[Gta04-owner] [Community] Phone based on raspberry pi?

[Sebastian Krzyszkowiak]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller
<hns at goldelico.com> wrote:
>
> Am 31.07.2014 um 12:15 schrieb Radek Polak:
>
> Hi,
> why not build phone on raspberry pi? Check this board:
>
>
>
> http://linuxgizmos.com/tiny-raspberry-pi-compatible-sbc-targets-wearables/
>
>
>
> I looks that the board has all that's needed. Just solder modem+display,
> print a case and enjoy cheap & free phone.
>
>
>
> What do you think?
>
>
> Sounds too easy to solve all problems designing a decent (smart)phone :)
>
> Just an observation: the OMAP3 system on the GTA04 is about half the size as
> that SoC module.
> So it is likely that you get an ugly phone out of that approach (well, I
> don't want to say that the
> Neo / GTA04 case is a modern and attractive design :)
>
> The problem is to squeeze everything into a small case. Miniaturization
> drives
> cost exponentially. And don't forget buttons, speakers, microphone, antenna,
> GPS,
> and some other things not on this RasPi SBC.
>
> Sorry, I am too negative and I am trying to break out of this bad habit.
>
> Maybe a more elaborated concept (e.g. complete material list, sum of
> volumina, sketch
> of how a case design could look like) is a better basis to discuss and find
> out where this
> idea can lead to.
>
> BR,
> Nikolaus

I think this is a great educational DIY project, but of a little value
in practice.

Aside of squeezing everything into a small case you have to care about
power consumption, lots of little bugs (especially USB host related
ones) and the closed blobs needed to boot. You'd need a lot of work to
make it really usable as a daily phone - however, getting it to a
"somewhat working" state is indeed pretty fast.

It's a perfect topic for some workshops though - "make your own
smartphone"! Augmented with some programming lessons (Python?) and
using FSO API to "write your own smartphone OS" with whatever
graphical toolkit you'd find suitable for the audience, it could
probably be a perfect activity for some extracurricular activity
groups in schools :)

-- 
Sebastian Krzyszkowiak, dos
http://dosowisko.net/