This project takes you through building a functional cellphone using off-the-shelf parts,

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?

  • GaumBeist@lemmy.ml
    2·
    3 hours ago

    Are there mobile desktops for Debian?

    If you just want the DE and to configure everything else yourself, you can always just install phosh or sxmo on top of a debian/raspbian installation.

    Mobian/Droidian are targeted for smartphone SoCs, so they would take a lot of tinkering to get runnin on an RPi

    If you want a full OS that’s already configured to be a smartphone-like device, something like Glodroid may be your best bet. They’re an infrequent updater, the only reason I mention them is because they can target Broadcom devices (like RPis)

    If you don’t mind getting away from building the hardware yourself, and just want a phone that you can run linux on, FairPhone/PinePhone/Librem 5 seem to be the way to go

    Aside from that, afaict you’re in for designing your own device from extant components and then crowd-funding to pay for a factory line to assemble it for you (this is essentially what the PinePhone did)