elly6d ago
Power button on this phone feels pretty nice 

I got annoyed because buttons on this phone have terrible quality and don't register presses when case is off.

While poking the board with oscilloscope to find UART I found a testpad that was shorting to ground when I pressed the power button, so here we go.

Also found that shorting two pins around the battery connector makes phone boot with only USB attached (both testpads had same voltage with battery connected and USB cable plugged in) so I can attach a MCU to toggle power on/off and turn phone on/off by setting pins high or low, I should have some octocouplers in parts drawer.

Sadly still no UART, I *really* don't want to deploy a Windows VM just to use some Chinese software to get schematics for this but it should be much easier to find it now.

Someone sent me memory dump from that software and it looks like it opens a tunnel to China (geoblock), authenticates over HTTP with cookie and downloads PDFs from "http://down.dzkj16888.com/down/51/pdf/$VENDOR/$MODEL/$FILE.pdf". I probably could pwn it and archive all pdfs they host on that server but I don't have enough spoons 
Show threadMoses Izumi5d ago
@elly
Speaking of keyswitches: how did your plan to install a keyboard on the xiaomi-pyxis by repurposing the internal interfaces go?

(the fact that tech moguls will make a device strong enough to BTFO a decade-old laptop, only to cripple it by having a finger touchscreen as the only interface...)
Show threadelly5d ago
@moses_izumi I probably will do this to motorola-vicky instead, because it has a completely plastic chassis (so I can 3D-print new casing) and I can steal I2C lines and power needed for keyboard controller relatively easily.

Biggest challenge would be:
1. Inability to afford a 3D printer
2. Figuring out how keyboard mechanisms worked in HTC TyTn II for example and replicating it
Show threadMoses Izumi
@elly
I'd probably try to make do with Psion-like keys (no idea if they're that suitable for thumb typing).
Apr 9 at 9:09pmWeb
Show threadMoses Izumi5d ago
@elly
Part of me views touchscreen-centric phones as a ploy to keep people stupid (selling a device that's kinda terrible at productivity or any vaguely serious gaming), even though vendors probably just view it as a cost-cutting measure.