Make Calls with the rCrumbl Raspberry Pi Phone

We mostly take smartphones for granted, but it’s truly staggering if you consider the technology behind this gadget that most people reading this carry around in their pockets. If you were to take that one step further and try to replicate it, perhaps you’ll have a deeper appreciation for Apple being a trillion dollar company, employing thousands of people to make such a physically minuscule device.

As spotted on Reddit, Dylan Radcliffe decided to take on the challenge of creating a smartphone from scratch, or at least with the pre-made guts of the Raspberry Pi — a build that would become the “rCrumbl.” The Pi, a TFT display, and a camera is stuffed into the phone’s housing, along with power delivery components and a physical button. Shoving all of this into a usable enclosure made the final result something of a testament to just how close together wires can be soldered when needed.

Software to run the rCrumbl is provided by TyTelli. While certainly fine for what it is, it’s meant to run on 2G networks, which have been phased out in Canada — where Radcliffe resides. Regardless, he’s been able to use his device to make a call through the command line, and while this means there’s still a bit of software work to do, one could call this DIY Pi phone a success! If you’d like to try something similar, files to make the case are available here.