Hello all!
Due to the recent statements by Google (as well as their track record the last few years) I’ve decided I do not want to use Android as a phone operating system anymore. But Apple is just as bad, if not worse. So I’ve decided to build my own custom device.
I am working on building a phone using a single board computer, right now I’m using the raspberry pi 5. This is still a proof of concept, but I want to share my ideas with others, so like minded individuals can start messing around with this idea in their own homes to further this goal.
You can view more images of the device here, as well as the step by step instructions here (these are still very rough and incomplete) https://github.com/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone OR https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone
Right now it just runs raspberry pi OS, with a different desktop look and feel. Everything that normally works in a pi 5 works on this device, additionally I am experimenting with a Mobile Broadband modem, to allow the device to text and call, as well as access internet, like a normal phone off wifi
The total cost is around 200 dollars, not including the 3d printer to make the custom case.
This project is barely off the ground, and I’ve got a lot to learn before I can stop relying strictly on the raspberry pi 5, my end goal is to custom design SBCs, and release those designs for free alongside the plans for the device, so that interested parties can select their own System on a Chip to use for the device. I need to get into designing boards, I’m interested in trying Stephen Hawes’ Lumen PnP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlkTcxh-9gA) for that phase.
But that’s for the future, for now, I’m hoping to get more people interested in the prototype so that I’m not the only one noodling around on this idea. I’d love some feedback, and if anyone was willing to put one together for testing, I would appreciate it greatly!
You must log in or register to comment.
I’m sure you are already aware, but just in case, there’s a lot of prior work in getting a truly Linux mobile phone.
There are ready-made devices like PinePhone (the PinePhone Pro looks the most promising one of the bunch), Librem 5, and Liberux Nexx. I think at least some of those companies publish schematics for their boards, you should probably check those out if you want to design your own.
There is also another direction, taken by postmarketOS and the like, to install Linux on a phone that shipped with Android out of the box.
It should be easy enough to install postmarketOS on your device, since it seems to have support for raspberry pi. The benefit of postmarketOS here is that it makes it really easy to install mobile Linux UI shells, like phosh, gnome-mobile, plasma-mobile, or sxmo. This will let you try all of them out and maybe pick one as a starting point for your software stack.
And the software side of it is the really annoying part. We’re missing so many components: Connected standby, an app lifecycle management, maybe sandboxing and a detailed, user-facing permission system. And then we need to go ahead and rewrite all the important Linux software to use these (not yet existing) interfaces.
I own a Pinephone, and I feel the Linux phone is within reach since the Nokia 900 (and its predecessors) and that was in 2009, so 16 years now. I believe any effort is very welcome, though. We badly need a good and free operating systems for this important device we all carry around and use hundreds of times each day.
- Connected standby is already somewhat possible (it’s actually done on the hardware/firmware side on most phones), it can work with something like ntfy with a fairly simple script IIRC
- We have sandboxing and permissions figured out pretty well with Flatpak (there are improvements to be had for sure, but all the basics are there)
The one main remaining barrier (apart from thousands of paper cuts everywhere and lack of apps), is indeed process lifecycle management. It’s the most complicated one to do, because in order to work well it requires apps to cooperate in some way, either by completely and honestly shutting down when not doing any work, or by providing ways to check if there’s any work to be done without running the rest of the app, or both ideally. None of the apps currently do that, so the only options are (1) just let apps do whatever they want, draining the battery, or (2) send SIGSTP to apps that are not in the foreground, losing background notifications and such.
Yes, good job at explaining the app lifecycle. I brushed over it because I had no idea how to phrase it in a concise way. And it’s really the million papercuts that stopped me from using the Pinephone. I tried.
Connected standby is already somewhat possible […]
Yes, it’s a very crude way, though. In practice I never got the messages from my wife to bring milk on my way home. I’d read them a few hours later in the evening after unlocking and tinkering with the device. What worked well is tell people to send SMS or call, because that reliably wakes up the device. But then people forgot they were supposed to communicate with me like in the 1990s.
[…] sandboxing and permissions figured out pretty well with Flatpak […]
We do. That’s how some modern distros like Fedora Silverblue work. But then it’s somewhat problematic with phones. These packages are supposed to come directly from the various upstream projects. And then the phone distros can’t patch them any more to deal with the peculiarities with the inconsistent ecosystem. So we’d either need to have a good platform first and all agree on it, or repackage everything in a way unalike how Flatpak is done today. And then it fills up storage fast with all the runtimes and dependencies and a phone has limited storage available.
I think hardware wise, that leads us to re-invent the laptop. Not a phone by any means. We need a large SSD for all the Flatpaks, lots of RAM to keep the software running in the background and a large battery stapled to it because none of it is energy-efficient enough.
It ain’t easy… I think we’re making (slow) progress, though.
We’re missing so many components:
PureOS disagrees.
Did it solve these issues with delivering Matrix instant messenger notifications and emails right away? And what’s the internet browsing and occasional social media doomscrolling experience? I don’t think the Librem5 hardware is substantially faster than my Pinephone? So I suppose it’s similar to mine with a Firefox which is rudimentarily optimized for touch but then the 3GB of RAM and slow processor make it somewhat not nice to use? Can you listen to a podcast via standard bluetooth headphones and there’s still some juice in the battery after 90mins? I’d love to try it. Especially if they solved those annoying issues. But seems the PureOS Pinephone ports have all been abandoned a few years ago…
When i look at postmarketos device wiki . librem 5 seems better, the chart lists the pinephone support for things like calls and SMS as partial. the librem 5 is the more expensive option but it seems like in practice at least some of the money for it went to good use. freedom isn’t free i guess.
the PinePhone Pro looks the most promising one of the bunch
I’ll have to advocate for the Librem 5 over the Pinephone Pro for the following reasons:
- The Pinephone Pro has officially been discontinued as of August 2025 [source].
- The Librem 5 and Liberty phones are still in production [source].
- Librem 5 PCB board design files are also available - not just schematics [source].
- Purism is already working on a Librem 5 version 2.
- Purism is pushing toward FSF RYF certification for the Librem 5 and future models.
I own a Librem5, and let me tell ya, it’s not a daily phone, hardware is just way too slow. Even with sxmo it lags a lot, opening a browser is a whole ordeal for it. Meanwhile when I tried my friend’s PinePhone Pro, it felt a lot better. Oh, and for context, I’m currently semi-dailying a OnePlus 6 with NixOS.
I’ve daily-driven my Librem 5 since March 2023. I will certainly not state that this device will meet everyone’s needs or expectations and would consider myself a patient prosumer, but comfortable daily use is possible and is proving easier in testing the next major PureOS release (crimson).
I guess we have vastly different expectations from our phones, then. At a minimum, I need to:
- Have reliable, snappy maps with precise GPS (for trekking)
- Be able to interact with my bank on the go, at least via a web app
- Be able to chat with people via Matrix
- Get transit routing via a web app
And in my experience, Librem5 just doesn’t have enough processing power and RAM to do any of those quickly and reliably. It was not comfortable at all, e.g. the browser kept filling up RAM and locking up the device with constant swapping, and finally OOMing. GPS took 5-10 minutes to get a lock, even with AGPS, and after that wouldn’t reliably keep it. Both Nheko and NeoChat were slow and laggy. It also died after 4-5 hours of suspend with a modem on, unacceptable for a reliable daily.
OnePlus6 is a rocketship in comparison, and performs all those tasks with ease. The battery also lasts for an entire day with conservative suspend settings (but with the modem on), and for a couple days in airplane mode (e.g. while hiking in the mountains).
Purism is already working on a Librem 5 version 2.
Do you have a source? i could not find anything.
Yes, I am a Purism staff member. Here are a couple Purism forum search results of things I have posed related to the Librem 5 version 2:
Very Interesting. any ETA? will it have faster hardware like a faster CPU? will there be a fundraising campaign like kickstarter?
What I wouldn’t give (or pay) for a 1. sleek, modern smartphone 2. running a pure Linux distro 3. that’s feature complete enough to daily drive
All of the current options available fall down in one of the three areas. Usually 2. and 3… mostly 3.
Considering their recent hardware reveals, I want a valve steamphone with a fully open system and modularity a la fair phone (or like their new VR headset) One model every 4/5 years would be perfectly ok for me.
omfg yes!
IMO it’s almost certain that Valve will go the same way as all the other big gaming and tech companies as soon as Gabe is no longer involved. I would like to believe they’re immune to enshittification but I can’t.
An actual open phone system similar to the openness and hardware support of desktop Linux is a better next step than Valve worship.
No worship on my side, it’s just that they could have the means, the will, the users and the know how to make a user friendly Linux based phone with a good UI. You need all this to make a successful product. I can’t imagine another company in the same position.
Of course I would want a real foss phone but realistically it’s super complicated, a steam phone could create a standard from where to start, same as the steam deck and modern portable PCs.
And about steam future past Gabe, we will see when we get there
Just reading the reviews and it sounds like it’s got problems. GPS doesn’t work, mobile data is sketchy. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m fine to tinker and massage most of my devices into a working state, but not my phone. I can’t be messing around with terminal commands trying to get my gps working when I’m out on a trail for example. Can you imagine if there were an emergency and I first had to try and figure out why telephony was suddenly down before I could call emergency services? My phone is the 1 device that HAS to work flawlessly every time.
Which reviews had you read? Earlier reviews of the previous model aren’t going to be as accurate as a lot of updates have led to improvements. You’re not wrong that things aren’t fully out of the woods (as is inevitably the nature of things, at this point in time) but most people who drive it daily have said that things just generally work, usually, these days. Their Matrix/Telegram channel may offer a more accurate depiction of the current state of things.
Now, Android/iOS level performance may be what’s necessary to make the cut for you (that sounds sarcastic, for some reason, but I genuinely mean that as neutrally as possible) but I figured I’d mention since people will often mention the Liberux NEXX (a device which doesn’t even exist, yet) without even mentioning this one and it’s by far closer to an actual possibility of being daily driven out of everything else out there.
EDIT: for example, here’s a review from a few months ago: https://clehaxze.tw/gemlog/2025/07-20-flx1-actually-usable-linux-phone.gmi. Again, I don’t want to make it sound like bugs don’t crop up occasionally (I don’t we can expect otherwise this early in the game) but I do think this one’s potentially actually feasible at being a daily driver far closer to what you’re looking for comparatively to anything else out there, at the moment.
I just quickly browsed the reviews directly off the page you linked
The GPS one was from August, and skimming them again now, the impression I get is that it’s a great experience for a Linux phone but that it still requires a fair bit of technical know how.
Android/iOS level performance
That doesn’t sound sarcastic, and it pains me to say it but yes, for the core OS and features, I am unlikely to fully commit until it’s at that level of stability.
I don’t need wide app support, and I’m more than happy to tinker and run compatibility layers and whatever else for 3rd party stuff, but the core features of the phone have to be rock solid. That means GPS, WiFi, mobile data, SMS, MMS, Bluetooth, camera etc etc. need to be absolutely flawless. It’s a safety thing in my mind.
Not to mention when the rest of my hacky, cobbled-together, bad diy home infrastructure inevitably falls over, it’s usually phone I reach for to fix it. If that starts acting up too, I’m in deep paddle without a creek to stand in
ETAsk: do you own one? How do you find it? I’ve just read the review you posted and that is really promising
Doesn’t it run an Android kernel?
It does; but that wasn’t a blocker that OP mentioned (I read “pure” as Linux kernel with GNU coreutils).
Well Android doesn’t use a mainline Linux kernel and instead adds a bunch of hacks that break compatibility with some core Linux programs, so it’s not pure in that sense either
Librem-5 is failing only at 3, right? Pine phone fails at 1 and 3 …
2 and 3 are the same thing. 1 isn’t something I care about too much.
This is a sexy device. But can I ask you to make a repo on codeberg ? Github has been taking down repos that might be a threat to Big-Tech monopoly
Thanks for the suggestion, I mirrored the repo here: https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone
I may end up switching entirely to code berg, but I’ll see how bothersome it is to push changes to both before I fully migrate. Thanks again!
I’m not sure if you can do it the other way around, but you can set up a push mirror on codeberg so you only have to push to one forge.
i just want a linux phone with a slide out physical keyboard.
I don’t care about this at all. This is a niche interest.
I just want a phone that isn’t backed by assholes that want to sell my data.
Bring back the Nokia N900!
Yes. So say we all.
Phones nowadays are so powerful I’d switch out my home PC if I could.
Powerful yes, powerful enough to replace a PC, I suppose only if you don’t do that much heavy compute
My phone has 8 cores and 16+16 GB RAM.
It’ll be okay for me.
My PC has water cooling and 64 GB ram, and 32 GB vram. The video card has a half kilogram heat sink and two 10cm fans
Phones, even laptops, can’t compete, especially if they are running on batteries
Not yet, bit give it five ten years and your PC will be behind a cheap smartphone. At least that is what history have teached me.
And of course there will always be specific needs that a phone can’t handle, some years ago we had a client with a PC that had 1TB RAM, but that’s not what I had in mind, a desktop usually can be quite okay with a quadcore +16GB RAM, hence the comparison with a phone.
Why do you have that big a heatsink 😲 ?
8 phone cores are not 8 laptop cores which are not 8 desktop cores but if it meets your use case that’s cool. I need more compute then that myself
Sure, I prefer my PC cores & faster bus to my incredible SSD, but I feel we’re getting phones that might be enough for many people.
Just out of curiosity, are you doing heavy lifting like CAD or such, or why do you need more power? Again I’m only currios, we all have wildly different needs!
Software development and gaming are the 2 main things I do with my computer. The more compute you have the faster your software compiles so you can iterate faster, and then games need no explanation.
Old video game dev so compiling needs no explanation either :-D I dreamed of those 20 cores cpus back in the day… Feels like at 8-10 cores you’re hitting a reduced returns though.
And obligatory have you accepted the lord and saviour CCache?
Cheers
That was actually one of the things I was interested in as well. The pi 5 comes with two micro hdmi ports, which allows the device to be plugged into a monitor and used “as a desktop”. You can even have the device propped up next to the monitor for a dual monitor experience. Some people already use a pi 5 for web browsing or document editing. I can easily imagine people using a single device for both personal home PC use as well as on the go computing and calling, and only having a dedicated device at home for heavy gaming or potentially home server use.
Fuck yes. Like a tiny little laptop or Gameboy Advance. I would replace my smartphone immediately.
deleted by creator
https://youtube.com/shorts/lDPZQpn4DeI
Something, possibly, to keep an eye on.
deleted by creator
I suggest adding a license . i recommend a copyleft license (there are copyleft licenses for hardware. for example the cern licenses).
I also suggest setting up a open collective. i suspect people might be more inclined to donate to a non profit then to for profit companies like purism and Pine64.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’m not actually looking for any donations though. It probably sounds weird, but I don’t want to derive value from this, or even assign value to it, in the interest of keeping the information as freely accessible as possible. Not too get too ideological, seeking money often causes people to make a good idea bad, or to make a simple process inefficient, to make more money from it. I’m thankfully in a position where I can keep (slowly) working on this project in my free time, while still keeping my head above water.
That isn’t to say that no one else should make money from this idea. I just don’t want to personally.
I do like the idea of a copyleft license. I’ll have to look into it a bit more. Thanks again for your suggestions!
Thanks for the suggestions! I’m not actually looking for any donations though. It probably sounds weird, but I don’t want to derive value from this, or even assign value to it, in the interest of keeping the information as freely accessible as possible. Not too get too ideological, seeking money often causes people to make a good idea bad, or to make a simple process inefficient, to make more money from it. I’m thankfully in a position where I can keep (slowly) working on this project in my free time, while still keeping my head above water.
If you want to not get paid that is fine. but donating is the only way some people will be able to help make this happen. you could hire people using something like fiverr to do some of the boring stuff. money is just an efficient way to store and transfer economic resources. There is a significant difference often between a how a non profit allocates a economic resources vs a company that is owned by pension funds and mutual funds and is just trying to maximize a return on investment. Some of the best open source projects (e.g. blender signal thunderbird etc) hire full time workers.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. And people do seem excited about the concept. I’m not even sure I’m far enough along to justify taking in donations though. So far I feel like all I’ve done is compile information that’s already available online into one document. I appreciate your perspective
Sounds reasonable. maybe take 3 months. spend about 30-50 hours working on this and see you can sustain the motivation to do this. then decide what to do next.
Why would you donate to pine64? They are selling things, just buy their stuff. Its like a donation but you get stuff out of it too!
When dealing with stuff like kickstarter campaigns. some people might not to risk the full amount (something like 600$), they might be interested in donating something like 10$ to help the project put out a product. then read up on reviews and decide if to go for it.
They already have products that don’t cost that much though. Do wish their website was better listed to compare specs of their SBCs though.
I just picked up a sealed pine time. Updated to the latest infinitime and its great. $25 is nothing for what I got and I showed support 10/10
Still, i try to act like an environmentalist and that means not buying stuff i don’t need. also a big part of that money will go to funding manufacturing costs and the development of new products for the same product line. unlike a campaign where a larger share of the money will go to developing a phone (and some of the money will go to give a return on investment to the owner, which is something i am fine with as long as there is no non-profit that can do the same work better).
Also for the CEO or board of directors it will be harder or even impossible to deduce that this signals a interest in a FOSS friendly smartphone.
there’s a youtuber working on something similar, maybe yous can join forces: https://youtu.be/OgMdO0ckICg
Wow! That does seem really similar to what I’m doing. And they seem further along than I am. I’ll have to look into this project some more. Thank you!
Happy to see this out there, love the idea. Watching the repo may mess around with this at some point when I have more time.
you could try one of these guys and a cm5 saves you some space https://www.pi-shop.ch/nano-base-board-a-for-raspberry-pi-compute-module-5
This is a very helpful suggestion, thank you! I have been having some issues figuring out spacing, the battery sticks out like a sore thumb right now, so if this can save me some space I may end up moving in this direction for further prototyping. Thanks!
can’t see from the pic (more of them appreciated), but it looks like you can desolder the ports to save on space.
I’m not sure how to add more images to the post, sorry. But I uploaded images to a repo, in the pictures directory https://github.com/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone OR https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone
i love this kind of thing. yeah you can definitely desolder the ports and try to squeeze it closer to the screen, you can rewire them with smaller connectors if you need to. round the printed chassis down and you got something much more ergonomic.
others mentioned you can run postmarketos, but i’m sure you can also get android running too. with the low resolution it is at least running smooooth.
also aliexpress is your friend. a lot of stuff is already designed and made and can be a stepping stone into making it work better as an actual phone, and as “inspiration” if you really want to eventually design the circuits involved into a single board. things like the charging and control circuit for that battery, for starters. or better screens/batteries.
i wish you best of luck!
Ah, the thicc phone.
What are the dimensions of the case?
50mmx130mmx82mm I measured it in freeCAD, so it might be a few millimeters off the real thing
OMG, what?!? Holy fuck, this is amazing! This is incredible! Way to go!
This seems like a very ambitious project and a great learning experience for someone working on their own. For a similarly ambitious project, check out the Liberux NEXX. The project didn’t reach its crowdfunding goal, but they did make some progress before rolling up the rugs.
I don’t know if they’re looking for contributors or if you’re in a place to contribute, but most of the project is open source. You could probably get in touch with them and ask for any advice, successes and failures, and even if they have parts (such as their dev-board) that they can give you access to.
If you’re really going to do this you need a RISC-V processor SOC. If you look around online there’s a few places where you can obtain these.
For the my layperson friend reading over my shoulder… erm, why?
SOC has a small form factor which can fit neatly in a phone sized device (this us why all phones have them) and RISC-V is a completely open source processor instruction set that can be customized to whatever function you wish to implement.
Are the processors good? Like, does performance compare to the alternatives? (I’m assuming these are alternatives to like an ARM based SOC?)
If you are using a Pixel with a Tensor processor then you are using a RISC-V SOC.
Oh cool. Thank you for the info. I hear people talking about RISC-V a lot, but was nearing the parks and rec meme of “I don’t know and am too afraid to ask”, lol.
This is Lemmy not reddit. Unless it’s a political thing on .ml feel free to ask and most people will be happy to answer your questions, especially if it has to do with Linux or FOSS.
Not trying to dump on your efforts or anything here, but you’d be better off first defining a scope of what you’re trying to do, and then work off an existing hardware or software platform.
You can get phone dev kits for cheaper than $200 if you just want to build something that works without Android, but if you intend to take that further and design some of the software experience, you’d be better off just working or contributing to something that already exists.
A single person can’t even begin to touch on the fundamentals of what it takes to run a phone experience in that that we currently understand and use them. Touch UX, software<>hardware integration, peripherals like cameras…it’s A LOT. Doing it well as a single developer is just not going to happen.
If your goal is simply to not have to buy another shit Google-infested phone, you can get a cheap that runs other things right now.
From the sounds of it, it’s just a hobby project for fun for OP. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing something just for the sake of it.
Plus, if OP’s project catches steam, it provides more competition and cult followings which adds to the flair of hobby phones and its attraction thus helping to pave the way for more adoption and development.
This is definitely the angle I’m trying to work. The more people who know how to build these sorts of devices, the more software and hardware will be supported, and standard custom software/hardware pairings can be documented. But we won’t know what works till we try it
When planning to go into mass production?
Why does it need to go on mass production? OP explained they want to get to a point where they share their design.
I keep repeating the same about Linux and other free software projects. The main goal is freedom, not market share.
OPs project seems to follow the same goals. And I find it awesome.
I meant the ability to order such a device. I just structured my opinion wrong. Because of sharing the device blueprints and software doesn’t mean that anyone will be able to create it by himself.
