A promo image that might have been a little much even in 1999.

Commodore Unveils Linux Powered Flip Phone

June 18, 2026 by Tyler August 74 Comments

Whatever happens with the new incarnation of the Commodore corporation, we’ll always remember the old one fondly. Well, we’ll remember certain of its products fondly, at any rate, if not the corporate leadership that drove them under. About that, perhaps the less said the better. That’s why we’re looking at the revived Commodore’s latest offering with equal parts interest and trepidation — is there really a market for a Linux-based, Commodore branded flip phone in 2026 and beyond?

The official reveal trailer, which you can watch below, can only be described as weaponized nostalgia for the late 90s, which tracks because the revived C-64 is more-or-less the same thing for the 8-bit era. That said, between replaceable batteries, actually having a decent camera — a 48MP Sony module — quality Cirrus Logic DAC for audio, and running the Linux-based, Android-app-compatible Sailfish OS, the “Callback 8020” ticks all the boxes. Except for price, that is. Many will find the $499 USD launch price a little tough to swallow in this economy, so we hope they aren’t betting the farm on this one being a mass hit.

Still, compared to other premium “digital minimalist” products like the LightPhone III, the price looks reasonable — and with web browsing and social media explicitly excluded from the app store, this phone is firmly in that category. At least this one comes with some sweet Commodore branded headphones, which double as an FM antenna just like they did on your Nokia back when.

While it doesn’t come with DOOM from the factory, it does come with Snake and a selection of emulated C64 games . Ringtones are SID samples, but of course there’s no actual SID chip in the phone, any more than there’s a 6502. That said, if someone builds a phone around a 6502, please let us know.

No, it’s not a new Amiga, as so many of us were hoping for, but by putting quality modern components into the flip phone form-factor, at least they’re trying to innovate (or perhaps retrovate) and we have to respect that. Only time will tell if the market does.

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Off-Grid OCR Server Powered By IPhone

May 31, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 8 Comments

Running an optical character recognition (OCR) server might sound like it would need some powerful hardware, like a rack-mounted, water-cooled machine, or at least a nice desktop or laptop. But if you have the time, anything could be used. [Hemant] has a long-running personal project that processes a lot of image data over a long time, and set up the OCR server on an iPhone 8 running entirely with solar power, rather than turn to more typical hardware.

Part of what makes this task feasible for low-powered hardware is Apple’s Vision framework, which uses machine learning to aid in things like character recognition (among other tasks). It will run on an iPhone just as easily as a Mac. The phone’s built-in battery already provides the first step of an off-grid setup. This build relies on a separate power bank to integrate the phone with the solar panel more easily. On the software side, [Hemant] reports that the true challenge wasn’t setting up the server as much as it was keeping the iPhone from sleeping or stopping his program from running full-time.

A system like this running off-grid, especially considering the costs of the solar panel and power bank, might seem counterproductive. But when comparing electricity costs for running the same software on his server, he estimates he saves about $10 per month with this setup, which has a payback of somewhere around 2-3 years. Not too bad for a phone that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill. Old phones can be surprisingly good choices for servers, too. It helps if they can run Linux, but plenty of phones will support server applications, even when running their native OS.

A phone running the XFCE desktop environment is placed on a desk, with a wireless keyboard in front of it.

Linux On Android Provides Inexpensive, Powerful Computing

May 26, 2026 by Aaron Beckendorf 62 Comments

In some parts of the world it’s common for cell service providers to sell new phones at a price significantly below market value, with the caveat that these phones are locked to that service provider alone. It’s questionable whether this practice is good for consumers, but as [Gabriel Broussard Korr] notes, it’s an opportunity for hackers: since it’s possible to run a Linux environment on these phones, they make an inexpensive source of quite powerful computing hardware.

In this case, [Gabriel] was using the Moto G Power 2024, which has 128 GB of storage, 12 GB of RAM, and costs less than $50 when carrier-locked. Rather than trying to install a mobile-oriented Linux distribution (such as postmarketOS), [Gabriel] installed Termux, a terminal emulator which provides a Linux environment within Android. Before doing this, he set up the phone and configured a number of settings for a better Linux experience. Since automatic updates can interfere with these settings, and since none of the provided settings effectively disable these, he used NetGuard to block Internet access from the updater app and from Google Play services.

The next step was to actually install Termux, as well as an X11 extension and an app which exposes an API for Termux. The desktop environment (XFCE in this case) was installed through Termux, and [Gabriel] wrote a shell script to go through the steps of starting it. XFCE worked well on mobile devices because of its full-desktop zoom capability. Even running Linux indirectly, the experience was smooth; [Gabriel] found that GIMP, Shotcut, and VS Code all performed well.

It’s not quite the same set of software, but we’ve previously featured a guide to setting up a similar Linux environment using Termux and AnLinux. Lindroid provides a similar containerized Linux environment; on the other hand, you can also use postmarketOS to make a server from an old phone.

Compact Calendar Display Reduces Phone Dependency

May 1, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 6 Comments

Phones can be distracting objects if you’re not an enlightened master of the mental arts. Even just reading an email or glancing at your calendar can get you caught up checking other apps and notifications and waste your time. [Paul Lagier] built a device to eliminate this problem by showing him critical information right on his desk.

The device is based around an off-the-shelf Waveshare ESP32 board which packs in a small 8×8 RGB LED matrix on one side. It’s a neat way to get an LED project up and running quickly, but [Paul] noted that it didn’t look that great out of the box. He had to experiment with some different solutions for diffusing the light, eventually wrapping the board in a 3D printed housing with a black grid to separate the light output from each LED to make a clear pixelated display.

The ESP32’s wireless connectivity comes in handy, because it’s able to query web services for [Paul’s] calendar and other useful data. The user interface is minimal—you merely flip the housing into a different orientation to display different information, relying on the onboard QMI8658 6-axis sensor. The main display shows [Paul’s] calendar in 15 minute blocks so he can keep track of meetings without having to open his phone. Shaking the device in this mode will display the events as scrolling text. There’s also an ambient mode that looks pretty, and a pairing mode for setting up the wireless connectivity.

The great thing about modern electronic hardware is that it’s very easy to produce productivity aids like this to suit your own lifestyle.

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USB-C Charger Juices Up 100 Devices At Once

April 30, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 15 Comments

Back when phones used to ship with chargers in the box, you’d get a plugpack that could charge one device. Aftermarket manufacturers eventually started making chargers with four or five ports which were great for travelling. But what if you wanted to charge even more devices? You might build something like this rig from [DENKI OTAKU].

The goal was to build a charger that could handle 100 devices at once. The charger is designed to charge devices at up to 1.5 amps. That’s no mean feat, as the device would have to be able to deliver 150 amps total when fully loaded. As for the actual design, though, it’s relatively simple. [DENKI OTAKU] simply built a simple USB-C charger PCB based around an off-the-shelf chip which has ten individual chargers on it, and stacked it up ten of those in a housing made out of aluminium extrusion. To deliver the current to run all these chargers, the rig got two massive switching power supplies to feed the charger array a massive amount of current. The open enclosure design here makes sense, in that it probably helps keep everything cool.

The only thing missing from the build video? A heavy-duty test. We’d love to see if it actually holds up under full load with 100 phones connected. We have some suspicions as to whether the traces on the PCBs would hold up under a continuous 15 amp load, for example. Still, if you wanted to provide phone charging en-masse at an event or similar, this kind of simple stacked design could be an easy way to go.

Phone chargers are still moving forward; the last big leap was the adoption of GaN technology. Video after the break.

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Payphone Tag Is Australia’s New National Sport

April 28, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 44 Comments

Australia’s payphones are an iconic part of the national landscape, even if they’re not as important as they once used to be. However, they’re having a resurgence of late, in part thanks to a new national pastime—the sport of Payphone Tag!

Created by [Alex Allchin], the game is simple. To play, you first sign up on the website and get your emoji and 5-digit PIN. You then go out and find a payphone, dial the Payphone Tag number, and enter your PIN when prompted. This lets you “capture” the phone, raising your score in the game. If a phone is already captured, no matter—just head out there, dial the number, and key in your own PIN to steal it. You can also push your score even higher by capturing three payphones in a triangle on the map to get bonus points.

It’s a fun geospatial game that’s also free to play, because Telstra made payphone calls free back in 2022. It might cost you a bit to get out to some phones, but there are plenty you can reach with the aid of free public transport at the moment, anyway. Protip—at the time of writing, there are a ton of easy captures to be had on Kangaroo Island. It might just cost you a pretty penny to get out there. Have at it!

We’d love to see some stats from Telstra as to whether this is making a dent in overall payphone usage rates. In any case, there were 800 players in the last 7 days and a full 36,640 captures so far, so a lot is happening out there. We fully expect to see this concept spread to other nations in turn, though it might be less attractive in places where you still need to dig out a coin to make a call.

We’ve featured a few payphone hacks over the years. If you’re doing something rad with these telecommunication devices of yesteryear, we’d love to hear about it on the tipsline.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The Magic Of The Scroll-Like Phone Which Wast Not!

April 7, 2026 by Fenix Guthrie 11 Comments

When LG left the smartphone market, quite a number of strange devices were left behind. While some, like the Wing, made it to consumers, others did not. The strangest of these would have to be their rollable phone concept; a device which would expand by unrolling a portion of the screen like a scroll. This never made it to market, but one managed to make its way to [JerryRigEverything’s] workbench, and we are fortunate enough to see the insides of this strange device.

There are a few interesting tidbits about the device before even entering the device. Very clearly this phone was ready to be sold, with a tidy user interface for expanding the display, and even animated wallpapers which expand with it. The display, when rolled onto the back of the device, sits behind a glass cover to keep it protected from debris, and can be used to take selfies with the larger sensors of the rear facing cameras. You can also see a bit of the track that the screen rolls on, hinting at what lies inside.

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