Do you have an old Android device after an upgrade? Rather than have your old device gather dust in a drawer somewhere, why not repurpose it back into service doing something else? Depending on what you have, you may find your old Android device can be a big help. Here are five ideas on how to keep that old Android device in your life. The first idea is to use it as a media centre device for the living room, or indeed any room where you have a Chromecast installed into a television set. You can remove or disable most applications from the device and instead keep the smartphone or tablet reserved for media – in simple terms, Gmail is out and Netflix, Google Play Music, Spotify are all in. For those applications where you have a set number of devices you are able to use or remove use with a service (such as Google Play Music), this is a great way to keep an older piece of hardware relevant.
The second idea is related to the first, which is to use your old Android device in the car. You can either connect the device to an in-car hotspot or use it in offline mode, providing you have made your music available offline, to play music through the car audio equipment. This can help the battery of your new Android device as it won’t need to stream music but you may need to plan to bring your music collection with you.
My next use for an old device is as a recipe station for use in the kitchen. Here, you can buy a stand and download one or more recipe applications for the handset and use it instead of a cookbook. Depending on the device in question you might want to consider buying a different case for the Android device. Also, related, is to use your old Android device as a digital photo frame; often the quality of the screen of your old Android smartphone or tablet is better than that of a proprietary frame. You can download and install applications designed to roll through a collection of photographs and if the accessory is available for your particular model, this will simplify holding the device up.
The fifth choice is to use the old Android device as a ebook reader. There are many applications available such as the Google Play Books or Amazon Kindle, but thinking beyond a simple eBook reader, you can also download applications such as News Republic and use your old Android device to keep up with the news. Here again, uninstall or disable applications such as Gmail and install the eBook readers and specialist news reader applications. You may find that you can combine the eBook reader duty together with the recipe station idea to display cookbooks. Of course, not all of these uses are mutually exclusive! It would be easy to convert your old Android device into something of a coffee tablet device, with access to media that you can stream to your Chromecast, plus eBook applications, and turn it into the very centre of your home entertainment system for the whole family to use rather than just you.