Home September 2026

5 apps that give an old phone a second job

An old iPhone in a drawer is a screen, a camera and a speaker doing nothing. These five give it one job each: a security camera, a sign, a teleprompter, a scoreboard, or a clock you cannot ignore.

The apps that give an old phone a second job are Alfred Camera, LiveMarquee, Teleprompter, Scoreboard - On The Go and ClockPhone. I built LiveMarquee; the other 4 are other developers’ apps.

MiaAppLog— an iOS developer who reviews other people’s apps
Published September 2026 · apps and prices last checked 13 October 2026

Four stars is my score for how well an app answers this moment. An app I built gets four and a half — that is a rule, not a comparison. The App Store’s own average is on each card beside it.

1. 

   Alfred Camera

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Lifestyle · App Store 4.8 (111,360)

   Alfred Camera points the old phone at the door and streams it to the new one, with motion alerts and two-way audio. No extra hardware.

   Skip it if you are not going to pay: the free tier has been cut back hard, and dropped connections and an old phone running hot are the recurring complaints.

   Official site ↗More lists with Alfred Camera

   
2. 

   LiveMarquee Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Utilities · App Store 5.0 (8)

   LiveMarquee takes the message you type and scrolls it across the whole screen in LED. Nothing uploaded, nothing tracked.

   App Store ↗More lists with LiveMarquee

   
3. 

   Teleprompter

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Productivity · App Store 4.8 (33,452)

   Teleprompter runs scripts with no length limit, at the size and speed you set, parked right next to the lens while you film.

   Skip it if you have more than a few scripts: importing and updating them moved behind a purchase, and auto-captions are the feature reviewers say does not do what it says.

   Official site ↗More lists with Teleprompter

   
4. 

   Scoreboard - On The Go

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Sports · App Store 4.4 (26,219)

   Scoreboard - On The Go is a real scoreboard on a propped-up phone for any points-based game, so whose serve it was stops being an argument.

   Skip it if ads would break the moment — they keep coming even after paying, and the free version stops at two teams.

   Official site ↗More lists with Scoreboard - On The Go

   
5. 

   ClockPhone

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Lifestyle · App Store 4.6 (29,760)

   ClockPhone is big readable clock faces — and an alarm you can only kill by scanning an NFC tag or a barcode you left in another room.

   Skip it if you paid once and expect that to hold: features have moved behind a subscription since, and a widget stuck on the wrong time is the other common complaint.

   More lists with ClockPhone

   

LiveMarquee is one of mine — everything else on this list is someone else’s app. How that works.