Frugal phone project
I love when people who take smaller or older processors or SoCs, and design custom low-level programs to do normal stuff on these tiny battery-friendly chips without overloading them, to make small portable devices or little Arduino devices that can do so much with so little.
So I've been looking into a way to design a mobile device that's like that, which gives me modern functionality with what you'd expect modern battery life to be, by sticking to the fundamentals that restricted us 25 years ago, and adding in the increased phone size, better battery technology and other modern advances, to curtail the power draw of 4g, minor internet use and whatsapp.
A device where the processor cannot be overclocked or overused by an app, and which can only run one app at a time.
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If anyone could help me with programming the OS or any apps, that'd be great
or anyone who would like to contribute in other ways
The Light phone is sometimes seen as a phone like this, but it only has one day battery life and zero features. It's a dumb phone entirely, small, ugly, no battery, no features, can't do basic modern things with it.
If you have a Light Phone you need to live as a hermit or bring a second phone.
I'm thinking that as it's a device with a simple OS that aims to be easy to programme for, programming could be led by a nice hobby scene
the processor and gpu will be capped in the firmware so that devs can have the freedom to play without disrupting the normal function of the device
and it'll be restrictive in power enough that squeezing performance out of it will be fun
In summary:
Tiny, next gen 250Mhz IoT SoC with ultra-low-power mode, low-power 1mb/s LTE-M modem, 3300mAh battery, 5.1" 16:9 3-colour ePaper screen, beautiful slate design like the iPhone 4.
Hard-coded, low-level minimalistic OS that: is singletasking ONLY except for notifications and calls, has a 100MHz-capped clock speed mode for most apps, and a 250Mhz capped mode for "high-power apps" an app-store, and built-in apps for essential smartphone use such as calendar, maps, html-only web browser, whatsapp client, email client etc. All designed to only use the modem periodically except for calls. Browser scrolls page-by-page to save screen refresh power.
Modem pings, pulls and syncs less often compared to ordinary phones with a:
- Fast mode: pings/pulls every 5 seconds, syncs every 20 mins
- Normal mode: pings/pulls every 15 seconds, syncs every 20 mins
- Hero mode: pings/pulls every 3 mins, syncs every hour
- Endurance mode: pings every 15 mins, does not sync.
So in normal mode, you'll get any texts and calls only every 15 seconds, and emails/notifications every 20 mins. This is well within the usual waiting time for a caller and an emailer, and triples the battery life. Even fast mode is more efficient than normal phones, and hero and endurance will give multi-week battery life.
Maps will use the GPS to find your location, download the directions, and then turn off the GPS and 4g connection. You'll tap the screen to advance the map, which will essentially be a series of screenshots of the route. Ultimate battery life here.
The goal for apps and programming is to grow a hobby scene like that of microcomputers, where comp;lex, low-level programs are built that squeeze power within the limits without using up battery life. The benchmark for the phone is a 7-day battery life under regular use. This is a fairly hard rule for now and I wouldn't like to see it change to below 4 days minimum in normal mode.
It will be a challenge, but a nice challenge, for programmers to have to work within 100Mhz CPU, 1kb/s modem, the 100Mhz GPU and 3-colour ePaper screen. I see these as the makings of a cult classic like the ZX Spectrum, Gameboy, raspberry pi etc.
I wouldn't mind adding a dev mode that supports command-line operation and an external keyboard, while locking away existing programs.