Starting a Terminal-Style Cellular Device (Part 1 of Phone)

Concept image generated by ChatGPT

Starting a Terminal-Style Cellular Device

I’m starting one of my most ambitious projects yet: A working geek phone from scratch.

Smartphones are cool, but they aren’t built for the electronics geek:

• Apps decide how you talk
• Notifications decide when you talk
• You can’t see anything inside

As someone who likes electronics and computers, I wanted something cooler.

So I asked a simpler question:

What if a phone worked like a terminal?

And phones nowadays are full of distracting notifications that in way, control you.

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The Core Idea

Instead of designing a normal phone, I decided to design a terminal-style cellular device.

That means:

• Text only
• Physical buttons
• Clear commands
• No apps
• No touchscreen
• Nothing happens unless I ask for it

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Constraints (On Purpose)

Here are some general rules I’m going to set up for this:

• No touchscreen
• No app system
• No multitasking
• No background behavior
• No distracting notifications

So once you remove all the extra features, the device only needs to do a few things:

• Take input
• Send data
• Receive data
• Show system status clearly

That’s the entire job.

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Terminal-First Interaction

Everything on this device is through a text interface.

You type commands. The device responds.

Example:

>>> status
NET: CONNECTED
BAT: 82%

Sending a message is not in an app — it’s in a text-based command line.

>>> text
Retrieving Text Database...

Contacts:
John  :  hey how a...
Anna  :  what?    ...
Kate  :  work time...

Selected John...

John: hey how are you doing?
You: I am doing good.

This makes the system:

• COOL!
• Easy to debug
• Easy to understand

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High-Level System Diagram

This is the basic idea of how the system works.

flowchart TD
    K[Keyboard] --> MCU[Microcontroller]
    MCU <---> Modem[Cellular Modem]
    MCU --> Display["Display (Text Output)"]

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Where This Is Going

It’s not meant to be fast or flashy. And it’s not meant for everyone.

It’s a personal device for me designed to be:

• Geeky
• Cool
• Intentionally different

Future posts will go deeper into:

• Power design
• Input handling
• Terminal UI
• Communication logic

Slow progress is expected..

More soon.