A neighbor gave me a brand-new in the box Tracfone Samsung Galaxy Centura dating from probably 5 years ago. I don't mind it being dedicated to Tracfone since I have another of their phones and this will act as a backup in case the first one dies. My main interest in it is actually as a media player, with possibly some of the wi-fi enabled capabilities. It is running Android OS version 4-something. My plan is to get a 32GB micro SD and use it as a glorified iPod.
I installed Android File Transfer on my Mac. As a side issue I think I managed to disable Google Updater which got installed alongside.

I transferred a test video and a test mp3 and they play with no problem, the former oddly in "Gallery" and the latter in "PlayMusic". I then started hunting for a few utilities on Google Play apps since there's no sound recorder, no note taking editor, no weather app. Chrome and "Browser" are installed as web browsers but I'm not really impressed with them.
I like the Android in that I can just copy media files to it vs. having to run the sync process with my 4S which has broken sound output so that's not good for listening to music. What I don't like is sparse configuration capability, particularly in terms of privacy settings per application. On iOS I can tell Google Maps to only use my location when I am actually using the app, but tell refuse access to another application all the time, and another application can have access all the time. I don't see this on Android, just a way to completely shut off location services for everything, or not. What really horrified me was when I was trying to get an app to use to display weather. When I looked at the permissions section of several apps in the Play Store they included permission to read your phone number from your device and all the phone numbers of people you contact from that number! It also said something about being allowed to read all the files you may have in USB storage. To generate a weather report?? Talk about privacy invasion. Couple that with what seems to me an inability to customize what few privacy setting options there are on a per-app basis really horrified me.
So, does anybody have an recommendations for weather, sound recording, and note-taking apps (preferably free) that aren't huge invasions of privacy?
What about all the other Google apps on there? I know Google isn't exactly known for its privacy. Is there a better free music player than PlayMusic which I assume is a Google app?
I put Firefox on the device. Should I get rid of Chrome? What about Browser? Or is there a more-recommended browser (remember this is Android 4).
Is there a way to sign out of PlayStore without signing out of Gmail at the same time?
I guess I could disable wi-fi and just use it in complete isolation but it is kind of nice being able to use some of the other features, though it definitely doesn't have the size or quality display that my lame 4S has.
Anything else I should know about?