{"id":266744,"date":"2026-01-27T16:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T16:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/266744\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T16:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T16:08:08","slug":"pi-compute-module-powers-fully-open-smartphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/266744\/","title":{"rendered":"Pi Compute Module Powers Fully Open Smartphone"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the powerful off-the-shelf hardware available to us common hardware hobbyist folk, how hard can it be to make a smartphone from scratch? Hence [V Electronics]\u2019s Spirit smartphone project<\/a>, with the video from a few months ago introducing the project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As noted on the hardware overview<\/a> page, everything about the project uses off the shelf parts and modules, except for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) carrier board. The LCD is a 5.5\u2033, 1280\u00d7720 capacitive one currently, but this can be replaced with a compatible one later on, same as the camera and the CM5 board, with the latter swappable with any other CM5 or drop-in compatible solution.<\/p>\n

The star of the show and the thing that puts the \u2018phone\u2019 in \u2018smartphone\u2019 is the Quectel EG25-GL<\/a> LTE (4G) and GPS module which is also used in the still-not-very-open PinePhone. Although the design of the carrier board and the 3D printable enclosure are still somewhat in flux<\/a>, the recent meeting notes<\/a> show constant progress, raising the possibility that with perhaps some community effort this truly open hardware smartphone will become a reality.<\/p>\n

Thanks to [tiel] for the tip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the powerful off-the-shelf hardware available to us common hardware hobbyist folk, how hard can it be to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[61,60,202,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-266744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-mobile","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}