Awesome DIY Cell Phone Has Universal Appeal

Now THAT is pretty cool. Two thumbs up!

So can it just be a phone and nothing else?

When I didn't own a cell-phone (or other mobile, cellular phone system using device) I used to tell my kids I wouldn't until it, like the wired telephone (Anyone remember the 2600 models? How about the old rotary dials? But I'm not retro enough to EVER want another "party line" phone, with the hand crank on the side.) became SO ubiquitous that users saw it as "just another appliance".

Apparently that time came and went without my noticing, since I now pack more USB cables/chargers than clothes on long trips. And all for the devices I own. My kids are on their own for those items.

But I LOVE this idea. I see this as the opportunity to "jail break" or "unlock" our own phones without paying exorbitant prices to the phone companies for a "limited unlock" phone.

Oh, I know they say they'll sell you an unlocked phone. But that just means that a)they get their money up front, since they can't force you to exclusively use their services with one of those, and b) since THEY say they unlocked it, and the methods are proprietary, and secret to all but the sneakiest of us Hacker/Consumers, you STILL only get the features and services they want you to get.

But if we can buy modules to build our own phones, any electronics hobbyist (The next gen HAM, maybe?) might be able to build what he or she wants, without regard to what the phone companies would have wanted him or her to want.

The phone company, in my teens and early adulthood, still owned every piece of equipment in your house or business, and still decided for you (At a premium, of course) what CLASS of phone user you would be (Pay more, be higher class). The forced breakup of Ma Bell into the RBOCS, also accompanied a change in the ownership of phones, accompanied by a HUGE change in the variety of phones, services, capabilities, etc., that were available, on the consumer market. And that, in turn, due to market pressures, forced the phone system out of the dark ages. It wasn't without it problems (The roll-out of SS7, that caused phone service blackouts all over the country in 1990, for example.) but it improved service so drastically that most of us don't even remember the old days.

But, credit (BIG, BIG CREDIT) where credit is due. The phone companies (MA BELL, are you listening?) who built the networks that provide such current service systems as the Bell RBOCS all over the US, the British MOTT system, and the phone systems which served Canada, and other parts of the UK and Europe, came from the incredibly hard and innovative work of early telephone (Landline, folks, NOT Cellular!) companies, which produced so much of the exiting infrastructure, including even much of the underlying Internet and Cable TV supporting technologies. Without them, we wouldn't have the knowledge and technology to allow us HAM/Hacker/Hobbyists to you this new idea from MIT.

But Government driven divestiture in the US led to freedom to use the knowledge gained. And changed the whole picture.

And the change also allowed an awesome lot of smart young people to try their hand at building/designing/even producing their own innovative services, riding the telephone service that we, mostly, had come to take for granted.

I see the same kind of game-changer coming.

And I'm looking forward to the new era.