I love tinkering with the bunch of old phones I have lying on the gadget desk. In the past, I have converted Android phones into a dedicated dashcam, a home security camera, and even a baby monitor to keep an eye on my 11-month-old infant, who is on a stage where she wants to go everywhere. There are dedicated devices for such stuff, but you won’t get the processing power and ease-of-use of an Android device. And repurposing old smartphones also saves you money.
There are so many ways to put that old phone of yours to good use, and recently it came to my mind, why not use it as an offline GPS for my car? This way, my primary driver can relax and focus on other important stuff, such as playing music or just preserving the battery. If you also have a retired device lying in your home, here’s how to turn it into a dashboard companion.
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A dedicated device for navigation is always good
Put your primary driver to other use
It is not that using your everyday smartphone for navigation isn’t convenient. The thing is, it comes with several hidden costs, both for your device and your driving experience.
Navigation is a resource-intensive task. It requires constant GPS pinging, maximum screen brightness to combat glare, and continuous data fetching. Even if you use Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, your smartphone is constantly engaged in offering the processing power, location services, and internet to the car dashboard for navigation.
Doing this not only accelerates battery degradation but also increases the risk of OLED screen burn-in. By offloading the task to a secondary device (if you have one), you preserve the lifespan of the smartphone that you actually use daily.
On top of this, setting up a secondary phone as the navigation device keeps your ride distraction-free. Since it won’t have an active SIM inside, you won’t receive text messages, email notifications, or app alerts. Your device remains locked on one task, that is navigation, ensuring that you don’t miss a single turn.
Setting up your old phone as a GPS
It all depends on the app that you are choosing
The first step in the process of turning your old phone into an offline GPS requires the selection of the app that fits the bill. While you can download offline areas on standard map apps like Google Maps, etc., they eventually expire or require a network connection for a refresh.
For a truly offline setup, you need an app designed for the job. And for this task, I chose the OsmAnd app. We have praised OsmAnd in the past for its privacy-focused nature and better offline navigation than Google Maps. So, it became an obvious choice for the task.
To give you some context, OsmAnd is an open-source navigation application powered by OpenStreetMap data. Being an open-source app, it prioritizes functionality over privacy and tracking your data.
All you need to do is download the map for your entire state, country, or continent while being connected to your home Wi-Fi or cellular data. Once downloaded, OsmAnd provides an incredibly detailed, offline turn-by-turn navigation. It even includes speed limit warnings, lane guidance, and specific points of interest along the way — all without needing an active internet connection.
- OS
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Android
- Price model
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Free and Plus
OsmAnd is a powerful offline maps and navigation app built for travelers, hikers, and everyday commuters. It lets you download detailed maps, navigate without an internet connection, and customize routes for driving, cycling, walking, and more. With OpenStreetMap data, GPX support, and privacy-focused features, it’s a great alternative to mainstream navigation apps.
Put things to work
It only takes a little effort
Before anything else, you would want your old phone to only focus on one task, which is navigation. For that, you need to start with a clean slate. This means you need to first factory reset your phone. No bloatware eating up the resources, and no old accounts cluttering things up.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Open the Settings menu on your phone.
- Tap on General management.
- Scroll down and select Reset.
- Go all the way down and select Factory data reset.
- On the next page, hit the Reset button to completely remove all your accounts, system, and app data, settings, downloaded apps, music, pictures, and all other user data.
Once your phone is reset, and it boots back up, skip signing in to a Google account. You do not need it. You can sideload the OsmAnd APK from its official website or transfer it from your PC. Now that you have the APK, here’s what you need to do:
- Install the OsmAnd app on your phone and open it.
- The first time you open the app, it will ask you to download the map. You can do that or press the Skip Download button in the bottom-right corner.
- You can go ahead and download whatever region you are going to travel to or the areas where you travel the most.
Once you are done, you do not need a Wi-Fi connection until you want to update the maps.
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Lock down your phone
It should be made for GPS-only use
This is probably the most important step, and you should not skip it. Since your old phone has no SIM and you are not using it for anything else, you want to squeeze every drop of battery into navigation.
Go to Settings and do the following:
- Turn off Wi-Fi auto-connect
- Disable Bluetooth
- Set screen brightness manually to 40–50%, enough to see in the daylight.
- Turn off auto-sync and background data
- Disable unused apps (including system apps)
Doing so, you will straightaway notice that your phone lasts much longer when it’s only focused on one task, which in our case is GPS.
Now that you are done with the above steps, all you need to do is get a cheap phone mount for your car’s dashboard. Plug your phone into the car charger so that it never runs out of battery, and you are done.
You now have a dedicated GPS device that costs you nothing extra and works everywhere, even underground parking, mountain passes, and places where your primary phone loses cellular signal.
You are now ready, almost
It wouldn’t be fair to pretend that OsmAnd is perfect, and now you will no longer have any issues. In my testing, I found a few areas where it fell short. The first one is the user interface. Notably, OsmAnd has a functional UI, but that is nowhere close to modern standards. But I would say, just tweak the settings for once and leave it as is. Secondly, there is no real-time traffic or details about nearby accidents. It also cannot update ETA’s dynamically based on what’s happening on the road.
However, navigating through rural areas with spotty reception, or on a weekend trip, this setup acts as a reliable backup. A dedicated offline GPS device is unbeatable. You drive, you drive, and arrive at your destination with your primary phone sitting comfortably, fully charged, ready for those long doom-scrolling sessions.
