I’ve seen cases where phones are used for testing, monitoring, background tasks, or other always-online purposes after a one-time setup. No user interaction, just keeping the device connected and running.
Curious what real-world use cases others have actually found useful. Are there setups that worked well long-term, or things to avoid?
Not trying to promote anything here — genuinely interested in how people approach this.
- Put most of your apps on the spare phone, only put apps needed to leave the house on your primary phone. This helps with battery life, storage, and privacy.
- If you're into HomeAssistant, you can turn one into something akin to an Echo Show, complete with local voice assistant.
Just yesterday I learned the Echo Show 5 can be pwned so I dug mine out, put LineageOS on it, and now it's a satellite for my HA server. Her name is Janet now.
- I do:
And it stays simless, in airplane mode, after a nice adb session where I uninstall just about everything I can. I could easily live without it, but I'm often glad to have it.Secondary camera (with OpenCam) *oss Security camera (various software) Alarm clock with custom audio files (tibetan bells make a very unobtrusive wakeup sound) Guitar tuner & general audio recorder Mp3 player while working in harsh environments - Boring answer. Your first case - testing for app development, web development, display variations, device feature variations.
A little bit of @hnburnsy's answer, with segmented logins and emails separated by phones with layered restoration so it's difficult to accidentally get bricked by having one system get malware, system faults, or other failures. Two-Factor Auth also gets separated around between devices.
- You can turn one into a server.
I used to keep one as a sort of backup internet connection, since there are "unlimited 4 hours of internet" prepaid plans, like $1, here that work pretty well when used as an access point if your home internet's down for whatever reason.
Nowadays I just sell them
- Since I opted out of Google via GrapheneOS, I use one of my old phones in my car just to navigate.
Another phone is an audiobook listening device for my kids (they choose and I play).
Of course I also have a dedicated dev phone.
- I have a $180 spare Android phone. I slapped PagerDuty on it to serve as my on-call phone. I also installed WhatsApp and Signal on it as I don't want to keep them on my primary phone (less distract).
- I always wondered if they'd be of any use as multimedia server, with local content deliver and an USB device hanging out of it, for unused libraries...
- I use a non-smart, non-internet phone but I do have a android phone in the car to make the multimedia/maps/whatever work properly - more and more stuff assumes you have a modern spyware device
- Could be cool to use one as a speedometer or pedometer. But the accelerometers are probably not good enough.
- I just want a LineageOS fork that is just some retro game emilator in proper kiosk mode or makes two phones work togther somehow as a big tablet or screen and keyboard combo
- I don't know why you got downvoted so I could not reply your question. Here is my reply:
> Out of curiosity, have you found any downsides with that setup long-term? Battery health or missed notifications, for example?
Yeah, it is inconvenient to bring two phones. That's definitely a downside. Battery health is fine. I never missed any notifications so far.
- Mine is bricked forever because google non consensually entered me into 2fa using a dead email address. Which is good because I needed a reason to never trust those fuckers again.
- Use it as storage lol
- > I’ve been thinking about practical ways people reuse spare or unused Android devices instead of letting them sit in a drawer.
I sell them or give to family.
> Not trying to promote anything here — genuinely interested in how people approach this.
Adding this makes me think you do want to promote something.