3 Reasons to Keep a Spare Old Smartphone Around
We live in a disposable society; it's easy to trade in your old Blackberry for an iPhone 4, and a lot of us do it, without thinking about the value still locked in your old phone. But here's something to think about the next time you upgrade a phone: Does the value of keeping the old one around -- even without an active service plan -- actually outweigh the value of getting rid of it?
Recently, MakeUseOf listed 5 interesting uses for a spare old smartphone, and I thought the concept was brilliant. Even without a service plan, most of the functions on your old phone still work. And if your phone has a Wi-Fi antenna, then you can do almost anything even without a plan -- including making calls.
That's why I would go one step further and suggest that you should drop your old smartphone in your travel or emergency kit. On the road and find yourself without a cell phone for some reason? Your old phone can come to the rescue. Here are some ways your old phone can come to the rescue:
Make calls via Wi-Fi. Did you lose your mobile phone or just want to conserve its battery? Our old spare, equipped with an app like Skype or Google Voice, can let you send and receive calls via Wi-Fi. In fact, you could have a dedicated Skype phone for use in the home office, or for times when you're stuck in a hotel room and forgot to bring a charger for your primary phone.
An emergency 911 phone. All phones are designed to make 911 calls, even when they don't have an active service plan. Put that knowledge to good use by stowing a phone in your car's emergency kit. You never know when you might find yourself in a situation when it could come in handy; after all, the central conflict in almost any horror or action film of the last 30 years could have been thwarted in the first 15 minutes if the protagonist if he or she had simply had the ability to dial 911.
A pocket computer. Smartphones are great because we use them as general-purpose computers in addition to making calls. Great until they run out of juice because of all the things we use them for. Try this instead: Use your old smartphone to surf the Web, listen to music, store files like a USB memory key, and play the occasional game.
Photo courtesy Flickr user marc kjerland
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