This is an odd question but will MNT ever in the future consider making a cell phone?
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Not likely, it seems: From mastodon: Most exciting/useful for you as a potential MNT open hardware product?
Even Pine64, creator of the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro finds it too risky to create a successor, stating: It [PinePhone 2] would be a big financial risk, where PineStore would lose a lot of money developing the device and with the current market there, is no SOC that currently fits the solution.
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I am a big fan of MNT devices, but the software on a phone needs to be inhouse to some extent and with the size of MNT’s team that would be impractical.
It especially doesn’t make sense when companies such as Fairphone exist with similar ethos devices, plus Graphene and Murena exist with Graphene OS and E/os both of which degoogle your phone.
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Yep, we are indeed too underfunded to make a solid phone. But we are at least working on something in proximity to that, which could be a step on the way in that direction: Reform / MNT Vector Tablet · GitLab · MNT Source
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Nothing to do with MNT, there is a french research project aiming to make a engery efficient “smart” phone. Maybe it would be a good idea to take a look what they are doing.
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Oh wow, a power efficient (goal is battery runtime of about a week) open hardware phone based around the RP2350 with a physical keyboard! Too bad it’s “just” a research project, so probably not something which will be sold at some point in time. Here is a prototype:
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A week was pretty common back in the venerable Nokia days. Now… nearly unheard of, even a day is considered impressive for smartphones.
if you’re after a cellphone, i’ve been working to do similar with my MNT Pocket Reform and have near feature parity with my config. working on a guide to exactly how to replicate everything, should have all the bits i need for that by end of year, but it’s largely well documented in my original post below.
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Hell yeah! I have hopes the PostmarketOS people adopt the upcoming MNT Vector tablet as a reference design, since the chosen components play well with Linux. A True Linux phone where things mostly work and using the Qualcomm modules for long battery life, can you imagine!
It would only be a “phone” if the modem can make phone calls and I failed to make this work with the quectel em06 in the pocket reform. The vector is essentially the pocket reform but with the keyboard replaced by a touchscreen. In future where pmos works on the vector, it will likely also “just work” on the pocket and then i’m interested in repurposing the parts which are able to make voice calls via the modem.
Mecha Comet phone
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mecha-systems/mecha-comet-modular-linux-handheld-computer
that is severely cool, i may have to grab one at some point as an accompanying “walkie talkie” once it’s had time for the community to make some neat stuff to attach to it.
Just to clarify, this isn’t a phone. It is a computer in a phone shaped format. It is very cool but it does not have any of the tech inside to be a phone. The one positive is it has the I.MX 8M Plus in, so some items that have been designed for it may have success running on MNT devices with that chip in.