Before I buy... is PinePhone actually open source?

[JuniperFury]

There are reverse engineering efforts for Qualcomm and Quectel modems underway.
We will see how far they advance...

Can you point me in the direction of these efforts?

There's a separation between Qualcomm's blob that does the radio side and Quectel's part that does management and looks after interfaces. All the reverse engineering I'm aware of has been directed at Quectel's part.

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11797
https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/modem-pp-reveng.html
https://projects.osmocom.org/projects/qu.../wiki/EC25

I don't know whether libqmi is based on public documentation or reverse engineering of the interface for talking to Qualcomm's blob.

I've been off the internet for quite some time. Can anyone recommend good courses or moocs that would help me dive in to everything I need to develop the PinePhone as well? Courses without much theory or history that would allow me to start working and customising the device for different scenarios would be great. I am guessing I need basics of electrical engineering because those schematics looked like extraterrestrial hieroglyphics ^_^. GSM Stack and I guess C++ for the linux os?

That's a big one - what level are you starting from? Any electronics or programming experience at all? Are you looking for general understanding, or do you have a specific goal in mind?

The GSM side is abstracted by oFono or ModemManager depending on which front end you're using. You communicate with these via dbus, and they translate to/from the AT, QMI or whatever else the modem hardware uses.

Thanks so much for the links! I love learning. As far as courses my background is general IT security, personnel security and investigation, networking, data science. As far as programming basic web design. Can solder, but electrical background is basic. For instance had to recently research how to figure out how big of a battery bank I need to power all my devices based on their hourly drain. Didn't know the calculations for this off the bat.

My goal is find a way for my children to not be tracked or spied on when they grow up and I'm long gone. I don't know where the world is going but the future globally looks oppressive authoritarian if not totalitarian and I don't believe there are any political solutions other then responsible educated citizens who have the capabilities and assets needed to check the power of every state on this planet and soon off.

As far as my linux background been a Qubes user for more than a year and have had no major problems that I couldn't figure out. This is forced to me to figure out fedora, debian and whonix. Also this made me aware of pernicious closed sourced firmware that could have backdoors or zerodays on all devices marketed as "secure". This false advertising bothers me to my core.

So my hope is to be able to get a foundation in the entire radio spectrum so I'm able to discern and adapt to the privacy and security flaws of new communication standards from non-benevolent, negligent, inconsiderate actors by being able to design and deploy devices that make the flaws of any communication standard irrelevant.

I'm currently in an amateur radio course where we're required to build on our own radio and antenna from recycled parts then use the radio for various tasks such as making contacts, signal detection, multilateration, radio discipline and encrypted transmission.

So got the PC down, now trying to get COMMS down. That's why I'm here. Thanks for any advice you can give.

Modem is not the only issue.

As pointed before pinephone also uses closed blobs for wifi, camera and booting process (although last is worked on?). Situation is better on librem5 but it is expensive and not functional yet. Also librem BT adapter seems to be a big mistery since I'm not aware of wifi/bt cards working w/o blobs, so they might be hiding some info on that part.


I would stick to rock64 or rockpro64 and build uboot from source + linux kernel w/o closed sources firmwares + fully open source packages. It is possible for rock64pro, should work on rock64 too:

https://stikonas.eu/wordpress/2019/09/15...rockpro64/

this way you get completely librem/open source starting from uboot, firmware, kernel etc. You can do it on gentoo (as in article), or by using debian/devuan

you can also stick to other distros - but will have to deblob kernel yourself

Also keep in mind init system, you don't want to run bloated systemd suspected to carry vulnerabilities. also I've seen myself systemd service de-anonimizing vpn through dns look-ups (call it a bug) on fedora so I would not trust it

than something like gentoo or devuan look as good options

As for wifi you can use Atheros usb card. Also pine team works on fully open source wifi/bt card:


For modem I guess you have your own solution. By adding enclosure, external screen (there are ones for rockpro64) + battery you should get fully open source and as private as it can get communication device on the go

Other option is necunos phone w/o modem, but it seems pricy:
https://necunos.com/

Thanks for this! I'm sold! The spec to price ratio on the Rock64s looks great! We'll be getting a few of these along with the PinePhones for our experimentation and prototyping.

I looked up Necunos, saw a review that said "an expensive, open source phone-shaped… thing" . Expensive it is. Good to get a few of these in an emergency deployment, but the route I'm going I'll be building such a solution myself saving retail costs. Thanks for the info though.