How to turn your old Android phone into a standalone music player
There are many things you can do with an old Android phone. You could hook it up to a speaker and make your own DIY Google Home or use it as a dedicated time lapse camera. If you’re a die-hard music lover and audiophile, we have another idea to put that old phone to good use.
For a brief period of time, before smartphones really took off, everyone had a personal music player. These devices were essentially hard drives with headphone jacks. You could store tons of music and have it with you all the time. Nowadays, most people stream music from the internet, but there are advantages to having a dedicated device.
For all the advantages of streaming music, there is one thing that a lot of people have to deal with: data caps. Streaming music all day over data is going to cost you a pretty penny. You could download the music for listening offline, but then you have to worry about storage.
A dedicated device solves both problems. You can avoid streaming by downloading music for offline listening, and since the device is only for music, you won’t have to share storage with all your other apps. Use a phone with an microSD card and you’ve got room for a giant music library.
Another problem with using your phone as a media player is battery life. Playing music all day can run down your battery, leaving you stuck without a phone at the end of a day. A dedicated device won’t drain your phone and it will last a lot longer because it’s not connected to data.