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?
(Personal opinion not based on scientific evidence.)
I would say that’s not possible for a hobbyist. The main issues with this kind of DIY phones are performance, compatibility with existing software, and most importantly battery life.
The Raspberry Pi was never designed to be used with a small battery while still staying connected to the internet to receive notifications all the time, like a smartphone. If you want to build a usable smartphone you will need an efficient co-processor to do these tasks. This could get complicated fast unless you use a CPU designed for this job.
There has been some interesting progress with desktop environments and small touch screens. Still nothing as good as Android, but nice UI is no longer the main issue imho.
As for compatibility, good luck running Signal, Matrix and Thunderbird in the background without draining the battery.
That being said, if you are just doing it as an excercise without expecting to build a device that will replace your main phone, you can definitely give it a try. Have fun and learn much!