Any thoughts on building your own phone?
Recently I had the idea of building my own phone with a Raspberry Pi. I started searching and I found this article where someone had already done this. Unfortunately this article is from 2014 and I can’t find a newer article with a functional phone with SIM card. At some point this guy says he’s running Raspbian. Are there mobile desktops for Debian? Mobian doesn’t look very real.I don’t want Android although Lineage/etc might be acceptable… (Although now I’m thinking of putting Droidian on an old phone…)
Anyway does anybody have any info, thoughts, or advice on this? Am I a total idiot for wanting to attempt this?
I think there are 3 reasonable options (that I’m pursuing currently):
Linux on a phone designed for Android
I’ve tried a few different models of phone. I’m currently running mobile nixos on a OnePlus 6, but waiting on Plasma Mobile to be fully functional. When I last played with it a couple months ago, the virtual keyboard was broken. Nothing else I’ve tried has had all features on the phone work.
A small Linux laptop with a mobile network card
I am trying to set up an MNT Pocket Reform as a phone replacement. The hardware is almost there. The software and firmware have a bit of a ways to go, but it has promise for a subset of people.
A Linux-first phone-like device
There are some phones that are set up with PostmarketOS or other mobile Linux distributions from the manufacturer, but they right now tend to be really pricey, under-performing, and don’t really have upstream support. The Mecha Comet seems to be another interesting option. I’ve pre-ordered one and I’m excited to see what it’s capable of.
for my money, it’s lineage (or maybe graphene) on android 16 with the Linux virtual machine. i tried Ubuntu touch and i don’t think it’s daily drivable unfortunately and i think postmarketos is in a similar state. hoping to get a small phone with usb display out that has volte and officially supports lineage.
FYI, I have the FLX1s, and I really like it. It’s quite buggy, and I wouldn’t give it to a “normie”, but I think it has a lot of potential. That being said, their support hasn’t been great.
I haven’t heard of the Comet, but that looks super cool, thanks for the heads up
There are thumbdrive-sized sim card over USB adaptors around. Remove case, plug it in a Raspy Zero, add touchscreen and battery.