flashing a kyocera hydro for non cell phone use?

[1950coronet600]

Ok so heres what im trying to do.. I am a backwoods explorer, and I tow a trailer.. what I want to do, is basically try something out with what I have lying around, and that is 2 boost mobile kyoceras, that I can make one good phone out of two. I could care less about using them to surf the internet, talk or text. The phone would be loaded with 2 apps, either us topo maps or backwoods navigator, and torque (car scanner app) and strapped to the dash of my car to keep track of my car, and where I am.

so ideally, the idea would be to wipe the phone, and install a tablet os, and use wifi only for updates, and downloading maps etc. So oh wise techies.. is this possible? basically I don't want to plunk down $100-$200 just to find out my idea sucks, so that being said, I know its an older phone, with a small screen and limited processing power. but it will at least let me try it out, to see if its worth throwing some money at...

 

[Pugs1957]

No, it's not possible to install tablet OS on your phone. THe hardware will be different. Not sure why you would do this as all you would lose is call functionality with little if any gain

 

[1950coronet600]

the idea would be to remove any unneeded software, and only keep what was needed to be a gps and use torque, basically keep any extra programs from tieing up processing power, memory etc etc.. I'm new to android, so just trying to figure out what can be done, and what cant... comming from the pc world, pretty much anything is possible, just need to set the right settings, just seems odd to me that the hardware would be that specific.. but im learning...

 

[Fox Mulder]

Put the phone in airplane mode, then turn on the individual radios that you need (Bluetooth, GPS etc). This will keep the cell radio disabled so it won't use any power. I've done this with old decommissioned phones that I use as media players.

 

[glc]

And use the apps manager to disable the apps you don't need.

 

[electricpete]

I've got a Kyocera Hydro Icon and that's exactly what I do.
The first few times I rebooted it kept trying to set up my account. After that it gave up.

 

[1950coronet600]

so plan of attack with my newly gained information, I think what ill do is root it, and remove the bloatware.. just keep the bare essentials for operating, plus I suppose it will be handy to have phone connectivity, if ever there is an emergency I can still call 911.. so i guess that's a bonus.. I've got it as a wifi only device now, and its working pretty well.. We shall see how the rooting goes...