from Hacker News

Paxo: A DIY Phone

by conaclos on 1/26/25, 10:51 AM with 36 comments

• by Baguette5242 on 1/26/25, 7:05 PM

  I read a lot of negative/pesimistic comments, but just to put things in perspective, this phone was developped by a middle/high school guy when he was 13~16 years old… come on guys…

• by yaky on 1/26/25, 1:40 PM

  I tried to find some technical details, but there is nothing on the tutorials page. The press page links to a few articles in French, but all I found was that there is that there is no 4G, and "Circuit artisinal fonctionnel" on a diagram.

  It would be great to know how it compares with other DIY phone projects like ZeroPhone.

• by antongribok on 1/26/25, 1:43 PM

  The way it looks reminds me of the Handspring Visor[1] for some reason (with less buttons).

  1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handspring,_Inc.

• by rzr on 1/26/25, 2:06 PM

  With all respect to the younger generation, this is project is oversold compared to previous similar projects.

  BTW, which OSHW project is advanced enough to deserve more contributions ?

  Back to paxo one, According to

  https://github.com/paxo-phone/paxo-electronic

  It is integration of SIM800L modem with ESP32

  Software side, the main app (aka OS):

  https://github.com/paxo-phone/PaxOS-9

• by GJim on 1/26/25, 3:49 PM

  A rather unfortunate choice of name!

  https://www.paxo.co.uk/

• by jonesjohnson on 1/26/25, 4:12 PM

  Oh man. Again one of those projects where someone glues together an Arduino (ESP, Raspberry,...), a modem module and a battery. I'm not sure where this is "educational" (except for the creators, of course).

  I've been using hacky phones all my life (N900, N9, Sailfish, Ubuntu Touch, Pinephone, Librem5) and I really really really just want people to finally concentrate their efforts and build a (non-android) open-source phone (HW + ecosystem) that's actually usable.

  Sorry for this non-constructive post, but this is a topic that bothers me quite a lot.