Alternative OS for old phones

[itisme911]

I want to turn old phones into media devices for my vehicles. Does anyone know of or have any reccomendations for a super low spec OS, as well as just some android alternatives for mobile devices?

[emosun]

whats wrong with the os's they are using

[Dukesilver27-]

Depending on how popular they are, you could find Lineage OS, which is pretty good, granted that I don't have a lot of experience with custom OS.

It worked on my galaxy tab 2.

[itisme911]

@emosun   I want lower power draw, I'm likely never going to use cellular bluetooth meybe even wifi, its also slow, takes forever changing songs or doing anything.

 

 

@Dukesilver27-Thaks for the suggestion, one of my old samsung should work with lineage, I also have a kyocera TANK from school, waterproof(2 meters?), us military approved, removable battery, which is why I still have it.

[Applefreak]

33 minutes ago, itisme911 said:

I want to turn old phones into media devices for my vehicles. Does anyone know of or have any reccomendations for a super low spec OS, as well as just some android alternatives for mobile devices?

Really depends on the phone and if someone has made one. There is no universal OS for smartphones as each phone uses different components and manufacturers do not share their internal specs and drivers. As a result, you need to find a specific OS called a ROM that was made for your phone. In most cases though, if your car stereo has bluetooth or a usb plug, you should be able to linkt your phone and use it as a playback device. If you are talking more tablet size media things, get a used surface tablet with x86 hardware. You can run a lightweight linux distro or something like that on it. 

[itisme911]

10 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

 if your car stereo has bluetooth or a usb plug, you should be able to linkt your phone and use it as a playback device. If you are talking more tablet size media things, get a used surface tablet with x86 hardware. You can run a lightweight linux distro or something like that on it. 

I've done some mobile rooting and OS swaps, IK its usually VERY phone specific but there are more and more OS with multiple brands of compatibility, Lineage OS mentioned above seems like one. I'm mostly interested in reccommendations for low power draw or just good alternative OS anyone has experience with.

 

The car has the USB, no problem there yeh, the van is only audio jack, and the car I'm thinking of is JDM import so I wanted something plugnplay for 9mm headphone jack

 

The x86 linux distro is a great idea for the van though, it would make the perfect media device as I will overhaul that one eventually, though at that point it may make more sense just to pop my laptop in when I need it. I just like the idea of putting mounting spots for the surface tab.

edit* also idk if I need a tab or large screen if I have a TV in the van .. ..

[Applefreak]

8 minutes ago, itisme911 said:

I've done some mobile rooting and OS swaps, IK its usually VERY phone specific but there are more and more OS with multiple brands of compatibility, Lineage OS mentioned above seems like one. I'm mostly interested in reccommendations for low power draw or just good alternative OS anyone has experience with.

 

The car has the USB, no problem there yeh, the van is only audio jack, and the car I'm thinking of is JDM import so I wanted something plugnplay for 9mm headphone jack

 

The x86 linux distro is a great idea for the van though, it would make the perfect media device as I will overhaul that one eventually, though at that point it may make more sense just to pop my laptop in when I need it. I just like the idea of putting mounting spots for the surface tab.

edit* also idk if I need a tab or large screen if I have a TV in the van .. ..

If low power usage is key, you probably want to run it off the cars battery for quite some time, look into raspberry pi. Those can run linux just fine while drawing 10 to 15 W under load. You can get specific touch screens for or connect some other kind of display with hdmi input.

[itisme911]

Inadvertently the Pi/surface tab sounds like my final device build for the van, its gonna have solar. I just dont want to have to charge my audio device all the time, and want something I can put together with the old phones in the tech drawer.

 

This is the power consumption of the current generation of one of the devices i might use, the older one has less power draw(less ram/cores/hz) 0.2 watts in a deactivated state. It was 0.5 watts in standby, and idle mode reached up to 1.9 watts. The absolute peak consumption was 6 watts (kyocera torque) circa 2018 but under $20 on ebay. . . and I have the older one already.

 

A galaxy note 4 which will DEFINITELY have alternative os is $50on ebay and 1..75w

 

My point here I can pick up an old samsung from goodwill and have super low power draw and spend under $25, but I already have some old devices.

[itisme911]

The XDA developers forums are REALLY fleshed out with LOTS of roots, software, and users with many phone models. I even found people modding my super obscure phones for their time (kyocera/Honor)

[daedulus]

see if it is listed here: Devices - postmarketOS otherwise yeah XDA dev forums but without mainline kernel support your device is a sitting duck for exploits if it is on a network.

postmarketOS is essentially an image builder for mostly ARM embedded devices such as phones/tablets, so some technical proficiency is expected.