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  • One layer down from where this thread is looking: the SMS never lives in the Android userspace on these sticks. It sits in the modem's own store, either on the SIM or in modem memory, and the vendor web UI is just a thin thing reading it out of there.

    So you don't need a messaging app that still runs on Android 4.x. If the device exposes an AT port, AT+CMGF=1 then AT+CMGL="ALL" dumps everything, and AT+CPMS picks which store you're reading. On the Qualcomm ones that keep the AT port hidden behind QMI, libqmi reaches the same thing through the WMS service.

    by catidegla
  • This is cool and all, but what is the point? I have a feeling it could be useful for me but what is it really for?
    by DingleDodies
  • Really cool!
    by dgf18
  • It would be pretty cool to put Hermes Agent or some agent system on that thing, assuming the OpenStick build has enough RAM/storage. That would be fire.
    by VinnyBarreca
  • Truly, I couldn't imagine a worse platform to put a coding agent on. What even would be the point?

    It's got less than 512GB of RAM, no package manager, and virtually no storage.

    by RIMR
  • What it has at its core is a smartphone chipset from 2014 - MSM8916 or so. Not exactly an AI compute powerhouse.
    by ACCount39
  • I love this
    by koinedad
  • OpenStick is super old though, there are Linux and OpenWRT builders that track the upstream kernel, check hkfuertes and others.
    by msm8916
  • Oh, if it isn't the MSM8916 himself! Fancy seeing you out there in the wild - posting on HN no less!

    Is there a guide for cheap MSM8916 platforms you would recommend? There is a hkfuertes repo, but the one I found is archived. Not to say it doesn't work, but that doesn't instill much confidence.

    by ACCount39
  • This is a really cool project! A mini cyberdeck that doesn't seem too impractical to use. Repurposing the Clicks keyboard is a genius idea.
    by xx_ns
  • I often ditch my phone and carry my hotspot device for my internet. The only drawback is that for viewing my texts and OTPs i end up putting the sim in my phone or opening up the web interface on my laptop. This seems to work very well as a dumbphone per se.
    by harhargange
  • If you move to an Apple set up, the phone can act as a hotspot and there is no need to take out your sim. Also... you have a physical sim card? I thought those became obsolete.
    by blobbers
  • How do you check sms/OTP/text using web interface on your laptop?
    by newhotelowner
  • Based on the work the person has done, if they wanted to make something with an exceedingly long battery life, and the battery setup there already seems to be basically a 1S li ion, they could graft in a back side battery holder for two high quality 18650 cells in parallel. It would probably last weeks.
    by walrus01
  • A 10000mAh pouch battery would take up less room and provide more battery life. They are almost as cheap as 18650s too.
    by iamnothere
  • This is really nice! It so happens that I’ve just bought a $10 4G dongle [1], guess I’ll have to check what’s inside now :-)

    [1]: like this: https://img.joomcdn.net/ea91b4418997d83d802339fad0bbcf878b9d...

    ---

    Aside, but it appears some MSM8916-based dongles run Android UI despite having no display: https://github.com/u0d7i/uz801#screenshots

    by notpushkin
  • it's most likely UZ801 (mentioned in the article)
    by untitaker_
  • I did some funny software porting on one of those dongles. At one point, I had it connected to a battery pack for power, joined onto my home WiFi for LAN/WAN access... and had the stick running the Open5GS cellular core stack, allowing my CBRS LTE base station to serve users on an in-home private LTE network by connecting to the cellstick over WiFi for management. (No, the stick's own cellular modem wasn't being used here at all. Just scavenged compute for the tiniest LTE core!)

    So... so cursed.

    by kotaKat
  • Postmarketos works well on those and they have lots of info and links. [1]

    My biggest tip is to carefully back up every partition of the original firmware - there are many many seemingly identical variants and if you hose your particular baseband components you will lose your cellular functionality.

    [1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_dongles_...

    by djfergus