A DIY GSM Cell Phone

As cell phones have progressed over the last 30 years of so, they’ve gone from relatively simple devices to something that is, literally, a computer in your pocket. Though there are many obvious benefits of smartphones, building a modern one from scratch would be very difficult.

Peter Misenko, however, decided to actually design and build his own “simple” phone, with a case cleverly made out of the same PCB that the electronics sit on. It features 16 keys, an 8-character LED display, and runs on an ATmega328 MCU.

Sure, it might not play YouTube videos, but if you want a phone that shows off your geek cred, this looks pretty great! If you do want to give it a try, boards for the phone can be purchased on Tindie.

There is a second version in the works, however, so it may be worth waiting! This Arduino Zero-compatible model pack an ATSAMD21E18 MCU at its core along with USB programming and a MicroPython interpreter.