Phone Hacks

193 Articles

Open-Source Cell Phone Based On ESP32

August 3, 2023 by 40 Comments

Over the past decade or so, smartphones have exploded in popularity and seamlessly integrated themselves into nearly every aspect of most people’s lives. Although that comes with a few downsides as well, with plenty of people feeling that the smart phone makes it a little too easy to waste time and looking to switch to something simpler, like an older-style flip phone. If this style of phone is more your speed, take a look at this DIY cell phone which takes care of everything a phone really needs to do. (Google Translate from French)

The phone uses an ESP32 at its core, with a SIM800L GSM modem to interact with the cell network, including retrieving the system time. A small battery is included as well as all of the support circuitry for charging it as well as a USB interface that can communicate to a PC. The operating system for the phone is built from the ground up as well, with a touch screen interface allowing the user to make phone calls, send text messages, store contacts, and a few other basic features. There’s also a GPS application though, allowing the phone to know basic location information.

Another perk of this device is that its creator, [Gabriel], made the design schematics, print files for the case, and the operating system software completely open source for anyone to build this phone on their own. Everything is available on the project’s GitHub page. It’s a fairly remarkable achievement, especially considering [Gabriel] is only 16. And, if you’re not one to eschew modern smart phone technology there are some DIY smart phones available to build as well.

Thanks to [come2] for the tip!

Windows 10 The Hard Way: On A Phone

July 4, 2023 by 19 Comments

Sure, there are — or were — Windows phones. But [neozed] wanted something different. An earlier project ran Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi 4 with some tricks, but those are sometimes hard to come by lately, so the next project was to put one on a Xiaomi PocoPhone F1.

The choice of phone wasn’t an accident. There was enough support and information on the Snapdragon 845 to pull the trick off, and this is one of the phones that looked like it should work. They were pretty inexpensive on eBay and have 128 GB of flash and 6 GB of RAM.

After a few false starts, the phone yielded to fastboot mode. Loading UEFI firmware allows you to re-partition the disks using a PC. With the partitions set up, you must find an ARM Windows 10 image to load. Sounds simple, but as you’ll see in the post, the devil is always in the details. Combined with a USB dock, the end result is a tiny Windows computer. However, it does seem like a lot of work. Even the original poster says: “TL;DR don’t do it… get a used Surface X instead.”

We’ve seen old phones repurposed before, of course. Or, go the other way: start from scratch and build a new phone. We won’t judge, either way.

Get Back Your Replaceable Batteries, Thanks To The EU

June 17, 2023 by 125 Comments

The world’s tech companies must harbour a hearty dislike for the European Union because when the many cogs of its bureaucracies turn, they find themselves with little choice but to follow or risk losing access to a huge and affluent market. There are a few areas of technology that don’t have some concessions to EU rules in their manufacturing process, and if a common charging connector or right to repair weren’t enough, they’re back for another clash with the mobile phone industry. If you hanker for the days of replaceable mobile phone batteries, you’re in luck because an EU Parliament vote has approved a set of rules covering batteries among which will be a requirement for replaceable cells in portable appliances.

We expect that the phone manufacturers will drag their feet just as some of them have over charger ports, but the greater ease of maintenance, as well as extra longevity for phones, can only be a good thing. There are a few other measures in the package, and one of them caught our eye, the introduction of a battery passport for larger industrial and EV batteries. There’s little more information in the press release, but we hope that it doesn’t inhibit their exploitation by people in our community when introduced.

We look forward to seeing more replaceable battery models appear in due course, meanwhile, you can read some of our coverage of the EU’s right-to-repair measures.

Header: Andy Melton, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0.

A Mobile Phone From 1985

May 25, 2023 by 7 Comments

It might seem quaint through the lends of history we have the luxury of looking through, but in the mid 1980s it was a major symbol of status to be able to communicate on-the-go. Car phones and pagers were cutting-edge devices of the time, and even though there were some mobile cellular telephones, they were behemoths compared to anything we would recognize as a cell phone today. It wasn’t until 1985 that a cell phone was able to fit in a pocket, and that first device wasn’t just revolutionary because of its size. It made a number of technological advancements that were extremely impressive for its time, and [Janus Cycle] takes us through some of those in this teardown video.

The Technophone came to us from Great Britain by way of a former Ericsson engineer named Nils Mårtensson. It was able to achieve its relatively small stature using a surface-mount PCB, which was a cutting-edge manufacturing process for the time. Not only did it use surface-mount components and boards, but the PCB itself has 12 layers and two sides and hosts two custom Technophone chips. The phone is relatively modular as well, with the screen, battery pack, and other components capable of easily disconnecting from the main board. Continue reading “A Mobile Phone From 1985” →

Linux Cell Phone? Build OURPhone

May 5, 2023 by 30 Comments

[Evan] couldn’t find a phone he liked, so he decided to build his own. There are advantages and disadvantages, as you might expect. On the plus side, you have the ultimate control. On the negative side, it doesn’t quite have the curb appeal — at least to the average user — of a sleek new cell phone from a major manufacturer.

The phone uses a Raspberry Pi, along with a 4G modem and a 480×800 touchscreen. There’s a laser cut box that measures 90x160x30 mm. For reference, a Google Pixel 7 is about 73x156x9 mm, so a little easier on the pocket.

But not one the pocketbook. The OURPhone only costs about $200 USD to build. There are trade-offs. For example, the touchscreen is resistive, so you’ll want a stylus (there’s a slot for it in the case). On the other hand, if you don’t like something, it is all there for you to change.

Obviously, a better screen would help. Thinner batteries might be a good enhancement too. But that’s the beauty of an open project. You can do all these things and more.

We wondered if you could get one of the “mobile” Linux editions to run or even Android. It seems like the hardest part is coming up with a sophisticated enclosure.

Using An Old Smartphone In Place Of A Raspberry Pi

April 27, 2023 by 63 Comments

The Raspberry Pi was a fairly revolutionary computing device when it came on the scene around a decade ago. Enough processing power to run a full Linux desktop and plenty of GPIO meant almost certain success. In the past year, though, they’ve run into some issues with their chip supplier and it’s been difficult to find new Pis, which has led to some looking for alternatives to these handy devices. [David] was hoping to build a music streaming server and built it on an old smartphone instead of the ubiquitous single-board computer.

Most smartphones are single-board computers though, and at least the Android devices are fully capable of running Linux just like the Pi. The only problem tends to be getting around the carrier or manufacturer restrictions like a locked bootloader or lack of root access. For [David]’s first try getting this to work, he tried to install Navidrome on a Samsung phone but had difficulties with the lack of memory and had to build the software somewhere else and then load it on the phone. It did work, but the stock operating system kept killing the process for consuming too much memory.

Without root access, [David] decided to try LineageOS, a version of Android which, among other benefits, is typically much more configurable than the stock version of Android that is shipped with smartphones. This allowed him to disable or uninstall anything not needed for his music server to free up enough memory. After some issues with transcoding the actual music files he planned on streaming, his music server was successfully up and running on a phone that would have otherwise been relegated to the junk drawer. The specific steps he took to get this working can be found on his GitHub page as well.

[David] also mentioned looking at PostmarketOS for this job which is certainly a viable option for some, but the Linux distribution for phones is only supported on a few devices. Another viable alternative for a project like this if no Raspberry Pis are available might be any of a number of Pine64 devices that might also be sitting around gathering dust, like the versatile Linux-based Pinephone.

Cold War Military Telephones Now Usable Thanks To DIY Switch Build

March 30, 2023 by 18 Comments

The TA-1042 is the most badass looking telephone you’ll ever see. It’s a digital military telephone from the 1980s, but sadly non-functional unless it’s hooked up to the military phone switches it was designed to work with. These days, they’re really only useful as a heavy object to throw at somebody… that is, unless you had the suitable supporting hardware. As it turns out, [Nick] and [Rob] were able to whip up exactly that.

Their project involved implementing the TA-1042’s proprietary switching protocol on a Raspberry Pi Pico. The microcontroller’s unique Programmable I/O subsystem proved perfect for the task. With a little programming and a hat for the Pico to interface with the hardware, they were able to get the TA-1042 working as intended. It involved learning how to encode and decode the Manchester encoded data used by the Digital Non-secure Voice Terminal equipment. Notably, the TA-1042 isn’t the only phone you can use with this setup. You can also hook up other US military DNVT phones, like the TA-954 or TA-1035.

If you want this hardware for yourself, you can simply buy one of [Nick] and [Rob]’s DNVT switches from Tindie. Alternatively, you can roll your own with the source code provided on GitHub.

We’ve seen these phones before repurposed in an altogether different fashion. We’ve also taken a deep dive into the details of the military’s AUTOVON network.

Continue reading “Cold War Military Telephones Now Usable Thanks To DIY Switch Build” →