The guide mentions that the phone doesn’t have a wired connection, but couldn’t you just plug in an external USB ethernet adapter. Would be curious if anybody has tried this.
In general, I really find that this is an underappreciated use for old phones. There’s an advantage over using something like RPI since you have a touchscreen built in, making it much easier to troubleshoot without having to plug in a monitor and a keyboard. Meanwhile, the battery can act as a built in UPS. Given how abundant old phones are, seems like it would be cool to make an Android distro specifically designed for this use case. Especially if you could plug in a USB hub for stuff like external storage. This could be a home server, music player, etc.
I have successfully plugged my android into an Ethernet-usbc adapter, yes. A special Ethernet icon actually pops up in my icon bar when it’s using that connection.
oh nice!
Generally speaking I find USB hubs with ports on them work pretty well with android as they’re just relying on the Linux kernel drivers for the USB support.
That’s what I expected, gonna have to play around with an old phone I’ve got lying around.
At a functional level I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work. Though my preffered method for that has always been old desktops over phones as it gives a lot more flexibility overall.
I just tried and my hub allows powering the phone while plugging a drive in. I haven’t tried a USB network card though. I agree old desktops or laptops work also work pretty well. It just bothers me how. old phones are fully fledged computers in a really nice small package, and there’s no easy way to make them useful.
Shit side with half the article used by ads no thank you.
Get a pi hole. I see no ads.
It’s amazing to see that there are still people lacking basic technical knowledge to use ad blockers, even in the year 2024.
And you generate traffic for them, thanks. You could just directly link to the install docs on PostmarketOS, not for a shitty third party site: https://postmarketos.org/install/
The article talks the idea of recycling a phone to use as a home server, which is what I found interesting. Also, if you spend your time worrying what sites you generate traffic for maybe rethink your life.
A lot of liberals are big believers in the power of consumers voting with their dollar/attention.
Ben Burgis: “Voting With Your Dollars” Is an Antidemocratic Illusion
Indeed, libs always think they can vote their way out of systemic problems.
Why?
prevent e-waste
or maybe as a first step into self-hosting for someone who has no access to more suitable hardware
