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cy6erlion

I think instead of a particular phone or brand what we need are open standards for a mobile platform.

- RISCV processor

- Standard Logic board

- Standard Screen

- Standard Battery

- Standard Wifi & Bluetooth modem

- Probably ditch cellular and use something like LoRa

- Standard OS (Linux)

- Standard package manager

Edit: Imagine a phone that you can just swap and mix components from different manufacturers. You could buy the components yourself and assemble, like a standard PC. If one manufacturer tries to lock you in, or you don't like their component you simply replace it.

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So no camera?

I'll be generous and add in "standard camera" for you.

But of course camera tech is moving fast. So either the standard camera gets left behind, or the "standard camera" is continually updated.

Rinse and repeat for sll your "standards". The modem needs updating (new mobile specs coming out from time to time.) Battery tech goes very fast. Every time I eat there's a cpu update. Screens change. Form factors change.

Armies of people at Samsung, Apple et al are managing this all the time. Naturally your Open Source phone would need to keep up.

So instead of listing all the common modules, perhaps it's more useful to explain what sort of budget this effort eould need (sustainably) then list the ways the project will generate income to meet that budget.

Without this your list falls into the "what we need are flying cars" box, which is nice, but not exactly constructive. [Astute readers will also note that we really don't want flying cars...]

Yes, I forgot to add a standard camera on the list.

I think if there's an open standard that different organizations can contribute to things will move faster and will be cheaper than having single organization trying to build a new Linux phone from scratch, it is also more reselient with little centralization. Different groups can specialize on different components where they have expertise.

I chose RISCV because it's a open standard, we could build around that ecosystem.

The standard can be updated, having different generations/versions when it's absolutely necessary. But it shouldn't move too fast especially if the interfaces are clearly defined. Phones from 10 years ago are powerful enough it's just that brands create new devices to force people to upgrade.

How do you move past the initial hurdle of the at least several first iterations of this device being inferior to the competition in every single way, though?

And even if you solve the software issue, a “modular” phone like that will be bulky, heavy and have permanently outdated hw without really offering anything in return for that for >95% of its potential user base.

> to force people to upgrade.

So if they had to pick between a modern device with closed hw/software and something allegedly good enough for them but has an inferior screen, camera, battery, is heavier and has poor quality software. How do you force them to buy it?

> How do you move past the initial hurdle of the at least several first iterations of this device being inferior to the competition in every single way, though?

I think it will initially be a phone for hackers, and they will develop the ecosystem. It will also be competitive in that different manufacturers will try to develop the best components for the market.

The problem though is that there is no market. No one wants this thing, no one will buy this thing, hence no manufacturers will care to develop or sell any of the modules.

Sure there's maybe a few thousand hackers, but the phone market is measured in hundreds of millions, not thousands.

The phone itself will be inferior in hardware, inferior in software, inferior in services, inferior in support, and so on.

There us no market.

While I'd love to see a successful ATX for phones (It's number 1 reason my desktop is x86, 2nd is Steam library).

1) The form factor really fights this.

2) Something needs to change with ARM, cause modular hardware would require device independent ISOs, and that only seams to exist for x86.... IDK about RISCV

> - Probably ditch cellular and use something like LoRa

This is absolutely a non-starter. LoRa is an extremely low bandwidth protocol - in a best-case scenario (e.g. two nearby devices communicating on an uncontended frequency), it's in the realm of 50 kbit/sec. It's designed for low-rate data like remote telemetry, not real-time communications.

I don't agree with any of this outside of having a standard screen and networking modem. The rest of this is why I think Linux phones are being held back.

lora is hilariously inadequate for what you mentioned.

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