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Notkia: Linux phone in the shape of Nokia, with LoRa + WiFI + BT connectivity
- rgoulter 4y agohackster link: https://www.hackster.io/reimunotmoe/notkia-f6e772 https://www.hackster.io/reimunotmoe/notkia-f6e772
- dang 4y agoOk, we've changed to that from https://gadgettendency.com/an-enthusiast-turned-a-nokia-1680-feature-phone-into-a-linux-computer-with-a-working-screen-and-keyboard/ https://gadgettendency.com/an-enthusiast-turned-a-nokia-1680.... Thanks!
- mikae1 4y agoPlease someone, sell me a feature phone with an open source OS that can run Signal. I don't need a web browser, but at least I want to be able to communicate securely with family and friends. Almost all of them have switched so Signal.
- jmprspret 4y agoBuy a Pixel 5a and install GrapheneOS on it. Install signal and disable the rest of the apps. Done.
- midislack 4y agoDo you still seriously need to give out your phone number to use it? Seems shady.
- BaseballPhysics 4y agoCan you just disagree with the design choice rather than implying, without evidence, nefarious motivations? Ongoing work is being done to enable Signal accounts without requiring a phone number (there's been a number of changes to the protocol to support this in the last 6-12 months), it's just not done yet.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoHow would you identify your phone otherwise?
- chinathrow 4y agoBy a random ID as others [1] do? [1] Threema
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoMAC address, randomised by the pocket-sized computer owner as needed. Perhaps laypersons are less able to distinguish computer networks from telephone networks than they were 20-30 years ago. Signal relies on a computer network. Signal runs on "personal computers" that are bundled with "phones", but not on phones that lack personal computers. Perhaps one day we will reach the point where "VoIP" becomes meaningless because all voice will be carried over IP.
- midislack 4y agoWhy do you need to identify your phone to use an online messaging service?
- donkarma 4y agoWith a username and password
- jeroenhd 4y agoThe Signal project doesn't want non-official clients to connect to their network. I doubt you'll get them to release an official client for your bespoke dumbphone OS, so I'm afraid you'll have to accept unstable hackery as a way to run signal. You may be able to create your own dumbphone by flashing something like PostmarketOS to a compatible second hand phone combined with a custom Signal client. Just apk remove the browser and any other utilities you don't need and even the librem phone might be fast enough for your use case.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago> The Signal project doesn't want non-official clients to connect to their network. They don't encourage it but they don't ban it either. Non-official clients absolutely exist for the network, some of which use signald, a backend service and abstraction layer for the signal protocol which is neither unstable nor a hack: https://signald.org/ https://signald.org/
- monocasa 4y agoThey have shut down third party clients, and reserve the right to continue that. Both use f the name signal, and connecting to their backend without it being their official client are the reasons given, and those seem to apply to signald just as much. https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
- BaseballPhysics 4y agoGiven that happened six years ago and multiple unofficial clients continue to exist without threat of ban, I'd suggest this one example cannot be extrapolated. It is true that Whisper Systems runs the network and can gatekeep it as they see fit. But your claim that Signal, as a matter of course, bans unofficial clients is objectively not true.
- monocasa 4y ago
- borgel 4y agoPunkt MP02 might meet your needs. https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/ https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/
- SoftTalker 4y agoI like the idea but that's a lot of money for very limited features. I understand the lack of features is the point, but a Nokia 6300 4G KaiOS phone is only $70. No Signal, but it has WhatsApp.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zajio1am 4y agoIf it can run Signal, then it is pretty much smartphone not feature phone.
- Sakos 4y agoI'm not sure what you're basing this on. Java runtimes have been on feature phones for far longer than we've had smartphones. The only reason why we didn't get more capable feature phones around the time we got 3G networks is because it's the same time we got smartphones with big screens and simple touch-based UIs.
- usr1106 4y agoThe OP seems to ask for only signal, not the possibility to install any other app. I would call that very much a feature phone.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoDepends on how you use those terms. If we're talking about processing power and how sophisticated the underlying tech has to be, then yes I'd tend to agree that the ability to run modern-ish internet-connected apps is at the equivalent of a smart phone. On the other hand, if "feature phone" is about the way the user interacts - a phone that ships with a give set of features and is not intended to run arbitrary apps - then it doesn't matter how sophisticated it is under the hood, only that it bakes in certain apps/features (phone, SMS, Signal) and that's it.
- mkj 4y agoThe signal protocol itself should run on a microcontroller. Showing images or videos would use more compute power.
- toast0 4y agoThere were a bunch of feature phones around 2014 that had an unauthorized (and poorly working) WhatsApp client. Signal of today is a bit trickier to run than WhatsApp of 2014, but it could be done. WhatsApp also ran officially on Nokia Series 40, which was a feature phone platform with apps. There's also KaiOS which is running on phones marketted as feature phones, although it's a fork of FirefoxOS which is Android base plus an HTML+js app model (or something).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- someoneelse9 4y agoSame but replace Signal with XMPP, which is far more flexible, has been around for a longer time and it's federated. But yeah, I agree. We need a feature phone with IM support. That would be perfect.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- toastal 4y agoMutida is open source but with no build instructions or information on how to hack on the device. Read the source, but don't modify it. Since they don't implement apps, there's no way to get a secure messaging system in there as SMS will be you only option. I suppose you could set up OTR or PGP, but you'd still have no built-in ability to encrypt and decrypt.
- aliswe 4y ago> Note: This is NOT a custom ROM for Nokia phones. It is a freshly designed PCB with exactly the same dimensions as the original PCB of the Nokia phone, so it can be put in the Nokia's shell.
- greenhorn123 4y agoSuggested title change: fitting a linux computer into a Nokia 1680 shell. @dang
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pvg 4y agoMail the mods if you want something changed since there are no @dangotifications
- AlbertoGP 4y agoYes, this looked very interesting but it falls a bit short: > “The device can be used as a computer, walkie-talkie or modem. But Notkia does not know how to make phone calls. The fact is that Remu NotMoe could not find a sufficiently compact 4G LTE module.” It’s still neat, but it’s not a phone.
- neilv 4y agoWhat I most want is new open source hardware guts with Linux for shells like the E61 and Blackberry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_E61 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_E61
- stuntkite 4y agoThere are several blackberry keyboard projects out there. I've been on a similar journey to OP for a while. Currently I've got a phone I'm fiddling with putting a jetson xavier inside a rotary phone and another based off the featherwing with a blackberry keyboard and touch display and a feather compatible linux SOC (GiantBoard). I recently got a ClockworkPi DevTerm and have been so pleased with it that I'm seriously considering their GameShell as a phone platform. It's modularity is great. I'm so excited that other people are working on DIY "phones". I personally think we are going to see this scene keep growing and phones will finally be more like the custom computer market very soon. The fact that people are finally putting linux on apple devices is also very very encouraging. There are so many bricked iphones and ipads floating around with great displays and sensors that are totally useless because we can't run a reasonable OS. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4818 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4818 https://www.crowdsupply.com/groboards/giant-board https://www.crowdsupply.com/groboards/giant-board https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/devterm-kit-a06-series https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/devterm-kit-a06-ser...
- goblinux 4y agoYes please! I miss real buttons and the tiny blackberry form factor so much
- ASalazarMX 4y agoI do too, but I really don't miss the tiny, non-tactile screen. A modern Linux smartphone with the form factor of the Nokia E90 Communicator or the N900 would make me ecstatic, though.
- durnygbur 4y agoThis device with both large screen and physical keyboard is still smaller than every Android device available currently on the market.
- marcodiego 4y ago> To do this, he created a special printed circuit board with a processor, memory and other components. But the keyboard is completely original. So, it is just a carcass?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rcarmo 4y agoA long, long time ago, I did this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruicarmo/16931940010/in/album-72157636969944404/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruicarmo/16931940010/in/album-... We tested phones to the limit and hacked them when we could, so I just casually left it on a table and a couple of colleagues nearly had a fit until they realized it was… just a GIF with a blinking cursor.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago"This design is only patented in US and AU, and will expire on 2023-06-23. After it's expired, we can produce brand new plastic cases based on this design, assuming the fundraising collected enough money." I guess it's only a year away, but I'm curious why one wouldn't just design a case too at this point. Would fix this issue: "...240x320 IPS LCD, and it's a bit larger than the original one. So, some pixels are hidden by the plastic borders, yielding a visible space of ~220x280 pixels." (Edit: 20% of the screen is hidden even though it fits in the case!) As well as the issue with the charge port not being quite right.
- new299 4y agoWouldn't they also potentially have copyright issues exactly replicating the original design?
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoI can't say for sure, but one might think so!
- flas9sd 4y agothough one can use any old Android that does Wifi to do SIP, it has its charms to use less capable hardware for this with less software complexity. I don't know that many projects of this category: the "ZeroPhone" was based on a rpi-zero and active 2017-2019, the "WiPhone", a ESP32/Arduino based device, is still ongoing.
- iszomer 4y agoThen there's WiPhone [0] which was previously talked about a few years ago [1]. A LoRa module is sold separately as an addon too. [0] https://wiphone.io/ https://wiphone.io/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241484
- pabs3 4y agoI wonder why they went with MIPS instead of ARM...
- pabs3 4y agoI really like the choice of LoRa instead of 3GPP stuff.
- rajaravivarma_r 4y agoI like this idea. I have been recently worried about the hacker unfriendly nature of the phones as well. It is frustrating to go through a series of painful processes like unlocking the bootloader, installing a recovery image, if you are lucky enough to find a compatible one, hoping that the phone will not be bricked or end up in a bootloop, etc. Having said that, I would have liked a powerful phone where we can use the desktop version of banking websites, YouTube etc.