There are all kinds of posts on here about current and new devices. Be at smart phones, laptops and desktops, or other computerized hardware. I thought I would try something a little different, and start a conversation about older hardware, just to see where it goes.
I have said on here before, that I have an old iPhone SE 2020 (a.k.a. iPhone SE 2). This was primarily a testing device. Beta testing software, that sort of thing.
I also have an original (1st GEN) Alexa device. This device is so old it does not even have Bluetooth compatibility. 🤯
I have been having problems with my old Alexa device as of late, there are times it does quirky things, like not activate when I called the wake word, or activate, but go silent on me when I ask a question, or one of the more recent fun quirks is when I set a timer or alarm, and then ask it to quit the timer or alarm when the thing is going off, only for it to tell me there are no timers or alarms, while the alarm sound is still chiming. Fun little work around for this, is to ask it to immediately set a new timer or alarm, then immediately ask it to cancel, all, timers or alarms. That seems to do the trick.
I could obviously just go and buy a new echo device, They really are not that expensive, and you can find them just about anywhere these days. Rather than doing something so boring like that, I got creative and decided to, "recycle", some old hardware.
So, below are the steps I took, to take a six year old iPhone, and turned it into a modern day ALEXA device, one that has both Bluetooth capability, and ALEXA plus functionality.
- Went into Settings, Accessibility, Display, and disabled Autolock.
- Turned on screen curtain.
- Opened the Alexa application for iOS. Make sure that it was set up just like an echo device, being able to activate via voice, having continuous conversation and adaptive speech enabled, as well as connecting to the local network via Bluetooth.
- Muted VoiceOver speech.
- Connected the iPhone SE 2020 to a Bose dock speaker system that I own.
Voilà , I now have a fully functional Alexa plus device, that meets all of my needs. It works just like an echo, I can activate it by voice, tell it to play something on my fire TV, and it does. It also does it faster than my old and tired first GEN Alexa device ever did.
So, with all of that said, what have you all done with your old devices? Share your stories below. 😀
Comments
Not nearly as interesting as what year is it?
I’m sure my story is not going to be half as interesting as that. I have never used an Alexa device at all so I wouldn’t be able to use my old devices for that. I don’t even have an Alexa. I guess the most interesting thing I’m doing is using my iPhone SE 2022 is an iPod. I never got to own an iPod. I was actually going to get one. I had everything all set for me to go and get one and I just never got to the Apple Store for some reason and then I think maybe a week later was when Apple had announced that they were just continuing. I guess maybe I kind of did the same thing with my old iPhone 5 before I got the SE phone. So yeah that’s the most interesting as I’ve ever done with anything. I had to get rid of the iPhone 5 though because the battery kept acting up. It wouldn’t let me use it past 20% before going completely dead and it wouldn’t really get full charge or anything in mine so it’s gone now so yeah hopefully people have way more interesting stories than this one. That’s pretty cool what you were able to do though
iPad mini 2
The oldest Apple device that I own is an iPad mini 2. I loved the device back then, especially with iOS 9 it was so smooth with VoiceOver. It can only run iOS 12, so I don't know what to do with this device. At the moment, I use it as a time capsule to look how iOS 12 compares to today's iOS; however, I'd like to have iOS 9 back on it but there seems to be no way to do this.