4 ms·

I had started to fear this. As Android fanboy, my biggest phone is no phone is open. I try to explain what a baseband processor, and DSP, and most people are

by 616c 13y ago

I had started to fear this. As Android fanboy, my biggest phone is no phone is open. I try to explain what a baseband processor, and DSP, and most people are confused by why it matters. Are there any fun phones (I assume in the US it would be illegal to sell one) with reprogrammable/more open baseband chips? Does anyone know anything about this topic? I would love to make this a hobby/obsession if there was a small place to enter this research outside of the industry.

adestefan 13y ago
AFAIK there is no legal mandate that says a baseband cannot be flashable. The FCC will not grant certification to a device where the frequencies could be changed, but that just means it couldn't be sold directly in the US. You could easily get such a phone from overseas though. I'm not sure how that regulatory structures works on other countries. I'm sure it's mostly similar.
hershel 13y ago
A good place to look is the replicant[1] project which aims to offer a fully open-source version of android. Most supported phones sadly have closed sourced modems and other stuff. There's one phone there[2] that only the wifi is non-free. So my guess i turning of wifi gives you a totally free pho ne.This is an openmoko phone-which is also open hardware phone. Regarding fun: I think you can't run the play store there - so you lose the google apps. And the phone we're talking about is weak - cortex-a8, 512MB. [1]replicant.us [2]http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GTA04 http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GTA04
- 616c 13y ago
  Thanks. Unfortunately no one sells these anymore, correct? I was well aware of OpenMoko, but you point out a lot of the problems. EDIT: I also forgot mention I was looking into this, but it means going back to the old phones. Still might be worth it. http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/MotorolaC123 http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/MotorolaC123
revelation 13y ago
Your best bet would be osmocomBB with the Motorola C123. That said, if you are just interested in the reverse engineering bits, most smartphones nowadays allow uploading new 'radio' images. So you can find a bunch of manufacturer firmware images for these baseband processors, with lots and lots of debug messages in them: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2087227 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2087227

by 616c 13y ago

adestefan 13y ago

AFAIK there is no legal mandate that says a baseband cannot be flashable. The FCC will not grant certification to a device where the frequencies could be changed, but that just means it couldn't be sold directly in the US. You could easily get such a phone from overseas though. I'm not sure how that regulatory structures works on other countries. I'm sure it's mostly similar.

hershel 13y ago

A good place to look is the replicant[1] project which aims to offer a fully open-source version of android. Most supported phones sadly have closed sourced modems and other stuff. There's one phone there[2] that only the wifi is non-free. So my guess i turning of wifi gives you a totally free pho ne.This is an openmoko phone-which is also open hardware phone. Regarding fun: I think you can't run the play store there - so you lose the google apps. And the phone we're talking about is weak - cortex-a8, 512MB. [1]replicant.us [2]http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GTA04 http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GTA04

616c 13y ago
Thanks. Unfortunately no one sells these anymore, correct? I was well aware of OpenMoko, but you point out a lot of the problems. EDIT: I also forgot mention I was looking into this, but it means going back to the old phones. Still might be worth it. http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/MotorolaC123 http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/MotorolaC123

revelation 13y ago

Your best bet would be osmocomBB with the Motorola C123. That said, if you are just interested in the reverse engineering bits, most smartphones nowadays allow uploading new 'radio' images. So you can find a bunch of manufacturer firmware images for these baseband processors, with lots and lots of debug messages in them: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2087227 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2087227