We Americans love upgrading to a new smart phone at every opportunity, and most of us have several of them stuffed in a drawer somewhere.

If you’re like me, you probably hate having a perfectly good portable computer (that’s really what a smart phone is) doing nothing more than gathering dust.

I’ve written several posts in the past explaining how to give an old smart phone a new life by turning it into something useful (like a wireless security camera), and I have another such tip for you today. 

Believe it or not, by downloading a free app you can turn your old iPhone or Android phone into a fully functioning metal detector.

In a nutshell, the metal detector apps instruct your phone to detect the magnetic fields of metal objects. I gave one of them a try with one of my old Samsung phones, and it works like a charm!

To turn an old iPhone into a metal detector, just download the free app from this page and install it. If you have an Android phone, you can download the app for it right here.

If you’re the industrious type, you can mount your new “smart phone metal detector” on the end of a stick so you can use it without bending over.

Enjoy!

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