mikroPhone project is designing a smartphone with an emphasis on openness and privacy | usagoldmines.com

The mikroPhone is a cell phone which you can construct your self… no less than theoretically. It’s made utilizing a mix of off-the-shelf elements and customized elements, however yow will discover a whole checklist of elements in addition to schematics and PCB fabrication information on the “How to build my mikroPhone” web page.

Why construct your personal cellphone? On this case, the concept is to provide you extra management over your gadget. The challenge goals to make use of {hardware} that’s “as open as doable” whereas additionally together with enhanced privateness options.

Proper now the design continues to be very a lot a piece in progress although – there are directions for assembling a cellphone with fundamental performance, however if you wish to run apps like an online browser you will have to attend some time. There’s a 5 inch, 854 x 480 pixel LCD display talked about within the construct directions, however I haven’t seen any footage of the gadget with the display screen connected. There’s no case for the cellphone but. And it’s unclear if or if you’ll be capable of purchase a completely assembled mikroPhone if constructing your personal feels a bit too arduous.

On the coronary heart of the board is a SiFive Freedom E310-G002 RISC-V microcontroller that handles fundamental cellphone performance. It’s the one processor that interacts with the microphone, digital camera, and different sensors, which limits the flexibility for a malicious attacker to realize entry to these sensors.

However the cellphone additionally depends on a number of different elements to be able to work. There’s an ESP32 WiFi+ Bluetooth module, and a mini PCIe module for a mobile modem resembling a SIMCom SIM7600X or Quectel EC-25.

Mixed with a show controller, audio chip, battery, and SD card reader, these elements ought to be sufficient to allow you to make calls and ship messages, and the builders behind the mikroPhone challenge say {that a} fundamental working system that helps these options is “nearly function full.”

However if you wish to run a full-blown smartphone working system with assist for an online browser or different apps, you’ll want a bit extra energy than that. So the group can be working so as to add assist for an add-on “App Moodule” that’s mainly a computer-on-a-module able to operating a separate working system like a mobile Linux distro or customized Android-based ROM. For the time being the concept is to us one thing like an NXP i.MX 8M Plus quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor module.

Whereas the RISC-V microprocessor (MCU) and ARM-based App Module would share a display screen and contact enter panel, customers would solely truly work together with one after the other. That sounds… a bit of bizarre. It sounds such as you wouldn’t be capable of make calls or ship textual content messages from the Linux or Android working system, and would as a substitute want to change over to the MCU working system for these capabilities, after which change again to the full-fledged OS to run extra advanced purposes.

through Hacker News and HackADay