see what it looks like inside.  While this is not always the best idea to do on a phone you use, why not disassemble that old smartphone and avoid the worry of breaking your $200+ toy?  This will provide hours of entertainment to any geek or nerd.  Want to see the fastest way to disassemble a smartphone around?  Check out the video below, courtesey of Will it Blend?  (For those engineers and scientist readers, this is also a fantastic example of constantly-increasing entropy in our universe.  Watch, in a matter of seconds, these carefully constructed electronic devices containing hundreds of elements, including carbon, lithium, gold, copper, aluminum, silicon, turn to a (mostly) homogenous dust.  It makes me smile just thinking about it.)

 

Recycle or Donate Your Smartphone

If none of the above options suit your needs, there are plenty of websites that deal with either recycling your smartphone or donating it to a worthy cause.  The EPA provides a list of brick and mortar stores that will recycle your phones as well as some online groups.  If you wish to donate your phone, there are hundreds of websites dedicated to taking in donations of electronic items.  Just Google "donate smartphone" and take your pick.