Make a modular dumb phone from FPGAs (like TinyFPGA, Lattice iCE40, or something open source), an open RISC-V core (like VexRiscV), keypad and screen (non-touch), run it on a Linux kernel to send texts over the LoRa network and possibly do other things. No proprietary baseband or Wifi hardware. That's the only "safe" cell phone there is because cell networks are paywalled, proprietary (rely on baseband), and are heavily monitored and controlled by the FCC.
>>32672Or hell, instead of Linux, use RTOS or bare metal.
or just dont use a phone
Every now and then, privacy experts propose an idea that would only be usable by someone with prerequisite technical/hardware experience. It won't scale to the masses.
I am not calling my Grandma over a custom hardware project from across the country. The people who can't fix printers are not supporting custom hardware phones.
Meshtastic does not scale to a population of over 1 Million in a major metropolitan area.
I appreciate the enthusiasm.
>>32672pinephone (pro) has an open source baseband firmware you can install on it and it works and i've been using it
FPGAs with open toolchains are dogshit slow. there was a talk where a guy booted linux on the fastest open FPGA available and it took like 24 hours to boot.