New can-do club wants to build better cell phone

Mercury News on a new homebrew cell phone club – “A small band of tinkerers with that old Silicon Valley can-do spirit say they are determined to build a better cell phone, whether wireless companies like it or not….This time around, the Homebrew Mobile Phone Club’s beef is that today’s cell phones are not as flexible as personal computers. That’s just not acceptable for a generation of Silicon Valley geeks who made a sport of building custom computers with off-the-shelf parts. “The mobile industry is really focused on selling products to the widest possible market segment they can,” said Matt Hamrick, a local computer engineer who created the new club and led its first meeting last week. “We look at these phones and we say, `What a horrid piece of junk.’ ”” – Link.

Pictured here, the rotary cell phone.

Related:
Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club – Link.