phone

114 Articles

Building A Stylish IPhone Standby Dock

September 2, 2024 by 6 Comments

[Scott Yu-Jan] is a big fan of the iPhone’s standby mode. Put the phone on charge horizontally, and it looks all stylish, with sleek widgets and clocks and stuff showing you information you presumably care about. [Scott] enjoyed this so much, in fact, he whipped up a custom charging dock to make the most of it.

The design was a collaboration with artist [Overwork], who mentioned the DN 40 alarm clock created by legendary designer [Dieter Rams]. [Overwork] sent [Scott] a draft inspired by that product, and he printed one up. It featured an integrated MagSafe charger to juice up the iPhone, and pressing into one side of the phone would pop it free. It was cool, but a little clumsy to use.

[Scott] liked the basic concept, but shows us how he iterated upon it to make it even nicer. He added in a wireless charger for AirPods in the back, gave the device adhesive feet, and a big chunky eject button to release the phone when desired.

You can also grab the files to print your own if you so desire! We’ve seen [Scott’s] work before, too, like his neat 3D scanner build. Video after the break.

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Rabbit Sighted In The Wild

April 13, 2024 by 21 Comments

Here at Hackaday we’re suckers for old abandoned technologies, the more obscure the better. The history of the telephone has plenty to capture our attention, and it’s from that arena that something recently floated past our timeline. [IanVisits] reports a sighting of a Rabbit in a London Underground station. The bunny in question definitely isn’t hopping though, it’s been dead for more than three decades. It’s a base station for a failed digital mobile phone system.

We’ve had a look in the past at CT2, the system this Rabbit base station once formed part of. It was an attempt to make an inexpensive phone system by having the handsets work with fixed base stations rather than move from cell to cell. It was one of the first public digital mobile phone systems, but the convenience of a phone that could both receive calls and make them anywhere without having to find a base station meant that GSM phones took their market.

The one in Seven Sisters tube station is a bit grubby looking, but it’s not the only survivor out there in the field. We have to admit to being curious as to whether it’s still powered on even though its backhaul will be disconnected, as in our experience it’s not uncommon for old infrastructure to be left plugged into the wall for decades, unheeded. Does anyone fancy sniffing for it with a Flipper Zero?

Webserver Runs On Android Phone

March 27, 2024 by 36 Comments

Android, the popular mobile phone OS, is essentially just Linux with a nice user interface layer covering it all up. In theory, it should be able to do anything a normal computer running Linux could do. And, since most web servers in the world are running Linux, [PelleMannen] figured his Android phone could run a web server just as well as any other Linux machine and built this webpage that’s currently running on a smartphone, with an additional Reddit post for a little more discussion.

The phone uses Termux (which we’ve written about briefly before) to get to a Bash shell on the Android system. Before that happens, though, some setup needs to take place largely involving installing F-Droid through which Termux can be installed. From there the standard SSH and Apache servers can be installed as if the phone were running a normal Linux The rest of the installation involves tricking the phone into thinking it’s a full-fledged computer including a number of considerations to keep the phone from halting execution when the screen locks and other phone-specific issues.

With everything up and running, [PelleMannen] reports that it runs surprisingly well with the small ARM system outputting almost no heat. Since the project page is being hosted on this phone we can’t guarantee that the link above works, though, and it might get a few too many requests to stay online. We wish it were a little easier to get our pocket-sized computers to behave in similar ways to our regular laptops and PCs (even if they don’t have quite the same amount of power) but if you’re dead-set on repurposing an old phone we’ve also seen them used to great effect in place of a Raspberry Pi.

How IBM Stumbled Onto RISC

December 31, 2023 by 37 Comments

There are a ton of inventions out in the world that are almost complete accidents, but are still ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives. Things like bubble wrap which was originally intended to be wallpaper, or even superglue, a plastic compound whose sticky properties were only discovered later on. IBM found themselves in a similar predicament in the 1970s after working on a type of mainframe computer made to be a phone switch. Eventually the phone switch was abandoned in favor of a general-purpose processor but not before they stumbled onto the RISC processor which eventually became the IBM 801.

As [Paul] explains, the major design philosophy at the time was to use a large amount of instructions to do specific tasks within the processor. When designing the special-purpose phone switch processor, IBM removed many of these instructions and then, after the project was cancelled, performed some testing on the incomplete platform to see how it performed as a general-purpose computer. They found that by eliminating all but a few instructions and running those without a microcode layer, the processor performance gains were much more than they would have expected at up to three times as fast for comparable hardware.

These first forays into the world of simplified processor architecture both paved the way for the RISC platforms we know today such as ARM and RISC-V, but also helped CISC platforms make tremendous performance gains as well. In fact, RISC-V is a direct descendant from these early RISC processors, with three intermediate designs between then and now. If you want to play with RISC-V yourself, our own [Jonathan Bennett] took a look at a recent RISC-V SBC and its software this past March.

Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip!

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Mailblocks Makes Your Phone Work More Like The Post, Kinda?

December 23, 2023 by 3 Comments

Phones can be distracting, with notifications popping up all the time to snare our attention and maybe even ruin our lives. [Guy Dupont] wishes to be no slave to the machine, and thus built a solution. Enter Mailblocks.

The concept is simple. It’s a physical mailbox which [Guy] can put his phone in. All notifications on the phone are blocked unless he puts his phone into the box. When the phone is inside and the box is closed, the little red flag goes up, indicating “DOPAMINE” is available, and [Guy] can check his notifications.

To achieve this, [Guy] is running a custom DNS server. It redirects all the lookups for push notifications on Android so they go nowhere. Placing the phone in the mailbox turns the re-directions off, so the phone can contact the usual servers and get its notifications as normal.

It’s a novel way of fighting against the constant attention suck of modern smartphones. Rather than being bombarded by notifications in real time, [Guy] instead has to take a significant intentional physical action to check the notifications. It cuts the willpower required and the interruptions to his work in a fell swoop.

We’ve featured [Guy’s] innovative and outside-the-box projects before, too. His smart pants were an absolute tour de force, I might add.

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What Can You Do With Thousands Of Vintage Telephones?

November 20, 2023 by 56 Comments

Telephones. We’ve got a few around the place, and some may remember all the weird and wonderful varieties produced over the years. But, vintage phone dealers [Ron and Mary Knappen] may have a few too many. With a large 41,000 sqft property, at least three farm buildings, and no fewer than 33 semi-trailers loaded to busting with racks of phones, the retiring couple have a job sorting it all out and finding someone passionate enough to take over this once-strong business.

Technology has moved on somewhat since 1971 when they got into the retro business, and there are only so many period dramas being produced that could make a dent in a collection of a thousand steel desk phones. Nobody seems interested in taking on their business, so they are concentrating on emptying that large property in order to sell it, but the fate of the crazy number of other storage locations seems uncertain. Perhaps, other than a few museums around the world purchasing a few, this collection really is likely heading to the recyclers.

So what can we do with a vintage phone in this modern era? Here’s a primer to get you started. How about going cellular? Or maybe just add them to your existing designer collection?

Thanks to [Jeremy] and Adafruit for the tip!

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!