using old phones as cold wallets

[eclecticuniversalas]

I am a new bitcoiner of about two weeks and I have successfully bought $5 worth of bitcoin with a debit card using a coinbase account, then used an old offline phone to generate an offline bitaddress with public and private keys, transferred the money from coinbase to the cold wallet account with all wifi, bluetooth, mobile data transfer etc disabled and not working, then saved all public and private key data to an existing sd card in the phone., then used the cold offline phone wallet to check balance of funds previously tranfered from coinbase, using qr code from screen, . . and then transfered cold wallet funds back online to my Mycelium wallet, . . . Very easy to do once I figured it out.

Why? . . I am seeing various advantages to this over a paper wallet. one is security. . suppose I have funds on a paper wallet in my house, or I am using it to go to a coffee shop to make a transaction, . . suppose my house is robbed (yes I can keep paper wallets in a safe deposit box) , so suppose on the way to make a transaction at a coffee shop that my paper gets lost, (I stupidly drop it or my wallet gets pick pocketed) , or my house gets robbed. . with a paper wallet. . who ever finds the paper can immediately transfer funds, . so once i get to the coffee shop and realize i have lost the paper, by the time i go back home and get the backup info, the funds have had plenty of time to be transferred. . where as if i lost my cold phone wallet, the theif or luck person finding it must first unlock my phone with the screen unlock pattern, then passwords, encryption, etc, . giving me plenty of time to go back and get my backup and transfer those funds away myself first, . I also can backup all my info using a usb cord to an offline computer or sd card and also print paper copies myself, . then store those backups in a safe deposit box.

How I did it. . . I used my wifes old samsung sch1200 that was laying around the house. (she loved that phone) . It is in excellent working condition and the battery holds an excellent charge,. especially since it is no longer transmitting data, . this phone also has an external sd card slot

1. I did a factory reset on it to restore it to original condition and to remove all previously installed programs

2. Used the wifi to get online from a place i considered secure

3, I had to update google play store and enter a valid google account

4 downloaded apps from the play store. "opera mini web browser", "QRDroid"

5. Using Opera mini I went to bitaddress.org and saved the page for offline use

6. took phone offline by halting wifi and bluetooth and putting it in airplane mode. (if you are still worried you can probably root the device etc.)

7. while offline I opened Opera and opened the bitaddress page i saved offline and generated a bitcoin account with keys, (this was a frustrating part and i learned during the random mouse generation to touch and swipe up)

8. after generating an account I held down on the character string that was generated for the public key and with the option told it to share that to qrDroid, Then told qrDroid to save it. . (did the same for the private key,) I then also copied the character string to a word processor for an additional backup method and record keeping.

9. opened qrDroid and went to the options and opened up history, opened up the public key and choose the show qr option, . using that qr I transferred the funds from coinbase onto the cold wallet account, then used the same qr code online to check the account, . both of these were done with my online phone, . the account balance showed a successful transfer, . .

10. opened up qrdroid and put the cold wallet qr private code on screen, then using my online phone scanned the qr and tranferred those funds to my Mycelium account.

11. backed up my data and put my totally offline cold wallet phone away

just saying after alot of trying different apps it can now be easily done, i can back up data onto paper and sd card and put it in a safe deposit box, i can keep my cold storage at home knowing it has passwords and confidential swipes and or encryption to open, and I can now make a second always blank one to take to the coffee shop for transactions with nothing on it but the current single qr code i want to use.

I would suggest of course that one uses minimal funds doing this until it is proven to work beyond what i have done, (as I am new I can not be responsible)

I am somewhat new at bitcoin so if anyone knows where I am going wrong or finds any issues please let me know, . .also you can donate I hope if i do this right at 1PGaNWs6ccLZF2QMu1WyV235nNetjRZgUw