Using an old Android phone as a music player

53 points by surprisetalk 5 days ago|28 comments

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jiffygist 23 minutes ago

I wonder does anyone here do the whole music piracy pipeline (e.g. downloading torrent -> cue splitting -> converting to lossy) entirely on their phone?

I personally find it more convenient to do that on my computer and then `adb push --sync` the PC music directory to the phone, but I'm curious what are other people's setups

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bashZorina_09 14 minutes ago

I still do it the latter way! Though only because I'm unnecessarily picky about how my tags are formatted, cover art presented and picks of appropriate codecs. It would be an immense chore to do it completely from my phone at the moment, but I'm also pleased to see how much actually can be done on the go^^

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hnburnsy 17 hours ago

>"for the debloating i used xda forums. they have a lot of forum posts about what is safe to remove from any device but as always be careful. don't try to remove gpu drivers or something"

Suggestion: Use the Universal Android Debloater

https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...

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jiffygist 36 minutes ago

>using one of smartphone's main functions

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pxoe 14 hours ago

Kinda bizarre to see much ado over what's ultimately just installing a music app. The concept of an edge to edge screen with a notch being an "old android phone" is also very bizarre. (that's before even getting into specs and the fact that this was a flagship phone so this is not "slumming it up" by any means, cause it's not a situation dealing with a truly old or weak phone either. like, there's genuinely no hardship there to overcome, besides shitty rom situation)

It's like a preview of some future generations idea of "old tech" and "accomplishing something". Ooh installing some apks. Using two phones, groundbreaking. (with such revelations as, using another phone with a 3500 mAh battery would save battery on some other phone likely with its own 4-5k mAh battery. great stuff.) And there could be a neat and useful writeup about using any and all kinds of phones as 'just a music player' or some other kind of focused device (some older phones may still have pretty good cameras), but this is just barely even instructive at all

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kjellsbells 11 minutes ago

That's an uncharitable take. Blog posts can and should exist at every level of expertise and depth. What's trivially easy and hardly worth blogging about to you might be the gateway/lightbulb moment to someone else, no?

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fhdkweig 17 hours ago

The author is using PowerAmp.

I am using AIMP. I was specifically looking for apps with downloadable APKs for sideloading. I can't use the Play Store because I don't have a google account. Looks like PowerAmp also has an APK.

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yjftsjthsd-h 16 hours ago

I'd also very strongly recommend F-Droid. TBH I can't really speak to the quality of music apps on it - I just use VLC - but it doesn't require an account and it has lots of good apps.

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reorder9695 16 hours ago

I use Auxio from F-Droid. It's quite simple (which to me is a benefit) and my only real complaint is how similar shuffle on and off look on Android Auto. It handles non ASCII titles correctly where some others didn't (from what I remember due to weirdness with the Android media store) and it picks up new media/edited quickly and reliably which can be a sore spot with others. I don't know how Android's media store is apparently so incompetent that most music apps don't work correctly using it.

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tmgldn 15 hours ago

can also vouch for Auxio - happy user of 5 years

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UncleSlacky 14 hours ago

I use the F-Droid apps Transistor to listen to streaming radio and Antennapod for podcasts on an old phone:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.y20k.transistor/

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/

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arcanemachiner 15 hours ago

Use Aurora Store to download apps from Play Store without an account (very trustworthy app IMO, has been around and working for years):

https://auroraoss.com/aurora-store

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Denatonium 12 hours ago

PowerAmp is paid, and Aurora Store can't do paid apps or in-app purchases without a Google Account. It's better to download the APK and buy a license key on the official website, which doesn't require Google Play Services if you do it that way.

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arcanemachiner 8 hours ago

Ah, I forgot. I thought there was a free version. I haven't used PowerAmp in like a decade.

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Denatonium 15 hours ago

Looks like they also allow you to buy with a credit card on their website, and they say Google Services aren't required if you buy that way. Very cool!

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bdavbdav 5 hours ago

I’m not quite sure what the point of this article is. Removed some apps and installed a music player on an old phone?

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dtj1123 4 hours ago

Indeed, why is this on the front page of HN?

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sdorf 15 hours ago

Sidebar, PowerAmp is the app I miss most moving from Android to iOS. Nothing on iOS comes close, Doppler is the closest I've found and it's just OK.

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CharlesW 12 hours ago

PowerAmp and Symfonium for Android are excellent. If you don't mind the occasional pain of beta software, I intend to fill this gap on iOS with Poppy. https://www.reddit.com/r/PoppyApp/comments/1tiyki0/about_pop...

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hollandheese 14 hours ago

It’s still nowhere near as good as Poweramp but I’ve found Jewelcase to be better than Doppler.

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ravoori 16 hours ago

I have an old LG V-60 lying around which with its quad DAC is the perfect phone for this

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reaperducer 14 hours ago

I've been using an iPhone 5 as a standalone portable music player and an iPhone 3G (not 3GS) as an office music player daily since they came out.

Even the latest versions of macOS support them perfectly, down to the icons.

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ck2 15 hours ago

I just use VLC but I just play long sets not individual tracks

Now if Winamp was available for Android so I could use the Enhancer plugin...

https://winampplugins.co.uk/enhancer/enhancer.html

I've never found a sound processor that can make music sound so amazing somehow

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gladykov 11 hours ago

To disable phone processing and distorting audio by phone:

1. Root 2. Install 2 modules: Audio misc settings and audio sample rate changer by zyhk

This was giving multiple other hacks to get "quality". Author was a madman, advising disabling services to minimize jitter. But hey, it worked.

Or just USB DAC.

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TiredOfLife 16 hours ago

I couldn't find a good player for linux, so am using Symfonium on my old android phone with music on raspberry pi with navidrome

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totallygeeky 17 hours ago

PowerAmp is an incredible app, used it and loved it before. I have a self-hosted streaming setup, so I've personally found Symfonium (1) to be my go-to. I'm glad things worked out for the author with this setup, and honestly the headphone jack is a sight for sore eyes.

(1) https://www.symfonium.app/

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xerox13ster 14 hours ago

Wake me up when you start using a Lumia 820 in lockedown mode as a music player.

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D0ugJudy 16 hours ago

Now I'm wondering if I can load plexamp on my ancient Nexus 5a...