Are smartphones any good? (was Re: Oneplus One support)

Sat Oct 4 13:03:28 UTC 2014

On 04/10/14 02:29, Jonathan Petruska wrote:
> I don't think a fully free cellphone is too unthinkable. Has anyone thought of porting to mini arm PCs like the Pi, or has this already been done
A proof-of-concept phone has already been built, albeit not with Android:
http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/

As for Android on the Pi, some attempts have been made, but a lot of 
things are still missing:
http://www.intorobotics.com/raspberry-pi-android-guides-resources/

Of course, there's also the GTA04, for which a port is under active 
development.

Such projects, however currently have a few hurdles to overcome:

- Hardware sourcing: The typical smartphone nowadays is more than just a 
Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen, modem and battery. Hardware typically 
includes one or two cameras, GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth modules, as well as 
a bunch of environment sensors (accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, 
proximity, ambient light, temperature, humidity). The challenge is to 
find freedom-friendly components, for which free drivers either exist 
already or are doable (i.e. documentation of interface and protocols is 
freely available).

- Momentum: A certain number of people who own and use such a device, 
and a certain percentage of them who contribute to development are 
necessary for any such project to take off. Without this critical mass, 
development won't be able to keep up with the pace of the industry and 
the product will be outdated before it is even finished. Openmoko and 
the GTA02 aka Freerunner was an example of where this worked quite well, 
but IMHO the Freerunner community was just about big enough to get off 
the ground.

- Cost: With the above constraints on hardware, a relatively low number 
of users (i.e. small quantities) and most likely some quality demands, 
such a device is likely to be costly. Take the GTA04, which has a 500 to 
600 euro price tag just for the mainboard. With fully functional phones 
selling for half this price, one does need a lot of enthusiasm to go 
down that road.

- Form factor: The GTA04, just like its GTA02 predecessor, is quite a 
big brick. That probably has to do with hardware sourcing, production 
quantities and also cost.

So how can we tackle this?

- Start with the easier tasks: A ten-inch tablet has fewer issues with 
form factor than a phone – its dimensions are largely determined by the 
screen size, which takes up the bulk of the space. The next biggest part 
is the battery – but the other components are the same size as in a 
phone, thus less is gained or lost from shrinking the mainboard or not 
doing so. Also a tablet does not need to include all the hardware 
components of a phone: a basic tablet can work on WiFi only, thus the 
cell modem is not a concern at that time. Once the tablet takes on shape 
and has evolved to a certain degree of maturity, cell connectivity can 
be tackled.

- Plan for a lifecycle: Over time, hardware requirements evolve as 
faster processors, more performant graphics and systems with more memory 
become the norm. Just having finished one platform doesn't mean work 
stops there – rather, this is where work on the next generation begins.

- Keep specs stable: We have just established that hardware evolves – 
and new hardware requires adaptations in software. However, such 
improvements should be as gentle as possible in order to limit the 
changes in software needed. Where possible, newly introduced hardware 
should be compatible with existing drivers, or at the most require only 
smaller modifications to existing drivers, rather than requiring 
completely new drivers.

- Get a company on board: When it comes to industrial manufacturing 
processes and building devices in professional quality, a different set 
of expertise than that of a software developer is needed, and the 
financial limits of a handful of individuals are easily exceeded. The 
founders of Geeksphone one stated that getting their company to the 
point at which they started shipping the One (their first device) 
required investments which roughly equaled the price of a small house. 
The GTA02 benefitted from the involvement of FIC, a manufacturer of 
computer parts. The challenge is to find a company who has a commercial 
interest in the project.

> ; I know there are some built specifically for Android (CuBox, Pandaboard, etc.).  I like the idea of Replicant in the tablet world (If you can roughly consider Replicant/Android on mini PCs akin to tablets).
>
> msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG wrote:
>
>> Allan Mwenda <allanitomwesh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> HAHAHA,if only I could. That is a rather gloomy scenario though
>> My great-grandfathers did it successfully in 1917, and we can do it
>> again.
>>
>> To bring this thread back on-topic, a fully-functional (i.e., unlike
>> OsmocomBB) GSM cellphone whose baseband firmware is available to every
>> end user in the form of full source code, compiled using gcc and other
>> Free Software tools (no blobs or proprietary build tools), and
>> physically reloadable into the phone, again using only Free Software
>> tools running under a free OS (GNU/Linux or other Unix), is NOT an
>> impossibility, and it is becoming closer to reality with each passing
>> day.  The work is being done in a public source repository:
>>
>> https://bitbucket.org/falconian/freecalypso-sw
>>
>> Look at the commit history, and see for yourself how steadily this
>> project marches forward.  As Che Guevara said, this movement is
>> growing stronger with each passing day, it will never stop.
>>
>> All the talk about legalities is nothing more than a scarecrow.  Does
>> your country's police force employ psychics with extremely advanced
>> extrasensory perception capabilities?  If not, how are they going to
>> divine that the ordinary-looking cellphone in your hand or your pocket
>> or your purse lacks some needed regulatory approval if its actual
>> radio signal emissions are identical to those from any other correctly
>> functioning GSM cellphone?  And how are they going to divine that a
>> cellphone that physically looks just like any other (standard
>> commercial quality plastics and all) contains firmware which some
>> believe might infringe on some copyrights held by some ancient company
>> which might not even exist any more?
>>
>> VLR,
>> SF
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