Using an old Android phone as a music player

using an old android phone as a music player

08 Aug, 2026

it's been a while since i last talked about my music setup and things have changed a bit.

the music player

main benefits of owning a device specifically for listening to music for me are:

it saves on battery life of my other devices it allows listening to music without any distractions

so these are all well and good but finding a decent music player in 2026 is really hard. in my experience most devices fall into two categories: the high end stuff made by audio brands whose prices rival smartphones or really really cheaply made music players which sound like tin cans.

i was also looking for buying a second hand ipod but their prices have been inflated so much by the retro movement it's kind of insane. plus with an ipod you can't use flac files and there is no last.fm or listenbrainz scrobbling or bluetooth audio. (maybe you can get better deals if you decide to mod one yourself by buying a broken one but that is out of my skillset)

huawei p30 running niagara launcher

then i realised something. an old android phone can do a lot of what i'm looking for. so i grabbed my mom's old phone (a huawei p30) and aggressively debloated it with adb until only the essentials remained on the device. i downloaded poweramp , panoscrobbler, slapped on niagara launcher and i've been using it exclusively for listening to music for the past couple of months and it's going really smoothly. IT EVEN HAS A HEADPHONE JACKKK!!

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