Servers Ultimate Turns Your Old Android Phone Into a Server

[HappyIdiot]

Servers Ultimate Turns Your Old Android Phone Into a Tiny, Multipurpose Server

Home servers can be really handy for streaming media, securing public Wi-Fi, or sharing files between friends. But if you don't have a spare computer lying around to turn into a server, free app Servers Ultimate can do it to an old Android phone.

Servers Ultimate has a bunch of different types of servers built in, such as:

A DLNA or UPnP media server, perfect for streaming videos from your phone to another device
A proxy server for securing and encrypting your traffic on-the-go
An FTP, WebDAV or web server for storing and sharing files
A home DNS server, SMS gateway, Email server, and lots more for you web developers out there

If you wanted more space than your 32GB SD card can provide, you can hook up an external drive to most phones via USB and use that as your main data storage. The app is definitely geared more toward developers than the average user, but it can be handy if all you want to do is share a few files or run a proxy server at home without keeping your computer on 24/7. An old Android phone is small, low powered, and perfect for hiding in the closet. For more ideas, check out Servers Ultimate's Google Play entry below, or check out this thread on the XDA Developers forums.

Servers Ultimate is a free download for Android devices.

Lifehacker Article
Google Play - Servers Ultimate

I probably won't be doing this, but a couple of people here might be interested.

[Raven]

Who has an old android phone laying around, but not an extra computer?

[moxnix]

I am pretty sure an old android phone uses a lot less electricity than a old computer.

[HappyIdiot]

And is more portable/easier to conceal.

[Libra Monkee]

My old Android phone (Motorola Droid 1) is currently being used as an alarm clock. It sets itself for daylight savings, has it's own battery backup, and plays mp3s and Pandora. Besides, the Droid 1 is probaly too underpowered to run something like this. My other old Android phone (Samsung Charge) died shortly after its warranty did. Now its a very expensive paperweight.

At any rate, I have a Synology box that's currently acting as my home server. Something like this might be cool to put on my current Android phone (LG Spectrum) though for wireless file sharing when I'm out somewhere.

[complacent]

interesting. i'm curious to see what the performance would be for some of the crypto applications/services.

[Raven]

I just realized I have a Viewsonic gTablet collecting dust in my draw that I could use for this. My only worry is that using this as a media server would suck up all the wireless networking bandwidth.