It is ridiculous. What is needed is a support for advert & bloat & forced updates free smart phone, not reinventing the wheel. Yes, someone must be first - but it is about software, not hardware.

Hacking isn’t about reinventing the wheel. This isn’t a finished product destined for a market. Even if it was, think about the small business utilities involved in local knowledge (“low-tech”): many small producers (farmers, shops, etc.) still use “obsolete” mechanisms and improvised mechanical technology. If that could reflect personal or community knowledge into real technology, even if “low technology”, that’s already a social gain for those people.

Besides that, it’s worth it for a personal project where the end goal is obtaining knowledge about how things work in the world. Not everything is about stocks, and stocks doesn’t fill all of the “market” also.

it can make calls, and send texts," LuckyBor writes of the project, which perhaps stretches the definition of “smartphone”

… And you need to remove the screen to insert a sim card. Now tell me again this is not ridiculous.

Take the first one off the shelf smartfone, wipe out the entire software, replace it with bloat free, spyware free, update free equivalent and voila!

Absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel, this is a road to nowhere.

I think they’re having more fun making it than looking for a perfect solution. The fastest way to accomplish this is just buying some flipphone from Kyocera or something.

Also it’s a prototype. It wouldn’t survive in the real world in it’s current state.

I think they’re having more fun making it than looking for a perfect solution.

Possibly, thus my point - reinventing the wheel.

I wouldn’t consider it reinventing the wheel. Giant algae tanks to replace trees is reinventing the wheel. They’re just making a phone out of parts that would have originally been in a cheap phone at one point (before they got turned into development boards).

If I wanted to be super uncharitable, what the maker did was akin to this.

youtu.be/d59J78yhwtg

I wouldn’t consider it reinventing the wheel

I do. What they are trying to create already exist. What is really needed is non intrusive software rather than hardware.

Which already exists and has existed for ages.

Lineage os (Android), e/os (Android), postmarket os (straight up Linux) would all be excellent answers for cutdown/debloatable mobile phone OSes. (also Ubuntu touch and whatever the pinephone shipped with)

Its probably a lot harder making an unintrusive os than it is making this.

This is cutdown hardware leading to simplified and cutdown software as it’s a necessity here.