6mo ago

What uses of a smartphone do you think most people miss out on?

By far my most favorite use is as a notepad that I always have with me. I use a custom keyboard to make typing faster and more accurate.

Anything y'all like to do with your phones that you feel like most people miss out on?

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108 comments

USB OTG on android phones is severely underrated.
I can plug in a USB drive and transfer files around, I've used this to manage my retro handheld SD cards before.
You can tether your hotspot over Ethernet to your computer with an Ethernet adapter.
You can plug Ethernet into your phone to get faster connections.
You can plug a mouse into your phone and get a cursor on screen. Not super useful tbh, but kinda cool.
You can use your phone as an external webcam for your computer.
It's a bit more annoying than it used to be but you can use your phone as a universal IR remote with a small adapter and free apps (I miss my built in IR blaster from my S3).
I haven't used it much, but I can plug in a RTL-SDR dongle and get aerial TV on my phone, or a radio spectrum analyzer. I used it to discover that my garage remote is about to die and that's why my car's garage button won't learn the signal.
USB (or Bluetooth) game controllers just work.
Definitely a relatively niche usecase but I have SSH clients, terminal apps, RDP remote access clients, and other networking tools as apps on my phone for quickly messing with things. Very helpful to not need to bring out the PC when I'm fixing my network.
The ability to VPN into my home network to access my NAS. Honestly being able to access my NAS in general is already great for backups or just so I don't have to think about what's physically on my phone.
With a cheap Bluetooth device I can connect to my car's diagnostic port (ODBII) and check engine codes. No more trips to the mechanic just to get it diagnosed.
WiFi direct cameras are a great addon too. I have a wifi endoscope (camera on a long bendy stick) for inspecting inside walls and my phone works as a screen for it.
- When my pixel 5a decided to stop using the screen, I was able to do a full phone backup using the OTG to plug in a keyboard. Ridiculous but was a fun troubleshooting moment
- Using a mouse is great for some games like OpenTTD!
- Using a mouse is invaluable if the screen shatters and the touch panel stops working but you still need to get data off it.
- I too miss my build in IR blaster from my S3.
- For anyone on iOS, you can do most of this there too. On older iPhones you need a lightning to USB-A adapter you can get on AliExpress for like $3, but on USB-C iPhones it works directly.
  The Files app has become like a full file manager, with local storage, unzipping, archiving, SMB connections, as well as most cloud storage services connect to it. Download Keka from the App Store and you can even unpack 7z, ISOs, everything you can do on a desktop.
- You don't need an ethernet adapter to use your phone as a cabled hotspot for a computer. Just a regular usb cabe works just fine, I've done it before when our home internet was down.
  
  That's true, but with the Ethernet connection you can tether to a router directly. When my Internet was down I was able to tether my entire home for the time I needed to get some updates finished to get my docker environment back up and running. I had no idea that was possible before that.
  
  I had no idea! So you use the phone in tether mode and get it hooked up on a router ethernet port and it works like that? Did you have to change any settings on your router to make it work?
  
  Nope it all just worked, it really surprised me honestly. I expected to need to do some weird tethering to a raspi or something to make it work but I didn't need any of that. (Well, I had issues because it turned out lightning borked my router, but that was a different issue entirely.)

108 comments