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Ask HN: Why is it so hard to design an open-source smartphone?

6 points hamburgererror | 4 comments | 16 Oct 25 07:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.589s | source

Following the discussion around Librephone [1], it seems that every project regarding open source smartphones OS are centered around the software only.

Lineage and GrapheneOS have proven that reverse engineering is hard. So I'm wondering why can't we have a project that starts from scratch and build the electronics and the OS? In the same spirit of what Apple did with iPhone+iOS. I'm sorry if I sound naive, I just don't realize how hard it is to design a smartphone.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45586339

1. paulwilsonn ◴[16 Oct 25 10:41 UTC] No.45603778[source]▶
It’s basically a scale problem. Modern smartphones are insanely complex: custom chips, radios, antennas, battery/thermal management, and tight OS-hardware integration. Doing software only is feasible for a small team, but building a full open-source phone from scratch would need hundreds of engineers and billions in investment - which is why almost everyone focuses on OS mods instead.
replies(3): >>45603912 #>>45604007 #>>45613999 #
2. 0xCE0 ◴[16 Oct 25 11:17 UTC] No.45604007[source]▶
Also patents and other per-country legal stuff.

And also the current application ecosystem: all the apps for iPhone/Android must be runnable. Not mentioned payment systems etc.

replies(1): >>45607218 #
3. paulwilsonn ◴[16 Oct 25 16:12 UTC] No.45607218[source]▶
I agree with you
4. 2rsf ◴[17 Oct 25 06:59 UTC] No.45613999[source]▶
And it's not just the individual hardware components, at these small scales building and integrating the components is a big challenge