Comment by sandreas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandreas | Hacker News Reader

While technically this sounds interesting, using an old phone to install ONE App and call it a NAS is not what I expected.

Additionally, a storage solution (NAS) relying on a single eMMC or microSD neither seems very reliable nor fast enough.

Considering the small size and the lack of connectivity of "an old phone", there are way better solutions out there in my opinion - even if you'd just like to use it as a "vacation device" in a hotel.

I personally use a GL.iNet Beryl with OpenWRT, which is about 50 bucks used, but there is also stuff from FriendlyElec (NanoPI NAS Kit).

Depending on the phone, if the phone has a USB-C, you could definitely turn it into a NAS with an external disk caddy and an ethernet connection (usb-c port extenders do that). That said, it'd definitely be cheaper and better user experience to just use something with Linux on it (like an older NUC, openWRT as you say, or something similar).

A phone is an extremely versatile device (Audio, Camera, Storage, Display, Battery, USB-C), but for some purposes it is just not the right choice.

I use old phones as

  remote
  audio player
  surveilance cam
  book scanner

What I would love to have is an Android KVM device - an old phone capable of remote controlling a PC like PiKVM[1]. Should be possible, but remote display stuff is pretty hard to handle...

1: https://pikvm.org/

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