Are there regulatory barriers to DIY mobile devices?
Like, you know, being able to assemble a bunch of of enthusiast parts and slap them in a custom printed enclosure.
Doesnât the FCC have to clear phones?
Could they just regulate the antenna module?
I donât know, just wondering how in this Jobsian Post-PC world to regain the customer choice / freedom for mobile that exists in the PC world.
coolness
âYour smartphone was designed to deliver as much value as possible to its manufacturer, carrier and OS vendor, leaving behind the smallest amount of value possible while still making it a product that youâd be willing to pay for and use.â
Well I fooled them - I donât pay for or use their products.
I thought the video was okay, but Iâd love a companion listicle that showed some of the phones, like the music oriented one and the bluetooth headset one, and pointed out the features and had photos.
Doesnât this article assume that I have a mass-produced phone, do not DIY, and am not in South China?
Please! I am begging you people! Stop using vaguely inclusive words such as âyourâ and âweâ. Itâs presumptuous and annoying. How about something more generally applicable? Such as âsomeâ, or âmanyâ?
Obviously this is just communist propaganda, because we all know communists are unthinking government drones, and only real capitalists innovate. This proves by logic that these phones are American, or they would be, except theyâre illegal. Must have sneaked in from Mexico.
Whatâs it like not having a mobile phone, grandpa?
So, like 99.99999% of the people who will ever use this discussion forum?
Please, I beg of you, donât pretend an audience is more diverse than it actually is just for the sake of rhetoric.
Admittedly, I have no statistics to verify this. But I very much doubt that anyone else has, either.
I would not dream of it! How I see this, claims of statistical diversity are a different problem than stating as fact that âThis article is about you, personally!â This seems to me like a lazily inaccurate way to persuade readers of its relevance - just for the sake of (bad) rhetoric.
Too bad youâre not the editor, then, or a journalist?
If people had to be editors or journalists to have opinions about or otherwise remark upon the articles, the BBS would be rather sparse.
Aside from economies of scale and any NDAs you need to sign to get your hands on parts that arenât antique, the question would depend on how you handled the RF portions of the design.
The FCC would be unhappy to have your random hackjob floating around anywhere in the licensed bands, and only somewhat less unhappy about what it may be doing in the ISM band. If, however, you were using already-licensed modules for those purposes(eg. cell modem, wifi board, BT dongle) they would be much less likely to care.
I think that if you are going for full-scale production and sale youâd still need to at least pass the tests as an âunintentional radiatorâ and fall within Part 15 power levels; but on a small scale prototypes flout that all the time without incident; and if all the serious RF were handled by approved modules there wouldnât be much chance of screaming neighbors complaining about interference.
Peaceful and uncomplicated 
I can say one thing, if the phone were designed with my interests in mind they wouldnât have dared to add the âAdvertising Identifierâ âfeatureâ. Yes, it was even worse back when they exposed the phoneâs UUID; but the new feature isnât an âimprovementâ, itâs a bandaid on a bullet wound.
Isnât pretty much every product sold created with the goal of profiting the manufacturer while âleaving behind the smallest amount of value possible while still making it a product that youâd be willing to pay for and use.â
