Many old Android phones in drawers today are 3G phones. Some are 4G phones that have been set to 3G or 2G years ago and never changed back. If you want to use one as a shop or home camera with a SIM card for mobile data, the network letters at the top of the screen tell you most of what you need to know.
This guide is written for budget and older phones, prepaid data, and places where the mobile network has changed since the phone was made. It answers three questions in plain words:
- Can this phone send live video over mobile data at all?
- If not, can it still be a useful camera without internet?
- What should you check before you put a SIM card in it?
The short answer
A phone that can only reach 2G data (the "G" or "E" icon) cannot carry a YouTube Live stream. YouTube's own minimum for its lowest live setting is higher than what 2G data can deliver, even on paper. A phone on 3G ("3G", "H" or "H+") may work if 3G still exists where you are, but in several markets 3G has been switched off. A phone on 4G/LTE is the realistic choice for streaming over mobile data.
But a 2G or 3G-only phone can still be a good offline security camera. Recording to the phone's own storage needs no network at all. Watching the live view from another phone on the same Wi-Fi needs Wi-Fi, not mobile data. Only the remote part — watching from another city — needs a working mobile data connection.
What the letters at the top of the screen mean
Android shows a small letter or number next to the signal bars when mobile data is on. These are the common ones:
| Icon | Network | What it means for a camera phone |
|---|---|---|
| G | GPRS (2G) | Text messages and very light data only. No live video. |
| E | EDGE (2G) | Faster than G, still far too slow for live video. |
| 3G | UMTS (3G) | Possible for low-quality streams, if 3G still runs in your area. |
| H / H+ | HSPA / HSPA+ (3G) | Better 3G. Same question: is 3G still switched on near you? |
| 4G / LTE | LTE | The realistic option for live streaming over mobile data. |
If you see E or G on a phone that you know supports 4G, it is usually one of two things: the phone is set to a lower network type, or the SIM card or data plan is limited. On many phones you can check under Settings → Network & Internet → SIMs → (your SIM) → Preferred network type. Google's Pixel help page lists the options there as 5G, LTE, 3G and 2G, depending on what your carrier offers. The menu name is different on other brands, but it is usually under "Mobile network" or "SIM".
Why 2G cannot carry a live stream: the arithmetic
YouTube publishes the bitrates it expects from a live encoder. For the lowest settings it lists, 360p and 480p at 30 frames per second, the minimum bitrate setting for H.264 video is 0.4 Mbps (400 kilobits per second). That is video only. YouTube also recommends 128 kbps for stereo audio.
Now compare that with 2G data:
- GPRS peaks at about 171 kbps on paper.
- EDGE is often described as reaching about 236 kbps in many devices, and some sources quote higher theoretical peaks. Real networks are usually slower than the peak, and one source notes many EDGE networks were configured for around 135 kbps.
So even the best-case EDGE number is below YouTube's 400 kbps video minimum, before audio and before the normal drop you get from a weak signal. This is not about the app or the phone being "too old" — it is the size of the pipe.
We went into what happens when a live stream's data connection drops in the middle of a broadcast in What Happens to a Phone's YouTube Live Stream When Mobile Data Drops?. The short version: an unreliable uplink does more damage than a slow one.
Is 3G still there where you are?
This depends on your country and your operator, and it has changed a lot in the last few years.
- In India, Airtel said in 2019 that it would switch off 3G and keep 2G and 4G, with its spectrum moved over to 4G. Vodafone Idea (Vi) closed 3G circle by circle and said it aimed to shut 3G completely in FY25. Both kept 2G running because many customers still use it.
- In Bangladesh, Robi announced it would phase out 3G, starting in a few districts, to put more resources into 4G. It said voice service would not be affected.
This is the important part for a camera phone: when 3G is switched off, a 3G-only phone does not stop working. It quietly falls back to 2G. You still see signal bars. Calls still work. Messages still arrive. But the data icon now says E or G, and live video is no longer possible.
So if your old phone streamed fine a few years ago and now it does not, the network may have changed, not the phone. Check the icon before you blame the app or the settings.
What a 2G or 3G-only phone can still do well
You do not need mobile data for most of what a security camera does. Background Camera RemoteStream records video with the screen off and saves it to the phone's own storage. Nothing is uploaded to a cloud account. That part works with no SIM card and no internet at all.
Here are three setups that work on a phone with weak or no mobile data:
1. Record-only, fully offline. The phone records to its own storage. You check the clips later by picking up the phone or copying the files off it with a cable. This is the cheapest setup and works anywhere there is power.
2. Wi-Fi live view, no internet needed. The app has a built-in web server. Another phone or laptop on the same Wi-Fi network can open the live view in a browser. The Wi-Fi network does not need internet. A router with no data plan works. So does a hotspot made by the camera phone itself with its mobile data turned off, as we showed in How to Use an Old Phone as a Security Camera Without a Wi-Fi Router.
3. Old phone for the camera, newer connection for the uplink. If you need to watch from far away, the old phone does not have to carry the SIM. It can join Wi-Fi from a 4G device — a 4G pocket router, or a newer phone's hotspot — and stream over that. The old phone keeps doing the camera work; the 4G device does the mobile data work.
For a shop, setup 2 is often enough during the day, and setup 3 is only needed when nobody is nearby.
Before you put a SIM card in an old camera phone: a checklist
Check the phone supports 4G at all. Look at the phone's specification sheet (search the exact model number, found under Settings → About phone). If it only lists GSM and UMTS/WCDMA, it is a 2G/3G phone.
Check it supports the 4G bands your operator uses. A 4G phone bought in another country, or a model made for a different market, may support 4G but not on the frequency bands your local operator uses. Then it falls back to 2G or 3G even though it says "4G" on the box. Your operator's website or a shop that sells SIM cards can tell you which bands they use.
Check the preferred network type. If the phone supports 4G but shows E or H, set the preferred network type to LTE/4G in the SIM settings.
Check the icon where the phone will actually sit. Signal changes from room to room. Put the phone in the exact spot it will record from, wait a minute, and look at the icon there — not at the door where the signal is better.
Check your data pack against the stream. At YouTube's minimum of 0.4 Mbps for video, one hour of streaming uses about 180 MB of data (0.4 × 3,600 ÷ 8). Add audio and overhead and it is more. A 1.5 GB daily pack covers roughly eight hours at that minimum, not a full day and night. Many setups only stream during closed hours for this reason. We covered whether Android's Data Saver blocks a screen-off stream in Does Data Saver Cut Off a Phone Security Camera Streaming on Mobile Data With the Screen Off? — the short answer is no, because a foreground service is allowed through.
Decide which SIM goes where. If the old phone has two SIM slots, read Should You Leave the SIM Card in an Old Phone Security Camera? A Dual-SIM Guide first. A phone with no SIM at all is a perfectly good offline camera.
For developers: what Android itself can tell you
If you are building something similar, Android exposes the same information the status bar shows:
-
TelephonyManager.getDataNetworkType()returns constants such asNETWORK_TYPE_GPRS,NETWORK_TYPE_EDGE,NETWORK_TYPE_HSPAPandNETWORK_TYPE_LTE. It needs theREAD_PHONE_STATEpermission (or carrier privileges), which is a reason many apps never ask. -
NetworkCapabilities.getLinkUpstreamBandwidthKbps()gives the system's estimate of the upstream bandwidth on the current network. It is an estimate, not a measurement, but it is the right number to compare against a stream's bitrate before you start — upstream, not downstream, is what a camera uses.
The practical lesson from both: a camera app on mobile data should treat "connected" and "connected fast enough to stream" as two different states. A phone on EDGE is connected. It is not connected enough.
Summary
- E or G at the top of the screen means 2G. That is not enough for YouTube Live, even on paper.
- In several markets 3G has been switched off, and 3G-only phones fall back to 2G without any warning beyond the icon.
- An old 2G/3G phone is still a good offline security camera: it records to its own storage with no internet, and shows live view over local Wi-Fi with no internet.
- For remote viewing over mobile data, use a phone that supports 4G on your operator's bands, or let a 4G hotspot device carry the data while the old phone does the recording.
Background Camera RemoteStream is free to install on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.superfunicular.digicam. It records with the screen off, keeps video on the phone, offers live view on your local network, and can stream to YouTube Live when you have the bandwidth for it. More at superfunicular.com.
Sources: YouTube Help, "Choose live encoder settings, bitrates, and resolutions" (support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853702); Pixel Phone Help, "Fix mobile connectivity issues" (support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/14116080); Commsbrief, "What is the difference between GPRS, EDGE and EGPRS?" and "EDGE 2G or 3G?"; Business Standard / PTI (Airtel 3G shutdown, 2019); TelecomTalk, "Vodafone Idea to Shut Down 3G Completely in FY25"; Prothom Alo, "Robi to phase out 3G by 2023". Network status changes over time — check with your own operator.
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