Old Phones -- What To Do With Them?

[LindaH]

I rearranged my office and came across a bunch of old phones and tablets. 

Three of the phones have no way of doing a factory reset.  Of these 3 phones, only one had a sim card which I took out and then discarded the phone.  I don't know what to do with the other 2 because I can't erase the personal info on them -- short of taking a hammer to them!

The other two "newer" phones I was able to do a factory reset on as well as one of the tablets.  I haven't been able to find the charge cord on the 2nd tablet, so can't recharge it to do a factory reset on it.

The question now is -- what to do with all of these devices?  I'm sure Verizon doesn't want them back because the devices are so old (the last 2 phone upgrades I've done, I was able to send back the old phone for some $$).

Any suggestions?

(ON EDIT:  I also have a WiFi Ranger I haven't used in a few years.  If anyone would like it and you're in or traveling through the Spokane area, you can have it.)

Edited May 30, 2019 by LindaH

[Barbaraok]

How old?   Flip phones or smart phones? 

[SWharton]

Our local women shelter happily took them.

[LindaH]

6 hours ago, Barbaraok said:

How old?   Flip phones or smart phones? 

I'm not really sure how old the 2 "newer" phones...older than 4 years, anyway.  They're both smartphones.  One is a Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD and the other is  Samsung Galaxy S Relay.

The tablet for which I have the charge cord is an Ellipsis 8.  The other one is a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3.  Of course, I'm not going to be able to do anything with this latter one unless I can find the charge cord.

[LindaH]

6 hours ago, SWharton said:

Our local women shelter happily took them.

That's a great idea for the phones!  I'll check to see if there's one around here.

[SWharton]

Thought you would like that one!!!!! Call the police, they would know and probably have a contact number.

[Carlos]

When I get devices from customers, I wipe them and donate them either to a domestic violence shelter, or a facility that helps the homeless get jobs.  Both groups of people need a cheap way to get phone calls.  Both of those organizations give people something like 300 minutes a month so they can get job interviews, talk to police about their situation, and stay in touch with family.

 

[frater jason]

Old smartphones can be used as dashcams, obdii displays, geocaching beaters, etc.

[Ray,IN]

On 5/31/2019 at 3:37 PM, Carlos said:

When I get devices from customers, I wipe them and donate them either to a domestic violence shelter, or a facility that helps the homeless get jobs.  Both groups of people need a cheap way to get phone calls.  Both of those organizations give people something like 300 minutes a month so they can get job interviews, talk to police about their situation, and stay in touch with family.

 

+ 911 may be called without a carrier.

[chirakawa]

8 hours ago, Ray,IN said:

+ 911 may be called without a carrier.

Now that would be a neat trick.

[justRich]

I think I saw a cellphone recycling machine in Walmart this week.  Similar to a Redbox.

 

[Lou Schneider]

12 hours ago, Ray,IN said:

+ 911 may be called without a carrier.

Quote

Now that would be a neat trick.

Actually, federal law says all of the cell phone carriers have to pass through calls to 911 and other emergency numbers whether or not the calling phone is currently activated.

I have an old deactivated phone in my glove box that was on a different carrier than my primary phone for just that reason, in case I need to call 911 and my primary phone is damaged or I'm in in an area where it's carrier doesn't have coverage.

Edited July 15, 2019 by Lou Schneider

[chirakawa]

1 hour ago, Lou Schneider said:

Actually, federal law says all of the cell phone carriers have to pass through calls to 911 and other emergency numbers whether or not the calling phone is currently activated.

I have an old deactivated phone in my glove box that was on a different carrier than my primary phone for just that reason, in case I need to call 911 and my primary phone is damaged or I'm in in an area where it's carrier doesn't have coverage.

That's correct.  However, he said you could call 911 without a carrier.  No way.

[Dutch_12078]

5 minutes ago, chirakawa said:

That's correct.  However, he said you could call 911 without a carrier.  No way.

Obviously some carrier has to handle the call, but the point is that the phone does not need to have an active account with any carrier.

[chirakawa]

28 minutes ago, Dutch_12078 said:

Obviously some carrier has to handle the call, but the point is that the phone does not need to have an active account with any carrier.

Exactly.

[Ray,IN]

4 hours ago, chirakawa said:

That's correct.  However, he said you could call 911 without a carrier.  No way.

Yep, my bad, I left out the word active..

[Carlos]

Wow, and I thought I was pedantic about technical details.

All wireless phones and providers in every first world country that I know of are required to process an emergency call using any available signal.  They also get priority on channels and signal strength.  Bear in mind however that right now we are under a massive change of cellular infrastructure here in the US, and older phones may simply not be able to connect to the newer systems at all.  Verizon, for example, is shutting down everything that is not LTE.  So you can't assume that your old flip phone is going to keep working.

 

[Dutch_12078]

That's the major fallicy in the "all phones can call 911" rule. CDMA only phones will not work on GSM networks, for instance. Now with all carriers moving to VOIP/VoLTE services though, it will be less of a problem. There will still be the issue of phones that aren't capable of using the frequency bands on an available tower though. Fortunately, there's enough band overlap among carriers that it shouldn't be a major problem.

[Carlos]

1 minute ago, Dutch_12078 said:

Fortunately, there's enough band overlap among carriers that it shouldn't be a major problem.

 

Depends on where you are.  I'm in a place with little overlap, and if you're not on Verizon or AT&T, you can't count on making calls.  If you have an old CDMA phone, you're not getting anything (tried it).  So the important part to remember is that the old "spare emergency phone" is becoming less useful.  I think it's important for people to know this since it's the first time we've done a fast, radical cellular tech change like this in the US.  Verizon plans to have ALL non-LTE service gone by end of year.

 

[Ray,IN]

Good point Carlos,  we still have DW's old bag phone from AT&T, it's only use is a paperweight or museum piece.

[Carlos]

Ray, fire that phone up, wait for it to search for networks (say five minutes), and then dial 611.  Old GSM phones MIGHT still be working, even for some years.  LTE is an enhancement of GSM, basically, while CDMA is now just dead tech.

Hmm, I'm sure I have some ancient GSM phones in my old tech pile...

 

[Dutch_12078]

1 hour ago, Carlos said:

 

Depends on where you are.  I'm in a place with little overlap, and if you're not on Verizon or AT&T, you can't count on making calls.  If you have an old CDMA phone, you're not getting anything (tried it).  So the important part to remember is that the old "spare emergency phone" is becoming less useful.  I think it's important for people to know this since it's the first time we've done a fast, radical cellular tech change like this in the US.  Verizon plans to have ALL non-LTE service gone by end of year.

 

Yes, the older phones are becoming less and less useful, just as the old bag and other analog phones became useless some years agp. Fortunately, many people upgrade their phones fairly often, and hopefully they're updating their spare with their previous phone at the same time. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all have band overlap in many areas, primarily on bands 2, 4, 5 and 66. And many towers have more than one carrier on them as well. Sprint is the only outlier with no overlapping bands in use.

 

[Ray,IN]

3 hours ago, Carlos said:

Ray, fire that phone up, wait for it to search for networks (say five minutes), and then dial 611.  Old GSM phones MIGHT still be working, even for some years.  LTE is an enhancement of GSM, basically, while CDMA is now just dead tech.

Hmm, I'm sure I have some ancient GSM phones in my old tech pile...

 

Can't, the 12V SLA battery died long ago. Analog phones will not work on the digital towers. Shoot, even the GM Onstar relay in my 2002 Dually stopped working, GM sent out a recall notice to have a dealer pull the fuse to deactivate it to prevent accidental battery run-down.

 

[Carlos]

GSM is not analog.  The Onstar in your old truck was, and they were still installing 2G/3G digital until just a few years ago, which is also going to stop working.  There's some sort of swap-out program in place now.

 

[packnrat]

On 7/14/2019 at 8:53 PM, Ray,IN said:

+ 911 may be called without a carrier.

this.  place a cell phone someplace with a good charger for said. as they can call 911, by law the phone company's can not lock them out.

can not call aunt sally, but you can call the police

 

but in this digital age the better analog phones are locked out. as no backward compatible in the system.