Hello all!
Due to the recent statements by Google (as well as their track record the last few years) I’ve decided I do not want to use Android as a phone operating system anymore. But Apple is just as bad, if not worse. So I’ve decided to build my own custom device.
I am working on building a phone using a single board computer, right now I’m using the raspberry pi 5. This is still a proof of concept, but I want to share my ideas with others, so like minded individuals can start messing around with this idea in their own homes to further this goal.
You can view more images of the device here, as well as the step by step instructions here (these are still very rough and incomplete) https://github.com/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone OR https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone
Right now it just runs raspberry pi OS, with a different desktop look and feel. Everything that normally works in a pi 5 works on this device, additionally I am experimenting with a Mobile Broadband modem, to allow the device to text and call, as well as access internet, like a normal phone off wifi
The total cost is around 200 dollars, not including the 3d printer to make the custom case.
This project is barely off the ground, and I’ve got a lot to learn before I can stop relying strictly on the raspberry pi 5, my end goal is to custom design SBCs, and release those designs for free alongside the plans for the device, so that interested parties can select their own System on a Chip to use for the device. I need to get into designing boards, I’m interested in trying Stephen Hawes’ Lumen PnP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlkTcxh-9gA) for that phase.
But that’s for the future, for now, I’m hoping to get more people interested in the prototype so that I’m not the only one noodling around on this idea. I’d love some feedback, and if anyone was willing to put one together for testing, I would appreciate it greatly!
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This is a really cool idea. Any work in the direction of more linux phone technology is always good. There are some linux phones out there already, and these devices have had some problems which is why there hasn’t been more adoption. If there is a way to do this with RISC and have decent battery life, that would be really exciting. Have you tried installing Phosh on it?
The newest, and most exciting, option right now is flx1s (https://furilabs.com/flx1s-update-2/).
One of the biggest problems is that, to my knowledge, there is no standard linux mobile App standard or, if there is, it’s not often used. There is a group working on this issue right now (https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/mobile-linux-standards-group-formed).
For example, if I am using mobian or something similar and download thunar using sudo apt install thunar, then if I run thunar, it will run, but certain menus won’t display easily. In phosh, any sub-menu boxes will also pop up as a smaller pop-up box and to close it, you have to scroll through Apps to find the pop-up box and then close it. Generally I may be able to see the file structure on the left in Thunar but have a hard time seeing what’s on the right.
There are also things that can happen in which default panels (like the side panel) take up so much room that you can’t see what’s going on. For instance, if you try running gimp in phosh, you can barely see the image panel by default.
There are some Apps designated as mobile-friendly but even these sometimes don’t display correctly. Perhaps there should be a way to make it harder for Apps to be installed that don’t meet mobile standards and have weird menu glitches, such as making it harder to download Apps from repositories that are not mobile.
I’d really like to be able to run something like “flatpak-mobile install librewolf” and just get something that at least had a file with it to tell phosh how to display menus in the best way, if not a slightly altered librewolf.
Many people who used phosh would say “well just use waydroid” but the problem is that with play integrity api, many of those Apps won’t work.
In order for banking Apps and other Apps to run on linux and people to develop software, there really needs to be more adoption of mobile linux.
And yes, battery life was atrociously bad and completely unusable on the linux mobile devices I tested, which were a few years ago. It also got way too hot when just not doing anything, which was terrible. (In other words, if I took the device with me to Starbucks and got a coffee, it might get way too hot in my pocket; if I took it out and used the Internet for 20 minutes, the battery could die, and even if it didn’t, if I were waiting for a call during that time there was a good chance I wouldn’t get it. After getting back home, it would be totally dead and need a full recharge.)
Right now also, the main competitor to linux phones is Graphene OS with FOSS Apps and Graphene OS has better security features if someone is worried about their phone being stolen or seized. Data security is important to me and Graphene OS has a rate-limiting throttle to the password entry that even cellebrite can’t easily bypass and a function to auto-reboot. If the political situation in my country deteriorated even more, and arbitrary arrests started to happen more often, I would much rather be arrested with a Graphene phone than a typical linux mobile phone. Mobile linux for certain distros such as Mobian still offers robust encryption in before first unlock (bfu) if the password can withstand brute force attempts, but since there’s no hardware rate-limiter, the password has to be much more complex. Also, most people who use their phone frequently are not in BFU mode.
Graphene OS also requires a Pixel which does not have hardware switches and so a person must trust that there’s no exploit allowing certain components to be turned on or off which can be concerning when there is no way to definitively measure what the cellular modem is transmitting. Call me paranoid, but given what I know about how easy it is for someone smart to exploit computers, I actually don’t want a cell phone microphone to have power when I am talking about sensitive things or inputting passwords into computer systems and I do not want a camera that is built into the lcd part of the glass screen and can’t be easily covered because of the need to swipe up nor turned off without a switch, even if the cell phone has an incredible operating system that is very secure. Graphene, unlike most mobile linux distributions, is mostly very usable with no battery life issues, no weird display problems where Apps don’t display correctly and menus don’t work correctly, and no random reliability problems, mostly. I understand not wanting to rely on anything involving Android, however, given Google’s recent aggressive anti-privacy stances.
I’m excited about FuriPhone (https://furilabs.com/) and Purism’s LibrePhone 2.
The thing that I believe would help Mobile Linux most right now is people having conferences and getting to know each other and discussing standards, specifically on user experience, linux mobile app standards, battery life, and reliability. There is now a group, the Mobile Linux Standards group (https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/mobile-linux-standards-group-formed) that was formed last month that wants to standardize the Application layer to hopefully help with some of this.
There are so many smart people in mobile linux and eventually it will get great but right now there are major problems with the user experience because of how Apps are displayed and battery life as well as things like reliability.
So any way to gather people to discuss the mobile linux user experience, like conferences or groups etc, and to come up with standards to reduce these issues would help, or even to help list all the different problems so that they can just be enumerated and acknowledged and worked on would help.
Another way that would help is to have a mobile linux security group or conference to discuss things like standards for making mobile linux more secure from brute-force attacks if stolen or seized after being unlocked.
I’d really like to be able to run something like “flatpak-mobile install librewolf” and just get something that at least had a file with it to tell phosh how to display menus in the best way, if not a slightly altered librewolf.
This is a great idea
Really? How do I tell the right people?
since the rpi5 cannot make phone calls and sms, i wonder if you or someone would design a attachment to add calls and sms (like to gpio pins for example)
Right now I’m using this “Gravity: CAT1 A7670G Global 4G IoT Communication Module”, connected through USB-C https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2802.html I am able to text reliably using a chat software, and connect to mobile data unreliably using ModemManager and mmcli. I haven’t been able to make a call yet, but I think this is due to a software issue, I’m still trying to get everything working reliably. Once I figure out how to do all of these things, I will add it to the guide in the repo https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone
i never knew that was a thing,may come handy.
would be cool if it also supported 5G.
If you’re really going to do this you need a RISC-V processor SOC. If you look around online there’s a few places where you can obtain these.
For the my layperson friend reading over my shoulder… erm, why?
SOC has a small form factor which can fit neatly in a phone sized device (this us why all phones have them) and RISC-V is a completely open source processor instruction set that can be customized to whatever function you wish to implement.
Are the processors good? Like, does performance compare to the alternatives? (I’m assuming these are alternatives to like an ARM based SOC?)
If you are using a Pixel with a Tensor processor then you are using a RISC-V SOC.
Oh cool. Thank you for the info. I hear people talking about RISC-V a lot, but was nearing the parks and rec meme of “I don’t know and am too afraid to ask”, lol.
This is Lemmy not reddit. Unless it’s a political thing on .ml feel free to ask and most people will be happy to answer your questions, especially if it has to do with Linux or FOSS.
Been wanting to do something similar in a small pelican case for my friend and us. Couldn’t figure out what to do for phone signal though which stumped us.
Sorta copying my comment from another response, but it may answer your question as well: Right now I’m using this “Gravity: CAT1 A7670G Global 4G IoT Communication Module”, connected through USB-C https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2802.html I am able to text reliably using a chat software (it came preinstalled with gnome or KDE, not sure which), and connect to mobile data unreliably using ModemManager and mmcli. I haven’t been able to make a call yet, but I think this is due to a software issue, I’m still trying to get everything working reliably. Once I figure out how to do all of these things reliably, I will add it to the guide in the repo https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone
OMG, what?!? Holy fuck, this is amazing! This is incredible! Way to go!
Looks like a GPS
I suggest adding a license . i recommend a copyleft license (there are copyleft licenses for hardware. for example the cern licenses).
I also suggest setting up a open collective. i suspect people might be more inclined to donate to a non profit then to for profit companies like purism and Pine64.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’m not actually looking for any donations though. It probably sounds weird, but I don’t want to derive value from this, or even assign value to it, in the interest of keeping the information as freely accessible as possible. Not too get too ideological, seeking money often causes people to make a good idea bad, or to make a simple process inefficient, to make more money from it. I’m thankfully in a position where I can keep (slowly) working on this project in my free time, while still keeping my head above water.
That isn’t to say that no one else should make money from this idea. I just don’t want to personally.
I do like the idea of a copyleft license. I’ll have to look into it a bit more. Thanks again for your suggestions!
Thanks for the suggestions! I’m not actually looking for any donations though. It probably sounds weird, but I don’t want to derive value from this, or even assign value to it, in the interest of keeping the information as freely accessible as possible. Not too get too ideological, seeking money often causes people to make a good idea bad, or to make a simple process inefficient, to make more money from it. I’m thankfully in a position where I can keep (slowly) working on this project in my free time, while still keeping my head above water.
If you want to not get paid that is fine. but donating is the only way some people will be able to help make this happen. you could hire people using something like fiverr to do some of the boring stuff. money is just an efficient way to store and transfer economic resources. There is a significant difference often between a how a non profit allocates a economic resources vs a company that is owned by pension funds and mutual funds and is just trying to maximize a return on investment. Some of the best open source projects (e.g. blender signal thunderbird etc) hire full time workers.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. And people do seem excited about the concept. I’m not even sure I’m far enough along to justify taking in donations though. So far I feel like all I’ve done is compile information that’s already available online into one document. I appreciate your perspective
Why would you donate to pine64? They are selling things, just buy their stuff. Its like a donation but you get stuff out of it too!
When dealing with stuff like kickstarter campaigns. some people might not to risk the full amount (something like 600$), they might be interested in donating something like 10$ to help the project put out a product. then read up on reviews and decide if to go for it.
They already have products that don’t cost that much though. Do wish their website was better listed to compare specs of their SBCs though.
Still, i try to act like an environmentalist and that means not buying stuff i don’t need. also a big part of that money will go to funding manufacturing costs and the development of new products for the same product line. unlike a campaign where a larger share of the money will go to developing a phone (and some of the money will go to give a return on investment to the owner, which is something i am fine with as long as there is no non-profit that can do the same work better).
Also for the CEO or board of directors it will be harder or even impossible to deduce that this signals a interest in a FOSS friendly smartphone.
I just picked up a sealed pine time. Updated to the latest infinitime and its great. $25 is nothing for what I got and I showed support 10/10
When planning to go into mass production?
Why does it need to go on mass production? OP explained they want to get to a point where they share their design.
I keep repeating the same about Linux and other free software projects. The main goal is freedom, not market share.
OPs project seems to follow the same goals. And I find it awesome.
I meant the ability to order such a device. I just structured my opinion wrong. Because of sharing the device blueprints and software doesn’t mean that anyone will be able to create it by himself.
Ah, the thicc phone.
What are the dimensions of the case?
can’t see from the pic (more of them appreciated), but it looks like you can desolder the ports to save on space.
I’m not sure how to add more images to the post, sorry. But I uploaded images to a repo, in the pictures directory https://github.com/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone OR https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone
i love this kind of thing. yeah you can definitely desolder the ports and try to squeeze it closer to the screen, you can rewire them with smaller connectors if you need to. round the printed chassis down and you got something much more ergonomic.
others mentioned you can run postmarketos, but i’m sure you can also get android running too. with the low resolution it is at least running smooooth.
also aliexpress is your friend. a lot of stuff is already designed and made and can be a stepping stone into making it work better as an actual phone, and as “inspiration” if you really want to eventually design the circuits involved into a single board. things like the charging and control circuit for that battery, for starters. or better screens/batteries.
i wish you best of luck!
What I wouldn’t give (or pay) for a 1. sleek, modern smartphone 2. running a pure Linux distro 3. that’s feature complete enough to daily drive
All of the current options available fall down in one of the three areas. Usually 2. and 3… mostly 3.
Librem-5 is failing only at 3, right? Pine phone fails at 1 and 3 …
2 and 3 are the same thing. 1 isn’t something I care about too much.
Just reading the reviews and it sounds like it’s got problems. GPS doesn’t work, mobile data is sketchy. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m fine to tinker and massage most of my devices into a working state, but not my phone. I can’t be messing around with terminal commands trying to get my gps working when I’m out on a trail for example. Can you imagine if there were an emergency and I first had to try and figure out why telephony was suddenly down before I could call emergency services? My phone is the 1 device that HAS to work flawlessly every time.
Which reviews had you read? Earlier reviews of the previous model aren’t going to be as accurate as a lot of updates have led to improvements. You’re not wrong that things aren’t fully out of the woods (as is inevitably the nature of things, at this point in time) but most people who drive it daily have said that things just generally work, usually, these days. Their Matrix/Telegram channel may offer a more accurate depiction of the current state of things.
Now, Android/iOS level performance may be what’s necessary to make the cut for you (that sounds sarcastic, for some reason, but I genuinely mean that as neutrally as possible) but I figured I’d mention since people will often mention the Liberux NEXX (a device which doesn’t even exist, yet) without even mentioning this one and it’s by far closer to an actual possibility of being daily driven out of everything else out there.
EDIT: for example, here’s a review from a few months ago: https://clehaxze.tw/gemlog/2025/07-20-flx1-actually-usable-linux-phone.gmi. Again, I don’t want to make it sound like bugs don’t crop up occasionally (I don’t we can expect otherwise this early in the game) but I do think this one’s potentially actually feasible at being a daily driver far closer to what you’re looking for comparatively to anything else out there, at the moment.
Doesn’t it run an Android kernel?
It does; but that wasn’t a blocker that OP mentioned (I read “pure” as Linux kernel with GNU coreutils).
Well Android doesn’t use a mainline Linux kernel and instead adds a bunch of hacks that break compatibility with some core Linux programs, so it’s not pure in that sense either
that’s feature complete enough
So what features do you really, really need?
Working hardware drivers. Stable phone and SMs applications.
Have yet to see either on any Linux Distro for Fairphone
I too need my sadomaso application, almost as often as online banking applications
Having already gone to e/OS and degoogled, avoiding apps on the play store - I’ve just been using the webapps via Fennec for banking, and its been fine. No notifications… But these days most of my important bank notifications can be emails.
Like all hardware supported out of the box such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC.
Well, when a product manager tells me “everything is a priority”, to me it translates like “nothing is a priority”, because there is not something more important.
I think being maximalist here is a losing strategy.
No, the hardware needs to be completely functional. I’m not asking for a native Signal app or banking apps here, but if I purchase a phone with wifi Bluetoothand nfc, I expect it those things to function. That’s not maximalist, that’s minimum viable product.
Considering their recent hardware reveals, I want a valve steamphone with a fully open system and modularity a la fair phone (or like their new VR headset) One model every 4/5 years would be perfectly ok for me.
IMO it’s almost certain that Valve will go the same way as all the other big gaming and tech companies as soon as Gabe is no longer involved. I would like to believe they’re immune to enshittification but I can’t.
An actual open phone system similar to the openness and hardware support of desktop Linux is a better next step than Valve worship.
omfg yes!
A valve / framework / fairphone teamup would be a dream. It’ll never happen but I’d pay unreasonable amounts of money to see it
I’m interested in this. Especially at that price point. I didn’t see any photos of device though.
I’m not sure how to add more images to the post, sorry. But I uploaded images to a repo, in the pictures directory. There are also step by step instructions to make one yourself! https://github.com/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone OR https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone
i just want a linux phone with a slide out physical keyboard.
I agreed
Phones nowadays are so powerful I’d switch out my home PC if I could.
That was actually one of the things I was interested in as well. The pi 5 comes with two micro hdmi ports, which allows the device to be plugged into a monitor and used “as a desktop”. You can even have the device propped up next to the monitor for a dual monitor experience. Some people already use a pi 5 for web browsing or document editing. I can easily imagine people using a single device for both personal home PC use as well as on the go computing and calling, and only having a dedicated device at home for heavy gaming or potentially home server use.
Powerful yes, powerful enough to replace a PC, I suppose only if you don’t do that much heavy compute
My phone has 8 cores and 16+16 GB RAM.
It’ll be okay for me.
My PC has water cooling and 64 GB ram, and 32 GB vram. The video card has a half kilogram heat sink and two 10cm fans
Phones, even laptops, can’t compete, especially if they are running on batteries
8 phone cores are not 8 laptop cores which are not 8 desktop cores but if it meets your use case that’s cool. I need more compute then that myself
Sure, I prefer my PC cores & faster bus to my incredible SSD, but I feel we’re getting phones that might be enough for many people.
Just out of curiosity, are you doing heavy lifting like CAD or such, or why do you need more power? Again I’m only currios, we all have wildly different needs!
Software development and gaming are the 2 main things I do with my computer. The more compute you have the faster your software compiles so you can iterate faster, and then games need no explanation.
https://youtube.com/shorts/lDPZQpn4DeI
Something, possibly, to keep an eye on.
Like the Gemini PDA or the Nokia N900 ?
Lika a Nokia N900 with a modern prozessor, camera, some GBs of RAM and a 5G modem. And of course Open Source drivers for the Hardware. This would be my dream phone (As the N900 was, back, when its Hardware was recent)
Fuck yes. Like a tiny little laptop or Gameboy Advance. I would replace my smartphone immediately.
I don’t care about this at all. This is a niche interest.
I just want a phone that isn’t backed by assholes that want to sell my data.
Bring back the Nokia N900!
Yes. So say we all.
So say we all
This is the way.
I mean, so say we all.
By your command.
there’s a youtuber working on something similar, maybe yous can join forces: https://youtu.be/OgMdO0ckICg
Wow! That does seem really similar to what I’m doing. And they seem further along than I am. I’ll have to look into this project some more. Thank you!
This seems like a very ambitious project and a great learning experience for someone working on their own. For a similarly ambitious project, check out the Liberux NEXX. The project didn’t reach its crowdfunding goal, but they did make some progress before rolling up the rugs.
I don’t know if they’re looking for contributors or if you’re in a place to contribute, but most of the project is open source. You could probably get in touch with them and ask for any advice, successes and failures, and even if they have parts (such as their dev-board) that they can give you access to.
