OpenMoko was a company that created, manufactured and sold a mobile phone and developed a complete FLOSS software stack based on GNU/Linux for it. From comparable modern projects there's Purism making both hardware (Librem 5) and software (PureOS, Phosh), or perhaps Pine64's hardware (PinePhone) combined with community-based software projects (like Mobian, postmarketOS, UBports, Plasma Mobile etc.)
This one is a cute DIY hobbyist project that puts a SBC together with an off-the-shelf modem module. Fun stuff, but from an entirely different category of things.
I well remember it. We bought a few for our research project, I think I have it still lying in my office shelf. My colleague build a crosscompiling tool chain based on arch as far as I remember. The only thing I cannot rember is using this actually as a phone...
I used it as a phone, the QtMoko distro was the most performant option it had at the time, but was a bit of a dumbphone style interface. I also ran the Enlightenment desktop using distros like SHR and Debian on it, which let you do a lot more but were a bit slower. The hardware was terrible in various ways.
I successfully used it as my main and only phone for a few years about 15 years ago before eventually switching to Nokia N900. It worked well as a phone, I'd probably have used it for a bit longer if it supported EDGE and didn't have a QVGA GPU attached to a high DPI screen.
It's always the same old raspberry pi glued to a battery, a screen and an lte module.
Please, come back when the software is half decent. First generation of iphone level of smoothness and intuitiveness should be the bar. Hell, even an old fashioned blackberry experience would be good enough
After using a Linux phone (specifically, the PinePhone) as my daily driver for the past 19 months, I must say that the overall experience has been quite poor. While basic functions like calling and texting are functional, the device falls short in many other areas. For instance, web browsing can be challenging - although most websites do load properly, opening the keyboard has made multiple website completely unusable or behaving strange.
Additionally, while I have experimented with apps for different platforms like Matrix and Mastodon, many of these are still works in progress, and compiling them can be a time-consuming process.It's worth mentioning that even the most optimized apps for Linux phones can still crash from time to time. Additionally, many apps that might work perfectly fine on a Linux desktop are simply not designed to be used on a phone, making them unusable in practice.
While there is a solution for running Android apps on the phone (Waydroid), it too can be unreliable at times and has been known to cause the phone to hang. Furthermore, there are numerous software-related issues, such as crashes after updates, voice-related problems (e.g. microphone or speaker not working), modem connectivity issues requiring a reboot, and the device failing to turn on the screen until a hard reboot is performed (it thinks it's being held up to the ear like during a call). Lastly, battery life is a real issue. It's worth noting that I'm running the Phosh interface on Arch Linux.
Frankly, what does "designing hardware as a EE" have to do with software issues your parent has described? Pine64 sells PinePhones, but doesn't do any software development, not even kernel drivers. That's not "failure", that's the expected outcome. You got what you paid for. The community does an amazing job supporting the hardware, but there's only so much you can do with self-motivated volunteers on such a complex project.
There are other projects out there where you pay for both hardware and FLOSS software development, such as Librem 5 with PureOS.
The irony is my newer iPhone has at least half of the same issues:
Keyboard doesn’t open randomly, sometimes browsers lock/hangs (both Safari & Brave), apps will crash for seemingly no reason, random OS crashes (rare but at least monthly), phone will think its being held to ear even on a level surface mid-call.
Linux phones are definitely still a ways away, but its funny how similar the problems are, they’re just less severe.
I tried using my Pinephone, but after years of development it's still impossible to quickly type your unlock pin without the whole thing lagging. That's right, the simplest screen ever, displaying just a grid of numbers lags
I think the point is open software all the way; the hardware is not the issue. As long as there are binaries without source included, we have a problem.
I agree with OP to some extent here. A phone is critical “infrastructure”. A high bar is basically a given at this point if you’re trying to pitch someone to use your product. Or it’ll remain an experiment and never go mainstream. Apple prioritized experience over features early. Might be something these projects should consider if they are serious about adoption.
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Has the "Waveshare SIM7600" and the raspberry pi bootloader/gpu have open source firmware?
I didn't think there were any open source baseband modems that did 4g, I know there were some software defined radio projects but they seemed of limited utility.
I know in the past there were some attempts to make rpi firmware open source but some of components would not activate or had reduced functionality, so I wonder if that is no longer a problem.
The PinePhone modem is from Quectel, the ARM processor in the modem is by default a proprietary Linux distro, but you can replace it with an open source Linux distro. Unfortunately the Hexagon DSP in the modem runs a proprietary OS.
I'd not complain even about a 100% closed modem, if my data would be en/decrypted before entering and after exiting from it, so that all it sees is noise, and it has no way of interfering with the hosting main OS. If they document it enough to make it fully usable from a FOSS environment, that is, no traps like "...but it works better with our new shiny (and 100% closed) OS...", then I'd be ok with that.
Usually the modem is the thing that implements SMS and phone calls, so it probably wouldn't be possible to do that. You could of course start a VPN and do VoIP and messaging apps instead but then you'll still be getting SMS and phone calls.
I have no problem with this particular project, but the optics make for a good joke about the usability of proprietary vs. free software (a bit like Top Gear's DIY car https://youtu.be/PCSNCs7bwCw).
30 comments
[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 88.0 ms ] thread--
Aside: Hackster.io has an RSS feed, even though it is not made evident. Always check the page source, or try the typical RSS URL forms.
Remember OpenMoko: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko
There also exist projects for Arduino.
Quite different indeed. But the old one did have physical phones made, apparently.
This one is a cute DIY hobbyist project that puts a SBC together with an off-the-shelf modem module. Fun stuff, but from an entirely different category of things.
Please, come back when the software is half decent. First generation of iphone level of smoothness and intuitiveness should be the bar. Hell, even an old fashioned blackberry experience would be good enough
But good support is still far away.
Especially since I'd really need Whatsapp and banking authentication on the phone, which both only support Android/iOS atm.
Additionally, while I have experimented with apps for different platforms like Matrix and Mastodon, many of these are still works in progress, and compiling them can be a time-consuming process.It's worth mentioning that even the most optimized apps for Linux phones can still crash from time to time. Additionally, many apps that might work perfectly fine on a Linux desktop are simply not designed to be used on a phone, making them unusable in practice.
While there is a solution for running Android apps on the phone (Waydroid), it too can be unreliable at times and has been known to cause the phone to hang. Furthermore, there are numerous software-related issues, such as crashes after updates, voice-related problems (e.g. microphone or speaker not working), modem connectivity issues requiring a reboot, and the device failing to turn on the screen until a hard reboot is performed (it thinks it's being held up to the ear like during a call). Lastly, battery life is a real issue. It's worth noting that I'm running the Phosh interface on Arch Linux.
There are other projects out there where you pay for both hardware and FLOSS software development, such as Librem 5 with PureOS.
Keyboard doesn’t open randomly, sometimes browsers lock/hangs (both Safari & Brave), apps will crash for seemingly no reason, random OS crashes (rare but at least monthly), phone will think its being held to ear even on a level surface mid-call.
Linux phones are definitely still a ways away, but its funny how similar the problems are, they’re just less severe.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I didn't think there were any open source baseband modems that did 4g, I know there were some software defined radio projects but they seemed of limited utility.
I know in the past there were some attempts to make rpi firmware open source but some of components would not activate or had reduced functionality, so I wonder if that is no longer a problem.
https://github.com/librerpi/lk-overlay/
The PinePhone modem is from Quectel, the ARM processor in the modem is by default a proprietary Linux distro, but you can replace it with an open source Linux distro. Unfortunately the Hexagon DSP in the modem runs a proprietary OS.
https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/ https://osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/