Hacker News Reader

Comment by epicide | Hacker News Reader

Decent specs, niche audience, cheap. Pick two.

That applies for niche audience laptops-- for example the gluglug laptop serves a small free-software fanbase but doesn't have decent specs.

But for cellphones, lots of values of "niche audience" end up with, "pick zero." Here are some examples:

1. Hook up a keyboard to ssh into the device. 2. Hardware switch to turn off the baseband OS. 3. Software toggle to turn off the baseband OS. 4. Sandboxed baseband OS that isn't proof-of-concept or impossible to buy and use in the U.S. 5. Free software baseband OS. 6. Open source "tivo-ized" baseband OS. I.e., user can read the source but cannot run modified version. 7. Just glue together a damned RPI with a baseband OS and ship it to me in working order.

Those are just the niches that interest me. Only #8 looks feasible in the near future and its apparently still in the planning stage:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone

So I think your "niche audience" needs an asterisk that says, "most niches not yet supported."

It's not an analysis of what's available on the market. It is a statement about constraints in manufacturing/production.

Also, you're missing #8.

Check out postmarketOS. It's porting mobile linux to a whole host of old smart phones. It's a relatively new (open-source) project, but has already progressed considerably. A lot of people (myself included) are excited about the possibilities of having a fully hackable linux phone.

I am not active in the porting side right now, but am prototyping a mobile computing device that runs pmOS. It's kind of a neuromancer style ono-sendai portable deck: A rectangular box (approx 11x29x3cm) that you can opem up and velcro your linux phone into and have a full-sized, stainless steel, porclean, or plastic mechanical keyboard and foldable mouse with slots for extra memory and battery life. It is designed to be as compact and as durable as possible, while staying true to the postmarket name by sourcing from reused materials whenever possible.

My hypothetical market is mainly highly mobile autonomous individuals residing in developing world megacities, but I'm interested to know what someone from the US or Europe thinks about the idea.

Oh ya, one more thing, the profits go to pmOS, to scale up a re-wilding project, and to getting these hackable linux devices into the hands of children forced to work in the supply/waste chain of electronics manufacturing.

How's that sound?

Considering I mentioned low end specs in the parent comment, I think I'll go with 'niche audience' and 'cheap' :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com