Converting Old/Broken Android Phones into TV Box

Hi all,

I have two Android phones lying around that has a faulty screen. ie. The phone still works but the screen is black. One is a Note 2 and the other is a Samsung S3. I was thinking that these phones would probably make good Android TV boxes since they have reasonably fast processors and very stable wifi.

I have verified that the phones are working by hooking it up to my TV using a MHL cable. Everything works, just that I sort of have to guess tap the screen to navigate.

With the stock rom, it is not ideal, as by default it shows the portrait view, which only takes up 1/3 of my tv screen. But when you play a video using mx player, it does automatically turn itself into the landscape view and takes up the entire TV screen. I could keep it in the landscape view permanently, but there seems to be an overscan problem on the TV as well in landscape view.

Any ideas where to start?

Comments

  • You will simply need to override the phone's sensors to tell it that it is always in landscape mode regardless of the way the phone is being positioned.

    This app for e.g will do just that. It's kind of old (not updated anymore).
    This is also another app., much newer.

    I've never tested either of these apps.

    as for overscan, assuming that your TV is not old or crappy it will have an option for either per-pixel true display or some overscan setting. Otherwise you may have to lower output resolution perhaps to 720p.

    • That probably won't do the trick, as the launcher on most android phones doesn't support landscape - even if you force it, it'll still display portrait. Best bet is to load something like Cyanogenmod and a launcher that will work in landscape.

      Galaxy S III: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/I9300_Info
      Galaxy Note 2: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/N7100_Info

      Combine that with a Bluetooth keyboard/touchpad so that you can navigate without touching the phone, VLC/Plex/MX Player and you're all set.

      • From memory yes Touchwhiz doesn't do landscape, neither does the Google launcher but the 3rd party ones like Apex, Go Launcher and Holo Launcher will do it.

        However as I've tested some apps on Android on a PC before, and since PC's don't have orientation sensors, some applications will launch with portrait mode as default, as it is defined in their manifest.xml file (by the developer). So the orientation hack is still required to fool these apps into thinking that the only supported mode is landscape to prevent them running in a vertical, cut-off mode.

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