Reusing an ancient cellphone
April 7, 2015 2:04 PM Subscribe
I have a deactivated Samsung Stellar that's not worth the effort to sell, but would be a serviceable Spotify MP3 player if I used WiFi to download playlists to the drive. I think it would be best to root it and replace the bloated OS with something smaller to accommodate the hefty Spotify offline files. What's a relatively painless guide to someone who's never jailbroken or rooted a phone before?
This is appealing to me because the phone is small, built like a tank, and still has a decent battery life left in it (which would make it ideal for places I want music, but don't want to risk injuring my day-to-day phone, like exercising, or the beach). If necessary I wouldn't be adverse to buying an SD card if that was necessary for the process. My general plan would be to have the phone go on-line on WiFi, download Spotify playlists while it's there, and then take it offline on the go.
I'm looking for general advice about this, and especially good guides that walk through the rooting process (as well as software suggestions that are scam and virus free).
This is appealing to me because the phone is small, built like a tank, and still has a decent battery life left in it (which would make it ideal for places I want music, but don't want to risk injuring my day-to-day phone, like exercising, or the beach). If necessary I wouldn't be adverse to buying an SD card if that was necessary for the process. My general plan would be to have the phone go on-line on WiFi, download Spotify playlists while it's there, and then take it offline on the go.
I'm looking for general advice about this, and especially good guides that walk through the rooting process (as well as software suggestions that are scam and virus free).
Best answer: On preview, i'm leaving the rest of my post because it's useful... but a bit of quick looking around seems to show that the newer versions of spotify for android will store the music on the SD card without any modding. You may not need to bother with any of this other stuff! It also seems like spotify may have done some stupid hackery to screw over anyone trying to force the app on to an SD card, and you have to play by their system now(GRRRRRR)
Well it's an older version of android(looks like either 4.0something or 4.1.2? if you haven't updated, you should get on wifi and check for updates).
Verizon phones have locked bootloaders. Always. You're not going to be flashing another ROM. The lack of any out there for this device cements that.
That said, My workflow would be something like:
1. run towelroot(which is mentioned various places as working on this phone). this is a one click root, easy as hell.
2. get supersu from the play store
3. get app2sd/something like this
4. buy a cheap ass 8 or 16gb sd card, move spotify to that
that's about as good as it's going to get i think. once you have root, you can install titaniumbackup and use it to nuke all the verizon crapware on the phone, which should free up a TON of space(vzw navigator, all 100 other apps). having 4gb of internal storage sucks though, i don't know why anyone thought that was ever ok after about 2008.
the bloated OS can be chopped down mostly with titanium anyways, you should have a decent amount of breathing room after that.
Also, this phone really isn't that old. It has LTE, shipped with android 4.0something, and has a snapdragon CPU and halfway decent specs. When you said ancient, i thought you were talking about something from 2008/9.
posted by emptythought at 2:50 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well it's an older version of android(looks like either 4.0something or 4.1.2? if you haven't updated, you should get on wifi and check for updates).
Verizon phones have locked bootloaders. Always. You're not going to be flashing another ROM. The lack of any out there for this device cements that.
That said, My workflow would be something like:
1. run towelroot(which is mentioned various places as working on this phone). this is a one click root, easy as hell.
2. get supersu from the play store
3. get app2sd/something like this
4. buy a cheap ass 8 or 16gb sd card, move spotify to that
that's about as good as it's going to get i think. once you have root, you can install titaniumbackup and use it to nuke all the verizon crapware on the phone, which should free up a TON of space(vzw navigator, all 100 other apps). having 4gb of internal storage sucks though, i don't know why anyone thought that was ever ok after about 2008.
the bloated OS can be chopped down mostly with titanium anyways, you should have a decent amount of breathing room after that.
Also, this phone really isn't that old. It has LTE, shipped with android 4.0something, and has a snapdragon CPU and halfway decent specs. When you said ancient, i thought you were talking about something from 2008/9.
posted by emptythought at 2:50 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks emptythought. The process was entirely painless, and worked like a charm.
posted by codacorolla at 1:36 PM on May 8, 2015
posted by codacorolla at 1:36 PM on May 8, 2015
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posted by jozxyqk at 2:24 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]