Terrorist Phone Thread

The last (consumer) GSM network in the United States is set to be disabled on April 2, 2024. This fact has made people who (for various reasons) have shown interest in ditching their modern smartphone never commit; Their only realistic option (a 2000s cell-phone) has an expiration date looming overhead. The Terrorist Phone Thread is NOT about minimalist or feature phones (nor is it about terrorism). Rather, it is about showing that it is possible for a cell-phone to outlive the network infrastructure they were built to assume.

(You) might imagine that, for an old cell-phone to communicate with modern network infrastructure, it would require intensive hardware and software modification. It wouldn't be your fault for thinking like this; you've been told (or at least heard) time and time again that this is a hardware limitation of the phone (so buy a new phone). However, it's a matter of perspective. There is nothing wrong with the phone, it's just that the tower disappeared! All you need is to relay communication from modern infrastructure to GSM, and back. This is what off-the-shelf femtocells do, but these are overkill for our purposes. All you really need is a power-source, a SIM modem, a software-defined radio, and a processor to glue them together. If you're feeling hacky enough, you can source a few of these components from the phone itself. I looked around for validation of these ideas, and sure enough, this is what someone did to get a Motorola StarTAC 6000 (!) connected to a network. (Original Article) https://medium.com/geekculture/howto-running-the-1g-analog-phone-from-1997-3caec77a9df9 (Ghostbin mirror because Medium is gay) https://ghostbin.lain.la/paste/zxqzs Unfortunately, I am not currently in a situation where I can implement a solution. That is the second reason why I've created this thread, in hopes of another Lainon with same love for these devices and the ability, can show something for it. It isn't hard work, but I believe it's important to let people know that these cell-phones are still an option.

Very interesting thread. Lainons should value it.

>>10670 none. no social media. unless you're smart. keep an offline computer. what the fuarrrk is your question? i don't care about technology. the only use of social media is to piss feds off. assume the worst. the best is always hidden.

Great I can hopefully breathe some new life into my old razr.

Im sold. Lets do it. Bagdag battery on a low voltage device with cheap sim access. Free the signal. Anyone seen the copper and foam wrappeed around a bar of magnesium trick from those peppers? If we can figure out dialing system (i know allmost nothing on that yet) that can match whatever cheapest sim is available we got free phones

I would think you would have to program your own SIM card to communicate only with a cell signal repeater that can receive GSM or CDMA and LTE that has a normal SIM card for LTE for it to act as a bridge and just temporarily hook this antenna up to your car where it can be removed if you need to leave your car far behind. I dont know enough how these work so there is probably more than that to pull such a feat off.

>>10670 That would be really hard, considering the cell towers are shut down. Your best bet would be replacing the modem, which would end up replacing the whole mainboard and reverse engineering the rest of the hardware. You can also set up a cell tower yourself, though that's highly illegal in most places and will cause getting triangulated by feds.

>>10671 I feel like this is edging on retro nostalgia more than functional minimalism. There are many phones today that do not run a 'smartphone os' (Android or iOS) that support 4G and are pretty cheap. Sure, if you don't have to buy a new phone it would be even better, but to make it work you have to use a $300 RF Transceiver like the article mentions. >inb4 not about minimalism what's the point then? Just a proof of concept of an mildly interesting idea? Bridges translating modern to older protocols isn't exactly a new concept. idk this doesn't sound like more than a fun weekend project

>>11310 I think it might be more about not wasting still functional devices not buying into consumerism. Though resale of used phones kind of helps minimize that effect. Still dumb phones today arent so dumb so if Lain is aiming for security then they arent really a good bet, though that isnt to say using outdated hardware is the way either.

>>11311 >security >GSM Think again. Sniffers are worth a few dollars

>>11439 I don't think the point is security of gsm or of the phone itself, but that the hardware is too old to be able to snoop on you in the same way modern phones are capable of. Presumably still capable of snooping on you to some capacity when idle - i wonder if there has been a proof of concept of this in some very old model, but not to the same degree and you can rest assured that it's off if you remove the battery. The workaround posted by >>10671 defeats the use for this purpose though, because the computer you use to enable this is certainly capable of snooping on you to a much greater capacity than a cellphone from 1995. I dont think we can have this anymore, if my thought above is even correct that is. Maybe it was already worse than I think it was.

>>11441 > you can rest assured that it's off if you remove the battery. If you can't remove a phone's battery, you can rest assured that it's not transmitting or receiving anything by putting it in a small copper or copper-lined container or bag that doesn't leak rf. You can buy these containers. That's why NSA headquarters building in MD is essentially a big copper-lined box. I'm not in favor of terrorists or criminals using using anti-surveillance measures to prevent detection. But since lawmakers won't stop corporations, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies from surveilling (stalking) average citizens, such anti-surveillance measures need to be shared far and wide. The same goes for Tor. fuarrrk the surveillance state.

>>11442 Faraday bags with modern phones aren't as useful as the phone has enough memory to snoop, record whatever the data and send it away once it's out of the bag/cage, would need the bag to also be soundproof

>>11443 A phone in a copper-lined container isn't going to be pinging cell towers, so it isn't going to be useful for tracking location, no matter how much storage it has. There's nothing to store.

>>11444 his point is obviously that even if its not tracking location and phoning home this instant, it still in theory could be listening, and that's worth considering. This is probably well enough solved by shaking it around to confuse the IMU and then putting it, faraday bag and all, in some padded bag or something where any sounds it hears will be well muffled.

>>10670 https://www.wiphone.io/ How is this phone? No SIM. Just VoIP calls.

>>11497 I think OPs intent is keeping old hardware working in modern times to avoid e waste. It is fairly futile though if that was the goal because so few people would do it so likely it is just from liking a specific phone model a lot.

lol there is many dumbphones you can buy right now that are cheap so I dont see the point cause I value my time. Old phones do not have VoLTE (Voice over LTE band) which is what you need to use one.

>>12034 All cellular modems in phones are backdoored by Qualcomm so whats your point?

>>12034 >many dumbphones you can buy right now from what i've seen, they all run android. i.e., not dumbphones.

>>12039 Thats better then KaiOS or some unknown OS that you can't modify.

I was looking up info on phone OS and found Open WebOS which is the open source version of WebOS for LG phones. Problem is LG shut down their website for unlocking phones bootloaders since they stopped making phones. So youd have to find one someone had previously unlocked. I do wonder how possible it is to make a 1 - 3G phone into a 4G phone. Can't you just change the antenna?

>>12042 >Can't you just change the antenna? No you need to change the modem or modem firmware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_LTE While VoLTE support is not solely determined by frequency bands, certain bands are commonly associated with LTE networks that support VoLTE. Common bands that support VoLTE include: Band 1 Band 3 Band 5 Band 7 Band 12 Band 20 However, just having access to these bands does not guarantee VoLTE support. Different carriers may use different bands for VoLTE. Even if a modem supports the necessary LTE bands, it still needs to have the appropriate software and firmware to handle VoLTE calls.

More interestingly I recently found out that you can still send SMS (RCS) and do calls (VoWiFi) even when your phone is in Airplane Mode as long as it's on a Wi-Fi network or any internet source... although it might be preferable to have IPv6 support. For Iphones they require you to have GPS on for VoWiFi features in airplane mode this is maybe so the telecom can charge you more for international calls but at this point I can say that while 1G/2G/3G networks are reliable and long range they are good as obsolete in this day and age, I'd just wait until they make satellite calls and text messaging more of a open standard. Waiting for you Elon boy.

>>12132 The GPS is for emergency calls I think so they know where you are if you call for help. Since I know on Android they require you to manually write your address for wifi calls for this reason.

>>10670 already being done by a handful of people https://www.freecalypso.org/index.html she sells low-powered modems and programable simcards, and uses BulkVS to tunnel to the outside world.

>>12034 >that are cheap that is the problem, nobody makes "dumb phones" with the same quality they had. i had a nokia e71 for about 8 years, and i bought one of the new nokia 3210's. compared to that phone, it feels cheap, doesn't have email, doesn't have gps, has worse battery life, and recently i had to start deleting messages on it because it doesn't offload to the SD card. i understand that they had to downsize, but really? i have to start deleting messages? i have 10 character limit on contact names? i can't play FLAC files? these are such arbitrary things that i thought we got past. i just want my e71 back...

>>12265 It's a weird phenomena of loss of technology. Part is from loss of suppliers of parts, loss of machines to make these things and loss of trade secrets they didn't patent so the info isnt stored anywhere.

>>12265 The E71 isn't a dumbphone. It's a symbian smartphone. But i understand what you say. By the way the new nokia phones have nothing to do with nokia of Finland. The original nokia couldn't handle the new market with android and iphone phones. First they made the bad choice of sticking with symbian, and when they saw they can't manage that, they made the even more horrible choice of being a platform for Windows Phone. They quickly got out of business for being soykafty because of their software. Then the name got bought by some Chinese people and they started selling random junk under the name.

>>12267 > By the way the new nokia phones have nothing to do with nokia of Finland. > Then the name got bought by some Chinese people and they started selling random junk under the name. not even true, do some basic googling. > Human Mobile Devices (HMD), formally HMD Global, is a Finnish independent mobile phone manufacturer. The company is owned by the Luxembourgish holding company Smart Connect GL. The company is made up of the mobile phone business that the Nokia Corporation sold to Microsoft in 2014, then bought back in 2016...HMD is headquartered in Espoo, Finland, and is largely run by former Nokia executives... their headquarters is literally across the street from present-day nokia. the reasoning from >>12266 is more accurate

>>10670 I can't say this is bad, because GSM has few flaws which make it easy to attack and intercept. Somehow dial-up not a thing anymore too... BTW, if you liked the design of it check the MODE Retro II, that's a great flip phone from a japanese market, with a decent build quality.

>>12272 I am not sure what OPs intent was but I think it is about keeping phones functional instead of turning to e-waste or just wanting a challenge.

Since this thread is under utilized I will just ask here. What would one do if you want to design a modernized flip phone to actually be professional level of design and build? Do you just look at patents or start from scratch? Since I had some ideas seemingly never done before.

>>12276 > What would one do if you want to design a modernized flip phone to actually be professional level of design and build? what exactly would a "modernized flip phone" have? (besides a non-android OS).

>>12278 By "modern" I just meant compatible with the networks and not just being a design copy of some old phone but also not those folding screen phones. There wouldn't really be an advantage to non Android based ROM unless all the good secure communication apps are ported to it which would be difficult to encourage or self maintain always up to date. I doubt I could pull it off in my current skill level but if I plan on killing myself before I can do anything if I recall to id leave full details somewhere on Lainchan of ideas I left out instead of some vague description like this in case anyone wants to do something with it. I was just asking basic tips not for people here to do everything for me when I would have nothing to show but ideas right now no proof of concept.

>>12279 > There wouldn't really be an advantage to non Android based battery life, fluid ui, no google, and ultimately more choice. pretty much things that almost everyone wants

>>12280 I never see any non AOSP based ROM from anyone in /sec/ and I have yet to see much wide interest in Ubuntu Touch, Mobian, or PostmarketOS much on /tech/. Not that I am saying I disagree but most people want the apps they need to work and only way to do that is making it compatible with Android apps or at least Linux programs. Anyway, I'm focused more on physical aspects than software right now. One thing I've been debating is whether it is better to have dual cameras like most smartphones now have or make a single rotatable camera if that would be cheaper or more expensive to produce. Not many phones had that kind of camera, one I found is the Oppo N3 to give you an idea what I mean.

>>12281 > I never see any non AOSP based ROM from anyone in /sec/ and I have yet to see much wide interest in Ubuntu Touch, Mobian, or PostmarketOS much on /tech/. having used all of those, it's pretty obvious why. they're slow, buggy, and drain battery while providing a lower quality feature-set than AOSP. that's the result of the projects being bigger than their teams, trying to support too wide of a range of hardware, and trying to over deliver, reducing everyones experience to crap until they get there "one day" (i.e. never). similar story happened with kaios. we need hardware running operating systems made exclusively for the hardware and the features most people deem important. > One thing I've been debating is whether it is better to have dual cameras like most smartphones now have or make a single rotatable camera if that would be cheaper or more expensive to produce. smartphones having multiple camera configurations was (is) always just a stepping stone to a single camera unit that can do it all. sony's latest smartphone has already gotten rid of multiple fixed-zoom cameras.

>>10671 DosDude1 is bringing this to the mainstream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMWvA4Ty1Wk 220k+ views, clearly an interest.

>>12264 >she

>>11443 What if one creates a Microphone jammer with an Arduino and a ESP32?