this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Do It Yourself

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Make it, Fix it, Renovate it, Rehabilitate it - as long as you’ve done some part of it yourself, share!

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DIY smartphone? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/diy@beehaw.org
 

I am looking to building my own phone from a SBC running a linux distro with plasma mobile and that can make calls. and I have some questions:

Where can I start?

Which SBC to choose?

How would I achieve the call functionality?

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[–] Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think making an "usable" phone (especially one that is able to make calls, etc.) yourself is extremely hard to do, if not impossible.
Many "tinker"-phone startups/ devices, like PinePhone or Librem, who made the phones from scratch or mostly themselves afaik, had huge problems in the beginning with basic functions, like making calls.

There's a project (mainly for kids and students) somewhere to make E-readers themselves, maybe you can start with that?
I'll link it to you if I found it.
That might act as a base.

If you want a good phone that gives off DIY-vibes (modularity, repairability, etc.) but want something proper and modern, then check out Fairphone. Afaik, the FP4 also supports PostmarketOS and other mobile distros.

Remember to take everything I said with a huge grin of salt, since I'm not that well informed in that area of DIY- or Linux phones. A lot of what I said might be wrong, take it only as idea or starting point.

But if you really want to start this project, good luck. You'll need it 🫠

[–] Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 9 months ago

To add, in the US, most service providers will not let a device on their network until it has gone through FCC approval. You can get around this by buying a cell module, which has gone through approval, but most of those are data only last I looked.

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