Turn old phone into media/music player ( with custom rom? )

skele_tron@feddit.de to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 29 points –

I know i could leave it stock, but i wanted to remove features it will not need, and have something that can use bluetooth speaker to play music, and i dont have to worry about it being stolen or damaged.

Streaming is not an option for me, first because i oft work either underground or in places with so bad reception that the battery goes down fast.

Shelling out 400€ for FiiO would be nice, but then i would not leave my shiny fiio lying around on construction sites. I would use my fiio m5, but for some reason it stopped seeing bluetooth devices and cannot pair at all ( updated to the latest possible fw, nothing helps )

Any other ideas ?

13

I don't think you'd need a custom ROM. You could just factory reset it and only install apps that's you'd use for music. I can't remember if you can remove bloatware unrooted, but you could set up a clean home screen and ignore all the unnecessary apps.

Alternatively, I picked up an old FiiO X3 from 2016 for like $100. The battery is way better and the audio quality is fantastic. It's nice having a dedicated device that I can navigate in my pocket, and I dig the iPod Classic vibe.

I did this for my previous phone. Used as an mp3 player, remote control, and a media streaming device. You can use the Android developer mode to disable a lot of unnecessary bloatware.

I use Musicolet for mp3s. Have about 10000 songs on my phone

You should be able to use adbshell with shizuku (both in f-droid) to remove whatever you won't use. I doubt there's any custom Roms that'll help here though. If you're willing to root the phone then you can probably find some way to get what you want.

If you have any music on your computer, an old clickwheel iPod is the way to go

Do they need itunes to tranfer music or its like on fiio - aka plug the cable, copy stuff with totalcommander if you like

I use iTunes. There might be other ways to load music, but I’m not sure how to go about it

Doesn't it just work as-is? Upload your songs or use Spotify pro to download what you want locally and then just dance away.

Well what phone is it? There are tons of music playing programs on f-droid. Why not just run one? I've been using Vanilla Music. I don't like it that much, but don't feel like derping around trying more and more of them. Vanilla is better than some others that I tried.

I have the same idea on my mind for a while but seeing how messy the Android space is (mix of gamers and tinkerers), how heavy it is to compile a ROM (250Gb of data), knowing how shity vendor shares - if any - drivers... I feel that it would be better to throw away (in a recycle park of course) that ie: samsung s4 an buy a basic music player.

it's sad that it is so difficult to build a minimal ROM for an obsolete but still powerful smartphone.