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Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?
Keep as backup phone? Recycle? Security camera? TV control?
- curiousgal 8y agoGive it to someone from the Third World, chances are, it'll change their love more than you would imagine.
- lingan 8y agoI would like to use mine as a "pay as you go backup". But I don't know a service that would let me do that without any monthly fee.
- Rjevski 8y agoWhat are you looking to do exactly? I don’t quite get it. Pay as you go SIMs don’t have a monthly fee (at least not in the UK).
- cimmanom 8y agoDonate. There are a lot of organizations that collect secondhand phones for people in need, including the homeless, refugees, people escaping domestic abuse, and the like. Wipe thoroughly first, of course.
- chomp 8y agoDepending on how old, sell them on eBay. They have okay resell value, you get money and keep a phone out of a landfill.
- shinymark 8y agoEvery time I upgrade I sell my old phone on eBay. I keep my hardware in good shape and I’m often surprised at the resale value after 2-3 years. Feels great to recover some of the cost of the upgrade!
- zachwill 8y agoI've jailbroken a couple and given a few more away to family that otherwise wouldn't have paid to upgrade. Would love to run little servers and other dumb stuff on them, but I never have. Always felt like it'd be fun to run a server/Python process on my older phones.
- perrohunter 8y agoI always look for that one friend who still has a really bad/old smartphone and give it to them for free.
- quasse 8y agoAs someone who was that friend, it's greatly appreciated. It's nice to still be able to use a semi-modern phone when you're living on $14,000 a year.
- anigbrowl 8y agoI have several phones doing sterling duty as paperweights and look forward to suggestions. One disappointment of our market system has been the failure to produce new apps designed to run on older hardware.
- ryandrake 8y agoIt’s also kind of tragic that companies stop providing software updates for older working devices, or allow open source to fill in. I can pull my PC from 20 years ago out of a closet and reasonably expect to run Linux on it, yet there is no equivalent for my 8 year old iPad.
- ken 8y agoCan you give examples of apps which you would pay money to run on an old phone? I might be looking for a project.
- bonyt 8y agoI gave them to my parents. I also still have an old iPhone 5 that I bring to the rock climbing gym and use on the WiFi because I won’t be as upset if it plummets to its death from my (zipper) pocket or gets crushed somehow. With the ability to receive phone calls on linked devices over WiFi, the old phones are still useful where the risk to the device is unusually high.
- tedmiston 8y agoThey mostly collect dust as backup phones. But it feels better as insurance than selling them away for a couple hundred bucks a pop. Maybe I'll put the Hue app on one so I have spare remote controls for lights. It would be nice if I could use an old iPhone as a hub for HomeKit, but I think it only supports iPads.
- isatty 8y agoYep only iPads and AppleTVs
- jareds 8y agoI created an itunes account for my daughter when she was two months old. The phone stays on a charger in her room and is used for nothing but playing apple music when she's sleeping.
- davchana 8y agoI hope you realise & know that an old device with always connected charger is at high risk of fire.
- Rjevski 8y agoNot really considering the battery is not charging constantly (contrary to popular fear-mongering, once a phone is at 100% and left plugged in, the phone will simply run off the power and disconnect the battery).
- santa_boy 8y agoOld iPhones make excellent portable music players. Use them yourself in the patio, car, bathroom, etc. Donate to others who would have a need. I donated my favorite iPhone5s (the best iPhone ever) to my dedicated home helper (yeah ... they exist in this part of the world!)
- bitVelocity 8y agoI use my old phones as wireless IP security cameras with visual and audio triggers to capture the video, I also use them as backup 2FA devices.
- josefresco 8y agoWhat apps do you use for security?
- CogitoCogito 8y agoI use them. I've actually never bought a smart phone (nor gotten one for "free" due to some contract) because there seem to be so many people willing to stop using functional phones. Currently I'm using an iPhone 5c and don't have any upgrade plans anytime soon.
- larrik 8y agoI pass them down to my kids as iPod Touches. Then I mostly forget about the previous generation. I'm hesitant to replace their iPhone 6's with our iPhone 7's. It doesn't feel like an upgrade. Our 7's have had issues since the beginning, and the headphone jack is very valuable to the kids.
- joezydeco 8y agoI'm going the opposite way, I'm trying to get rid of the 6s. I've had nothing but bad luck with touch disease and NAND solder joints breaking over and over. The whole early build of the 6 and 6+ is cursed. I hope Apple loses that class action lawsuit in a super-bad way.
- gregoriol 8y agoOld smartphones are good as security cameras: they have a nice camera and wi-fi of course, but also could be much better than traditional security cams as they also can have 3G/4G networking and a battery, in case power/internet is cut for example. They could also record or play sounds, like an alarm. I have an iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 doing that. However, it's not easy to find an app for such a use, I'm planning to open-source my custom one + setup. However, BE CAREFUL, devices with batteries MAY BE DANGEROUS. I have had so many bulging/swollen batteries, even with devices just stored in a drawer. No incident or fires yet fortunately. So always keep an eye on them!
- inertial 8y ago> Old smartphones are good as security cameras They don't get updates and are not secure to be used as network connected security cameras.
- macintux 8y agoI suspect that relative to the vast majority of IoT devices they're quite secure for a use case like that, at least iPhones.
- gregoriol 8y agoiPhones are not that bad at security. Anyways, always put any device behind a router/firewall (at least when on wi-fi). Also, prefer an app that pushes (to a remote server, ...), instead of an app that opens ports. And don't run other apps on the device.
- sebazzz 8y agoConsider storing devices with lipo batteries in a lipo bag. And always keep a powder extinguisher ready.
- cellularmitosis 8y agomight also be worth mentioning that devices with lipo batteries which live in a drawer will survive the longest if stored at 40% charge.
- JansjoFromIkea 8y agoThis might be quite UK centric and is a very dry answer but old smartphones should be donated to asylum seekers. I remember reading an article a year or so ago about how asylum live on the welfare afforded to them and their phone bills (a necessary expense) were a huge chunk of it, basically all of them paying well more than I do on my PAYG for similar service. What I see must be the issue is that, without a phone of their own, the cheapest short term option is to sign up for an option that provides a phone. This immediately limits them from the ultra low budget GiffGaff/Asda/etc type options and will very frequently tie them down to a much less budget friendly carrier if not straight into a contract.
- rhcom2 8y agoFor the colonies there is https://securethecall.org/ https://securethecall.org/ "Secure the Call is a 501(c)(3) charity that provides free 911 emergency-only cell phone to Domestic Violence Centers, Senior Citizen Centers, Police and Sheriff departments."
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- slavoingilizov 8y agoI don't understand this. If their problem is that they HAVE TO use Giffgaff, I can't sympathise with that - I use it myself and love the service Giffgaff provides. So this doesn't make sense to me - it doesn't feel they're forced into a corner at all. I'd rather sell the phone and donate money to asylum-seeker supporting charities.
- JansjoFromIkea 8y agoNah, you misread. Their problem is that they _can't_ use SIM only options as they need a phone (potentially multiple) too, so it's cheaper in the immediate term to sign up to a £15-20 a month plan that provides a (really crappy) phone than a similar £7 a month one which doesn't. Of course, on a purely rational level seeing as we're talking about iPhones as opposed to just phones in general, the best option would be sell the iPhone and use the proceeds from it to buy and donate multiple cheaper (but sturdy) Androids
- fossuser 8y agoSell the old one - I get around $500 back every year from Craigslist when I upgrade. If that’s too much of a hassle Apple will buy it back from you for a little less.
- tmaly 8y agoI give them to my family overseas in the Philippines. Old IPhones are still very useful over there.
- ericabiz 8y agoI run repair shops for a living, so I can tell you the #1 thing people do is give them to their kids or other family members. Trade-ins with carriers are big as well, and of course selling them will still net some money as well. You can sell to local stores or online at sites like Swappa. People who aren't as technical as the typical HN reader often don't know that iPhone, iPad, and laptop batteries are replaceable, and it's usually relatively cheap to do so. Please educate your friends and family members!
- dwighttk 8y agoI give them to friends.
- BooneJS 8y agoWe've had an iPhone 3gs (30-pin) plugged into a speaker playing music in our son's room for years. He plays the violin, so listening to the piece he's working on and previous pieces is useful and calming for him.
- bluedevil2k 8y agoI use my old iPhone as an international travel phone. I keep the Messages, Mail apps, but add things like WhatsApp, VPN, Skype, Google Translator, Measurement Converters, GoEuro for use when I travel overseas. Bonus points if you have to turn it on when you get back to the US and it doens't have many apps on it.
- the_watcher 8y agoI thought about using mine as a Fire TV remote because the one that comes with it is so bad, but the battery life just isn't good enough (and I don't want to have to always plug it in after use - I keep my remotes in a tray inside my coffee table).
- ddrmaxgt37 8y agoI connect my old phone to my speakers during parties as a kind of streaming device. It's easy to control them from my main phone
- pilom 8y agoI made a Myst linking book like this https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/myst-linking-book https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/myst-linking-book but it was way easier to do with a smartphone.
- cauterize 8y ago1. The security camera to watch your pets while you're away too! I like the Dog Monitor iOS app 2. Shower music player
- chooseaname 8y agoOld iPhones: 1) Make excellent phones. 2) Make great music players. 3) Make great backup phones to use when hiking, biking, running, etc. 4) Make great GPS devices for older cars (Some maps apps let you download maps to be used offline).
- reembs 8y agoI have an old iPad2 and I'm honestly amazed at how bricked it is at this point just from the passage of time. Recently I turned it on after a long while, asking myself this post's exact question. I went into the browser, but I got SSL errors accessing Google, Apple, etc. Okay... Then I went to the settings app to see if there are updates, but the device is obviously unsupported at this point. Finally I went to the App Store to try and install some picture frame app or something, but that was stupid of me since I already knew Apple certs were no longer valid in my obsolete OS. Bottom line: It's trash with a touch screen. Galaxies are much better in that aspect. Rooting them provides a world of possibilities.
- wingerlang 8y agoI disagree, I also have an iPad 2 and it works perfectly fine for watching youtube and browsing. I can't say I have any issues with downloading apps either, of course most new ones wont be supported.
- Rjevski 8y agoHave you checked the time is set up correctly? This could explain the TLS errors.
- acheron 8y agoI mostly only get new ones when there are serious issues with the old one, so generally they just get recycled. My first, a 3GS, did last many years with a white noise app as a overqualified noise machine in the kids' room but even it is finally dead. One of my wife's was still in good condition at one point and we did resell it.
- eswat 8y agoDid you know what caused your 3GS to pass on? Wondering how many phones out there could be given a second lease on life if just given a battery replacement.
- nunez 8y agoWe typically donate ours
- alimbada 8y agoI had to use my old iPhone 6 as a backup recently when water got into my 6S and the touch screen became erratic and had dead spots on it. Took a few days for it to get repaired (sister-in-law's husband did it for free so I wasn't going to complain about how long it took) so I had to use the old one during that time.