On Mon, 1 Oct 2012, [email protected] wrote:
On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 07:51:04PM +0100, [email protected] wrote 1.5K
bytes in 42 lines about:
: I believe it's possible to install CyanogenMod on it to get a
: completely free software stack. I don't know whether anyone's tried
: connecting a USB GSM modem.
Just splitting hairs here, cyanogenmod installs a free software operating
system on the hardware. It does not replace the baseband which controls
the hardware.
Right. The thinking here is that even though an add-on cell modem is just
as closed and locked as a built-in cell modem, the fact that it is add-on
is a fundamentally deeper level of control:
- you can physically disconnect it
- you can ifconfig/plumb/whatever the interface and have better assurance
that what you are telling it to do is actually happening
- the modem is completely subservient to the computer it is contained in,
which I don't think is a good assumption with a normal mobile phone ...
Perhas these assumptions are flawed ?
Another nice thing is that since you can choose whatever external modem
you like, at some point a project like osmocom might reverse engineer a
particular dongle chipset, etc., and then you could switch to that.
How small does an add-in GSM module come ? The smallest I have seen is
compact flash form factor, which is not used thee days... I have seen SD
card wifi adaptors, but not GSM. Attaching a USB dongle to the side of a
phone-sized device seems unwieldy...
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