Key Takeaways
- Use a USB-powered storage drive to turn your old phone into a NAS for your own storage network.
- Create a media server on your old phone and learn how Android or iOS works.
- Use Kodi for Android and Plex for iOS to create a media server on your old phone and stream content.
Do you have an old phone lying around your house that you don’t know what to do with? You could sell it and buy a new one, donate it to an e-waste centre, or try a fun project that will help you learn more about your device. Instead of throwing out your old phone, why not take the time to make a media server? Here are 4 reasons why it’s worth turning your old phone into a NAS. If you’re wondering what to do with your old phone, read on.
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1 What is NAS?
Unique Storage Network
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a device that connects to a Wi-Fi router and is designed to store files and transfer data between devices on the same network. NAS is a great and secure alternative to cloud storage. With a NAS, you have full control over everything that’s hosted on it. Think of a NAS as your own personal cloud drive, with near-instant access to everything stored on the network.
You don’t need to buy a thousands-dollar box for your NAS server; you can make one yourself with just a Wi-Fi router and a USB-powered storage drive. You can also create a NAS using an old laptop or an old smartphone, but you’ll get the best results if you build your NAS using devices with large amounts of storage.
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2 Check device details
Create projects that will help you learn more about Android and iOS
Instead of throwing out your old phone, you can learn more about how Android and iOS work by turning it into a media server. The process varies depending on whether you’re using an Android or an iPhone, but either will allow you to create a basic NAS and learn more about what these operating systems are used for. With an Android phone, you can take your NAS project a little further, but with an iPhone you can also create a basic media server and connect your iOS files to an external server.
3 Create a photo storage server
Store your photos in a convenient location from the cloud
There are a wide variety of servers you can run on an old smartphone, but one of my favorite project ideas is to use an old phone to create a file server to host your photo collection. A file server is one of the easier servers to run on an old smartphone, as it’s a simple directory where you can upload and download files.
However, depending on the type of files you plan to store on your server, you will need a good amount of storage space. Luckily, many Android smartphones allow you to expand storage using MicroSD cards, but iPhone users don’t have internal storage expansion, making hosting a file server difficult.
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Most complex server made from an old phone
Creating a media server using an old phone is, in my opinion, one of the coolest ways to create a NAS using an old phone. You can use your old phone to stream content around your home to other devices like PS5 or Xbox. There are several apps you can download to turn your old Android phone into a media server, but the open-source home theater app Kodi is the easiest and most popular solution for this.
iOS users can use Plex to turn their phone into a media server and cast their favorite TV shows, movies, and music to another iOS device, such as an iPad. However, Plex Mobile is not free to use and requires a $5 subscription fee. If you don’t mind jailbreaking your iPhone, you can install a Linux Shell on it to give you more options to turn your iPhone into a media server, but you will void your iPhone warranty and Apple Care terms in the process.
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5 Create a web server
Even if you are learning web development
You can also use an old phone to run a website. If you have an old Android phone, you can use it to create a low-cost web server. This is a great project to save on web hosting costs, but you should only do this with sites that don’t have a lot of traffic, otherwise your device will be locked up all the time. Therefore, this is a great project for people who are learning web development, because in addition to getting a free space to host your project files, you can learn more about creating a web hosting server.
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1 Comment
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.