Given that Broadcom originally designed the BCM2835 for smartphones, this could be said to be an actual "intended application" of the SoC. :)<p>$15 for a 2.5Ah battery is rather overpriced, however - as are the rest of the components like the screen and DC-DC. I found the SIM900 on eBay for $15, the DC-DC for $1.50, and ~ $5 for a battery of similar capacity. He could've put the whole thing together for <$100. Having done some electronics sourcing in China really changes your perspective on cost... amusingly enough, there was actually an iPhone 3G clone a few years ago called the PiPhone.<p>It's an interesting project but practically speaking $100 (no contract) can already buy a pretty good smartphone these days... and one with a more "unofficially open" SoC too.<p>The antenna sticking out of it is the best part.
Off topic, but I think it is a good opportunity to spread the world about it: PiPhone is also an open source tool build by La Quadrature du Net in order to allow citizens to call their representatives (in France and the European Parliament).<p><a href="https://github.com/LaQuadratureDuNet/piphone" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/LaQuadratureDuNet/piphone</a><p><a href="http://piphone.lqdn.fr/" rel="nofollow">http://piphone.lqdn.fr/</a>
He should really consider smoothing it out a bit and selling it as a beginners' kit somewhere.<p>I would love to give my little nephew something like this where he would have to assemble all the separate parts and do some basic Linux configuration. Perhaps Adafruit could help him out with that?
Direct link: <a href="http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/" rel="nofollow">http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartph...</a>
PhoneBlox-style fancy modular smartphones are an interesting prospect, but I really wish there was a simple replaceable-parts phone design based on ordinary development-board-style PCBs. Make it about 25mm thick and then it would be somewhat viable to carry around as a nerdy but genuinely usable phone, while still having enough internal space to be based on replaceable PCBs without too much pressure to miniaturise. Such a standard would have lots of utility: as a testbed for commercial phone development, as a place to experiment with new hardware or software for phones, as a phone (or just a gadget) incorporating niche (or "niche-of-one") hardware or software you can't get in a commercial device, as the equivalent of a self-build PC for enthusiasts.
I'd love to put my own little cell phone together, but in my area the only reliable provider is Verizon, and I haven't been able to find a CDMA module for Pi or Arduino or otherwise.<p>Anybody got a tip on this?
This is the first I hear of these Sim900 boards. Are there any other boards like it? Possibly 3G compatible models or slimmer versions with just soldering leads instead of jacks? I guess you could easily remove the jacks anyway if you needed to.<p>Combined with some of the slimmer boards out there (like one of the many old Allwinner sticks or Gumstix), this could actually be used to build a real open source DIY phone platform.
Heres to me hoping that I can have a tablet which I can use to documents and use rsync to keep the documents synchronized with my workstation. Have been waiting for the kde vivaldi tablet. Also unclear if the latest bay trail tablets will run linux without issue.
I know that there are relatively cheap USB line inputs available, but I didn't see what the PiPhone was using.<p>What components are used for the PiPhone's microphone?