Apps how to reprogram android phone into featurephone?

[chadkimball]

Question for the developers out there, I don't know if this could be done or how it could be done, I"m not a programmer at all. I'd be willing to hire someone to do it if its possible but I'm trying to start by seeing if this is the best way to do it.

I hate the intrusion that smartphones have in my life. I have very little self control. So I want to basically cripple my smartphone.
You may say, just get a featurephone, but I would like to be able to use google maps because I constantly get lost.

I want my android phone custom programmed into a dumbphone/featurephone with google maps/gps

I want ONLY these features:

1) abilitly to call
2) ability to text
3) take photos/video
4) play video/audio that I've added to the memory card
5) google maps
6) ability to update apps for numbers 1-5

NOTHING ELSE.

1) remove all browsers completely from the phone
2) remove ALL OTHER APPS completely from the phone
3) remove playstore completely and remove other native apps
3) apps involving settings can remain

 

[MLSS]

You have to have Google play services installed in order to run and update Google maps.

You can disable a lot of things on your device and with rooting you could unistall most everything.

My advice for you is to root your device, find a very basic custom ROM, and then unistall all the things that won't cripple your device and allow you to do what you want to do.

 

[chadkimball]

Can google play services be running in the background without the actual app being accessible via the UI ?

 

[chadkimball]

I had another question as well, when you say "you can disable a lot of things" I don't want them just disabled, I want them gone.

I basically want to replicate the limits that a featurephone has. You can't go into a featurephone and enable anything, the firmware limits i. Make sense? Wondering if this is possible or if I'm barking up the wrong tree

 

[MLSS]

I personally think you are going to encounter a lot of headaches. It might be easier just to go buy a stand alone GPS and a feature phone.

 

[chadkimball]

Thanks for your input MLSS could you let me know the type of headaches you think I"ll encounter? I'm unfamiliar with this type of custom thing

 

[MLSS]

I can't help you anymore than the advice I've given you.
Good luck and I hope you succeed with your plan.

 

[svim]

Going by the items you listed that you want and don't want, it's not a trivial project to turn your smartphone into a pseudo-feature phone. There's a learning curve on your part as a number of things you want to do are interrelated with things you want to remove -- deleting an icon off your screen is easy, uninstalling the app itself might involve a lot more effort along with making your phone run in a less stable way. Also, removing something like Google Play negates the ability for your phone to update the apps you do want to keep, creating a security issue.