Turning My Old S4 Into a Glorified MP3 Player; Should I Root it?

[NateHevens]

My current phone is the LG G4. I still have my old Galaxy S4, however, and I want to turn it into a glorified music player.

I should start out by saying that I've already done a factory reset on my old S4 (to clear up the space and have the thing working perfectly) and I have a brand new 128gb MicroSD card on the way. Pretty much the only app I really plan on using here is Google Music, and maybe the Google Play Store.

Will rooting the S4 provide any benefit to going this route with it? I only have 16gb on the phone by itself, and Verizon's bloatware takes up half of that. I wouldn't mind being able to clear out some (or all) of it.

In general, do you have an old phone that you started using as a glorified music player? What did you do to get there? Just download music and go, or did you root it and set it up specifically to play music and maybe connect to wifi?

 

[extraclass]

If you have 5.1 on it you will have a hard time rooting it! My S4 is a good player stock. I can connect to my car and Bose sound system at home and I have an SD card full of music. I am not sure what you would gain by rooting the phone!

Hide all the icons you do not need and just display the icons for your music player and necessary apps!

 

[NateHevens]

There is one thing I'd love to shut off but can't without rooting it... the whole "we have to protect your hearing" BS. I have that on my LG G4, as well, and Hearing Saver does not work 100% of the time (hell... my G4 just did this immediately after enabling Hearing Saver).

It'd be one thing if I was using my S4 with headphones, but I won't be. It'll be used exclusively with external speakers. I'll control the volume through the speaker... it'll be completely turned up on my S4. But I already know the S4 will be like "I'm so worried about your precious ear drums! Let me turn the volume down to a 'safe' level for you". I don't want it to do that.