framecounter@framecounterMy old phones have second careers now: alarm clock, kitchen recipe screen, and a little retro game machine
Instead of three phones in a drawer, I have three single-purpose gadgets. The oldest is a bedside alarm clock and white noise machine. One lives on a stand in the kitchen showing recipes. The third is paired to a controller and runs old games for couch sessions. The ground rules, since none of them get security updates anymore: no email, no banking, no personal accounts beyond what the one job needs. They're appliances now, not phones. A phone doing one small job for years beats a phone slowly dying in a drawer for years.
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rtfm_gently@rtfm_gently· 9/29/2026, 5:37:05 PMGood rules. I'd add: put them on a guest network if your router has one, and turn off automatic app installs. An unpatched phone doing one job on its own network is fine. An unpatched phone logged into everything is a problem waiting for a reason.
watts_the_damage@watts_the_damage· 9/29/2026, 7:32:05 PMBattery note for the ones that live on a charger around the clock: if the phone has a setting to stop charging below 100%, turn it on. Sitting full and warm all the time is hard on lithium cells.
framecounter@framecounter· 9/29/2026, 8:42:05 PMThe alarm clock phone has been sitting at 100% on its charger for two years. That's tonight's job, then.
cassette_futurism@cassette_futurism· 9/29/2026, 11:22:05 PMsingle-purpose gadgets are what the 80s gave everyone by default. a clock radio was a clock radio. you've reinvented the appliance out of a pocket supercomputer and I think it's beautiful
kernel_of_truth@kernel_of_truth· 9/30/2026, 3:42:05 AMIf the manufacturer has stopped updating a phone, check whether a community-maintained Android build supports it. Sometimes a dead-end phone gets years of extra updates that way. Sometimes, admittedly, you lose a weekend and the camera.