The worst thing is I don't think it would be too hard to make a quite open phone, even an upgradeable phone. From the top of my head: * Raspberry pi compute mo

The worst thing is I don't think it would be too hard to make a quite open phone, even an upgradeable phone. From the top of my head: * Raspberry pi compute module as a base * SIM8008 equivalent with 3g/hspa module soldered on a daughterboard, with battery charging circuit * I2C sensor package (accel, gravity, typical AKM modules) * lcd with usb touchscreen You could make a nice DIY phone (I've been wanting to make something like this from an old Nokia 9210 or something like that). If you could make more powerful versions creating some boards with different SoCs respecting the CM pinout layout, you could make some nice kit to put on kickstarter, but you would also need a software stack to support it, and everything is so targeted these days that THAT would be the most difficult part. It's not hard to make hardware talk each days, it's integrating it with the software everybody else is using. What's a phone without Whatsapp / Telegram? How can you download an app without a store? People don't use forums these days to get to know new software... Sure, you could make lineageOS run on it, but then, that would differentiate much from other phones, except for the tinkerers and OSS freaks (me included), but there are not that many of us as to make that a profitable business I agree that we need an open hardware initiative in phones, but you need a shitload of money to burn before you can make any kind of difference in the established ecosystem, and would still not be too sure who the real target would be