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Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#51

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

slavoingilizov wrote: post #34
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #20

This 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…

I 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.

Nah, 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

Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#52

Post by [deleted] »

slavoingilizov wrote: post #34
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #20

This 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…

I 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.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#53

Post by gregoriol »

phoenix9 wrote: post #21
gregoriol wrote: post #17

Old 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 ope…

I agree with your use case and I am interested in your solution. So many functions to add like face recognition, record only on motion detection (what is threshold)--object size/distance, send alerts, attempt license plate scan, etc

I do agree!

CCTV processing is often done server-side (ZoneMinder, Sinobi, ...), but nowadays "old" devices could do some stuff too. Motion detection is maybe not that intensive, but is hard to pull off (a car passing in the street might change the light on the walls/ceiling, it should not trigger the alarm, dogs/cats, ...). On iOS, you could do face detection using some Apple provided CoreImage components.

A few things I have been missing in the current apps/software: simple way to turn on/off (I had to open/kill apps), use less bandwidth (by pushing to the server only when motion is detected for example, MJPEG stream was about 200Kb/s), play an alarm sound when motion is detected, being able to interact remotely with the device like saying something out loud (if kid came home, triggered the motion detection and forgot to turn off the camera), ...

I wouldn't go for license plates though: you should not point a security camera to the outside/street!

Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#54

Post by throwaway413 »

Kadin wrote: post #36
gregoriol wrote: post #17

Old 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 ope…

What's the best software to turn an old iPhone (or Android phone?) into a security camera? The concept does seem good, they certainly have more capable hardware and cost less than a lot of network attached cameras.

https://alfred.camera/ has worked really well for me.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#55

Post by eswat »

acheron wrote: post #50

I 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.

Did 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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#57

Post by wingerlang »

reembs wrote: post #48

I 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 Ap…

I 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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#58

Post by alimbada »

I 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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#59

Post by Rjevski »

reembs wrote: post #48

I 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 Ap…

Have you checked the time is set up correctly? This could explain the TLS errors.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make good use of old iPhones?

#60

Post by Rjevski »

lingan wrote: post #8

I 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.

What 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).
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