4 ms·

I've been surprised personally that there are now a number of these small qwerty-LCD portable devices (that mostly resemble blackberries), but very few? (certai

I've been surprised personally that there are now a number of these small qwerty-LCD portable devices (that mostly resemble blackberries), but very few? (certainly not none..??) of them boast actual 3g/4g ie "real" cell phone connectivity I might personally find it a lot more tempting to use a super DIY device (ie a baroque OS, unique input devices, etc.) if I could also make calls out to the public Internet (to read wikipedia? answer SMS? fetch any sort of map/transit info?) Feel free to pile on and tell me which devices I've missed..! :-) I'm sure there must be some out there, considering that "cell phone in a chip" is pretty much a whole category now ie the qualcomm snapdragon chips, mediatek, etc. ... (reading more about it) actually, is it true that design/certification of a small device that boasts a cellular module is a lot harder than an esp32/wifi-only board? which explains why there isn't a plethora of cell-internet-enabled devices?

bArray 1y ago
> I might personally find it a lot more tempting to use a super DIY device (ie a baroque OS, unique input devices, etc.) if I could also make calls out to the public Internet (to read wikipedia? answer SMS? fetch any sort of map/transit info?) A browser would be quite tough on such an embedded system, you would need to really think outside of the box. The issue is that a browser could easily need more space to render than is available, have tonnes of images, require JS, etc. On my machine. the lightweight browser dillo is 852kB, and that doesn't include the shared libraries (I could 26 on my machine). It's not going to be easy to get a similar experience running. > Feel free to pile on and tell me which devices I've missed..! :-) I'm sure there must be some out there, considering that "cell phone in a chip" is pretty much a whole category now ie the qualcomm snapdragon chips, mediatek, etc. I'm hoping to add to the list of devices myself maybe next year. It's a very difficult space to operate in. > ... (reading more about it) actually, is it true that design/certification of a small device that boasts a cellular module is a lot harder than an esp32/wifi-only board? which explains why there isn't a plethora of cell-internet-enabled devices? For the most part you can get already certified modules, where the ESP32 is itself largely one of these modules (the small ones with the metal body on a thin PCB). I think cellular is mostly avoided due to the increase in BOM, and you're not easily going to get 4G/5G support.
- gregsadetsky 1y ago
  Thanks for your reply! Good point re: browser but I guess that's where my excitement about the possibilities lies: I wouldn't mind an extremely under-resourced device. RSS feeds and text content could be sent (and wouldn't require specialized rendering), vector maps and points of interest or transit info could be super minimal in terms of bandwidth/rendering requirements, etc. I think that I want a 5G tty qwerty terminal..? :-) aka https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii for maps, etc. > and you're not easily going to get 4G/5G support Sorry, what do you mean by that? In the sense of 4G not being that supported vs 3G? As in the chips aren't available? Or 4G service is hard to find..? Cheers
  - bArray 1y ago
    > I wouldn't mind an extremely under-resourced device. RSS feeds and text content could be sent (and wouldn't require specialized rendering), vector maps and points of interest or transit info could be super minimal in terms of bandwidth/rendering requirements, etc. A compromise might be to send the traffic via a proxy that pre-resizes images, renders content and chops it up into a manageable format for a resource constrained device. > I think that I want a 5G tty qwerty terminal..? :-) > aka https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii for maps, etc. For resource constrained devices, it's probably easier to render the vector graphics. There's a few open end points out there that could make it feasible for basic navigation. > Sorry, what do you mean by that? In the sense of 4G not being that supported vs 3G? As in the chips aren't available? Or 4G service is hard to find..? You can get them, but they are harder to interface with than the existing 2G/3G chips. Whoever takes on the challenge might have to do some work reverse engineering how to correctly speak to the modem, for example.
    - mlhpdx 1y ago
      WML is (needed) back? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Markup_Language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Markup_Language
      - 1y ago
estimator7292 1y ago
I'm no expert, but as I understand the 2.4GHz band has more lax requirements than the cellular bands, but it's not like ridiculously difficult, it's "just" a matter of money. Especially if you're using off the shelf modules. But at a practical level, there's really extremely few situations where you actually need a WWAN modem. There's almost always wifi available and if not you almost always have a phone with an internet connection. That aside, a big part of why people make these devices is specifically to get away from always-connected internet devices. It also may or may not need approval from whichever telco operator you're trying to connect to, and the user has to provide their own SIM and do the legwork to get a subscription. It's just not super practical. Not impossible, but a big pain in the ass for not much benefit.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
ACCount37 1y ago
Just about every modem that can do actual real 4G cell phone connectivity is built around a SoC that blows the socks off your usual microcontroller. The cheapest noname 4G USB stick you can buy now probably has a Qualcomm MSM8916 in it, and runs, I shit you not, Android. As you can imagine, development with this kind of thing can be rather involved. No open development kits are available. There are no reference designs that don't require you to sign off on an NDA to access it, and Qualcomm wouldn't even want to talk to you unless you are at least "MOQ 100000+" tall. The best you can do is get an existing modem module that hopefully doesn't bury too many of the interfaces you want, try to run your firmware on it, and then design your own board around that. Which would probably yield a device that's inferior to most cheap smartphones or even feature phones.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  I'm consistently puzzled why 5G versions of these SoC don't seem to exist for hardware hackers yet. I plain can't find any kind of 5G modem that isn't just a whole phone unless I pay like $1,000.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    There are some available. For example: https://www.quectel.com/product/5g-redcap-rg255c-gl-m2/ https://www.quectel.com/product/5g-redcap-rg255c-gl-m2/ - it costs around $120 per module. They have others: https://www.quectel.com/5g-iot-modules/ https://www.quectel.com/5g-iot-modules/ Which is pretty much what it costs for phone manufacturers right now. I guess the real reason is that 4G is more than sufficient for pretty much anything, and it's going to be supported for the foreseeable future?
    - gunalx 1y ago
      Where I live we are already talking about abandoning 2g, and 4g. (3g died a while back and 2g was kept as legacy network).
      - cyberax 1y ago
rtpg 1y ago
beyond the unihertz existing, I think that there's probably an interesting space for a device that works on the idea of intermittent internet (i.e. wifi) Offline maps being a big one that you could maybe "just" do. If you really need to get the device online pull out your phone. Though I feel like there's loads of stuff that are on LTE etc. Just... they're real companies doing real things and not people hacking together one-offs. Think agtech, vending machines etc.

bArray 1y ago

> I might personally find it a lot more tempting to use a super DIY device (ie a baroque OS, unique input devices, etc.) if I could also make calls out to the public Internet (to read wikipedia? answer SMS? fetch any sort of map/transit info?) A browser would be quite tough on such an embedded system, you would need to really think outside of the box. The issue is that a browser could easily need more space to render than is available, have tonnes of images, require JS, etc. On my machine. the lightweight browser dillo is 852kB, and that doesn't include the shared libraries (I could 26 on my machine). It's not going to be easy to get a similar experience running. > Feel free to pile on and tell me which devices I've missed..! :-) I'm sure there must be some out there, considering that "cell phone in a chip" is pretty much a whole category now ie the qualcomm snapdragon chips, mediatek, etc. I'm hoping to add to the list of devices myself maybe next year. It's a very difficult space to operate in. > ... (reading more about it) actually, is it true that design/certification of a small device that boasts a cellular module is a lot harder than an esp32/wifi-only board? which explains why there isn't a plethora of cell-internet-enabled devices? For the most part you can get already certified modules, where the ESP32 is itself largely one of these modules (the small ones with the metal body on a thin PCB). I think cellular is mostly avoided due to the increase in BOM, and you're not easily going to get 4G/5G support.

gregsadetsky 1y ago
Thanks for your reply! Good point re: browser but I guess that's where my excitement about the possibilities lies: I wouldn't mind an extremely under-resourced device. RSS feeds and text content could be sent (and wouldn't require specialized rendering), vector maps and points of interest or transit info could be super minimal in terms of bandwidth/rendering requirements, etc. I think that I want a 5G tty qwerty terminal..? :-) aka https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii for maps, etc. > and you're not easily going to get 4G/5G support Sorry, what do you mean by that? In the sense of 4G not being that supported vs 3G? As in the chips aren't available? Or 4G service is hard to find..? Cheers
- bArray 1y ago
  > I wouldn't mind an extremely under-resourced device. RSS feeds and text content could be sent (and wouldn't require specialized rendering), vector maps and points of interest or transit info could be super minimal in terms of bandwidth/rendering requirements, etc. A compromise might be to send the traffic via a proxy that pre-resizes images, renders content and chops it up into a manageable format for a resource constrained device. > I think that I want a 5G tty qwerty terminal..? :-) > aka https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii for maps, etc. For resource constrained devices, it's probably easier to render the vector graphics. There's a few open end points out there that could make it feasible for basic navigation. > Sorry, what do you mean by that? In the sense of 4G not being that supported vs 3G? As in the chips aren't available? Or 4G service is hard to find..? You can get them, but they are harder to interface with than the existing 2G/3G chips. Whoever takes on the challenge might have to do some work reverse engineering how to correctly speak to the modem, for example.
  - mlhpdx 1y ago
    WML is (needed) back? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Markup_Language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Markup_Language
    - 1y ago

estimator7292 1y ago

I'm no expert, but as I understand the 2.4GHz band has more lax requirements than the cellular bands, but it's not like ridiculously difficult, it's "just" a matter of money. Especially if you're using off the shelf modules. But at a practical level, there's really extremely few situations where you actually need a WWAN modem. There's almost always wifi available and if not you almost always have a phone with an internet connection. That aside, a big part of why people make these devices is specifically to get away from always-connected internet devices. It also may or may not need approval from whichever telco operator you're trying to connect to, and the user has to provide their own SIM and do the legwork to get a subscription. It's just not super practical. Not impossible, but a big pain in the ass for not much benefit.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

ACCount37 1y ago

Just about every modem that can do actual real 4G cell phone connectivity is built around a SoC that blows the socks off your usual microcontroller. The cheapest noname 4G USB stick you can buy now probably has a Qualcomm MSM8916 in it, and runs, I shit you not, Android. As you can imagine, development with this kind of thing can be rather involved. No open development kits are available. There are no reference designs that don't require you to sign off on an NDA to access it, and Qualcomm wouldn't even want to talk to you unless you are at least "MOQ 100000+" tall. The best you can do is get an existing modem module that hopefully doesn't bury too many of the interfaces you want, try to run your firmware on it, and then design your own board around that. Which would probably yield a device that's inferior to most cheap smartphones or even feature phones.

colechristensen 1y ago
I'm consistently puzzled why 5G versions of these SoC don't seem to exist for hardware hackers yet. I plain can't find any kind of 5G modem that isn't just a whole phone unless I pay like $1,000.
- cyberax 1y ago
  There are some available. For example: https://www.quectel.com/product/5g-redcap-rg255c-gl-m2/ https://www.quectel.com/product/5g-redcap-rg255c-gl-m2/ - it costs around $120 per module. They have others: https://www.quectel.com/5g-iot-modules/ https://www.quectel.com/5g-iot-modules/ Which is pretty much what it costs for phone manufacturers right now. I guess the real reason is that 4G is more than sufficient for pretty much anything, and it's going to be supported for the foreseeable future?
  - gunalx 1y ago
    Where I live we are already talking about abandoning 2g, and 4g. (3g died a while back and 2g was kept as legacy network).
    - cyberax 1y ago

rtpg 1y ago

beyond the unihertz existing, I think that there's probably an interesting space for a device that works on the idea of intermittent internet (i.e. wifi) Offline maps being a big one that you could maybe "just" do. If you really need to get the device online pull out your phone. Though I feel like there's loads of stuff that are on LTE etc. Just... they're real companies doing real things and not people hacking together one-offs. Think agtech, vending machines etc.