If you’re a tech enthusiast like me, chances are you have an old phone or two lying around unused. While it’s not necessarily the best use for it, you can definitely take one of those older devices and use it as a rudimentary NAS (network attached storage device) for sharing data across all your devices.
On top of that, if you really want to take things a step further, you can root an old Android phone and set up Docker on it. From there, you can host normal applications that you would on any other NAS and deploy them on your network, including running things like Pi-hole or Jellyfin. They’re making just a NAS out of an Android phone, but you can easily host a Nextcloud Pi server on your smartphone if it’s rooted.
We forget that yesterday’s flagship, or even mid-range, phones are actually pretty powerful devices, often a fair bit of storage. With a USB hub plugged in, you can attach storage, an Ethernet connection, and more.
Repurposing an old phone, instead of throwing it out, is certainly also cutting down on e-waste.