I've been using hacky phones all my life (N900, N9, Sailfish, Ubuntu Touch, Pinephone, Librem5) and I really really really just want people to finally concentrate their efforts and build a (non-android) open-source phone (HW + ecosystem) that's actually usable.
Sorry for this non-constructive post, but this is a topic that bothers me quite a lot.
Congrats, from now on you're in charge of and responsible for making a non-android open-source phone (plus eco-system!) that's actually usable.
Personally, I think the main criteria for that position is capital, which OP's comment doesn't even broach.
The word just is doing a lot of work here.
E.g., you want graphics acceleration.
That means you want work done in Mesa so that the GPU in question is better supported than it currently is.
But you also want Firefox's Webrender changed to allow using the GPU in question under Linux, by default. Otherwise the browsing experience is laggy as hell for everything other than HN. That means lots of testing in Firefox, and somehow convincing them not to blacklist your GPU under Linux. (Which I'm guessing takes time since changes in Mesa don't hit every major distro all at once.)
And you also need video acceleration to work out of the box. Otherwise you're going to be trying various flag combos just to get your phone from getting hot while watching a video. And then your browsing experience probably gets laggy again.
And then you're going to need to rinse and repeat that entire process to get the baseband to work with nearly any carrier, at least in the U.S. They probably aren't going to support using that baseband on something that isn't an android phone. You'll need some reliable way around that. Is this an open research question? I don't know.
Once you have those done, try to figure out why playing music to a bluetooth speaker over this device sometimes changes the pitch of the audio! Oops, another unexpected rabbit hole.
I declare by fiat all of the above problems have been solved.
Oh no, I forgot about battery life.
Now I've got a summer project to figure out why suspend sometimes-- but not always-- freezes my phone.
After that I need to figure out the signal path between baseband and Linux to figure out why getting a call sometimes-- but not always-- wakes the phone so it rings reliably.
These are all hard things. The idea that motivated rando open source devs can roll up their sleeves and solve phone usability is laughable.
I find it always does, especially when people are talking about software.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly hard about producing an open source linux phone with modern hardware and a supported base operating system that is competitive with a typical dumb phone.
However, none of the companies that have tried to make an open source phone are product focused enough to build such a thing.
I sometimes think through doing a garmin-type thing with an e-ink display and the features I want - it works out to need way too much time: well-integrated hardware, decent low-power firmware, then the interface and custom map software is just a bit much for a spare-time thing for me (a pick one or two sort of deal). Android solves at least the ui and app problem in that case.
BTW, which OSHW project is advanced enough to deserve more contributions ?
Back to paxo one, According to
https://github.com/paxo-phone/paxo-electronic
It is integration of SIM800L modem with ESP32
Software side, the main app (aka OS):
Such as?
Some of these comments are like saying of the PS5 "Oh great, another `game console` that's just a PC that boots to a launcher."
Whatever, close the tab and keep working on it. Building stuff is more fun than listening to internet complainers.
Maybe even just a different title, indicating it's a youth project, would have set more accurate expectations.
There are a LOT of half baked linux phone projects. And many people here, I'm sure, have bought and tried to use a few of those. It's generally not a fun experience. Even if a person is trying to contribute to the project, if you work on something hard for half a year, then have the whole thing disappear into the void. I would call that "not fun".
So, as a high school kids project, it's an awesome acheivement. Just having a high school student be so aware of the impacts of technology freedom is awesome.
But as a "hey, here's your new linux phone", this one is not ready for prime time.
Really just a matter of how the project is presented...
It would be great to know how it compares with other DIY phone projects like ZeroPhone.
