Engineer creates working smartphone using Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi — is there anything it can’t do? The tiny computer has helped inventors and hackers create a media streamer, outer space camera, games console and cocktail-mixing robot in its short lifetime, and you can now add cell phone to that impressive list. Linux software engineer David Hunt has put together a working mobile phone using spare parts and a Raspberry Pi, as demonstrated on his blog.

Raspberry Pi-using tinkerer David Hunt—who previously built a bark-activated door opener for dogs—is at it again with a real, working cell phone powered by the tiny computer and a few other items. “As you can see from the cost of the components, you’d be FAR better off going into your local phone store and picking up a normal smartphone, but hey, where’s the fun in that?” Hunt wrote on his blog today. “I got a great kick out of the first phone call I made with this thing. And it won’t stay in one piece for long, I’ll be using those parts for other projects very soon!” When powered on, PiPhone boots into the Raspbian operating system and then shows a numeric keypad, so it takes a while to get going.