Category Archives: Cellphone Hacks

Review: New 3G and Cat-M1 Cellular Hardware from Hologram

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In July we reported on the launch of the Hologram developer program that offered a free SIM card and a small amount of monthly cellular data for those who wanted to build connectivity into their prototypes. Today, Hologram has launched some new hardware to go along with that program.

Nova is a cellular modem in a USB thumb drive form factor. It ships in a little box with a PCB that hosts the u-blox cellular module, two different antennas, a plastic enclosure, and a SIM card. The product is aimed at those building connected devices around single-board computers, making it …read more

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Review: New 3G and Cat-M1 Cellular Hardware from Hologram

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In July we reported on the launch of the Hologram developer program that offered a free SIM card and a small amount of monthly cellular data for those who wanted to build connectivity into their prototypes. Today, Hologram has launched some new hardware to go along with that program.

Nova is a cellular modem in a USB thumb drive form factor. It ships in a little box with a PCB that hosts the u-blox cellular module, two different antennas, a plastic enclosure, and a SIM card. The product is aimed at those building connected devices around single-board computers, making it …read more

Continue reading Review: New 3G and Cat-M1 Cellular Hardware from Hologram→

Emergency Cell Tower on a Budget

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Cell phone towers are something we miss when we’re out of range, but imagine how we’d miss them if they had been destroyed by disastrous weather. In such emergencies it is more important than ever to call loved ones, and tell them we’re safe. [Matthew May] and [Brendan Harlow] aimed to make their own secure and open-source cellular network antenna for those occasions. It currently supports calling between connected phones, text messaging, and if the base station has a hard-wired internet connection, users can get online.

This was a senior project for a security class, and it seems that the …read more

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Hologram.io Offers Developers Free Cell Data

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If you’ve been thinking of adding cellular connectivity to a build, here’s a way to try out a new service for free. Hologram.io has just announced a Developer Plan that will give you 1 megabyte of cellular data per month. The company also offers hardware to use with the SIM, but they bill themselves as hardware agnostic. Hologram is about providing a SIM card and the API necessary to use it with the hardware of your choice: any 2G, 3G, 4G, or LTE devices will work with the service.

At 1 MB/month it’s obvious that this is aimed at the …read more

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eMMC to SD Hack Rescues Data from a Waterlogged Phone

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How do I get the data off this destroyed phone? It’s a question many of us have had to ponder – either ourselves or for friends or family. The easy answer is either spend a mint for a recovery service or consider it lost forever.  [Trochilidae] didn’t accept either of those options, so he broke out the soldering iron and rescued his own data.

A moment’s inattention with a child near a paddling pool left [Trochilidae’s] coworker’s wife with a waterlogged, dead phone. She immediately took apart the phone and attempted to dry it out, but it was too late. …read more

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LTE IMSI Catcher

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GSM IMSI catchers preyed on a cryptographic misstep in the GSM protocol. But we have LTE now, why worry? No one has an LTE IMSI catcher, right? Wrong. [Domi] is here with a software-defined base transceiver station that will catch your IMSI faster than you can say “stingray” (YouTube video, embedded below).

First of all, what is an IMSI? IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber Identity. If an IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) is your license plate, your IMSI would be your driver’s license. The IMEI is specific to the phone. Your IMSI is used to identify you, allowing phone …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A Femtocell Repeater

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For a Hackaday Prize entry, [TegwynTwmffat] is building a cell phone signal repeater. This sort of device is commercially available, but the options are either expensive or, as with some units available for $30 on DealExtreme, obviously noncompliant with RF regulations. This project intends to create a cost-effective, hackable device that works properly and conforms to the right regulations.

The core of this system is a LimeSDR transceiver. This is a board we’ve seen before, and it has a few interesting features. Basically, the core of the LimeSDR is a programmable RF transceiver with coverage from 100kHz to 3.8GHz. There’s …read more

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Tearing Down the Boss Phone

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Poke around enough on AliExpress, Alibaba, and especially Taobao—the Chinese facing site that’s increasingly being used by Westerners to find hard to source parts—and you’ll come across some interesting things. The Long-CZ J8 is one of those, it’s 2.67 inch long and weighs just 0.63 ounces, and it’s built in the form factor of a Bluetooth headset.

A couple of months ago Cory Doctorow highlighted this tiny phone, he’d picked up on it because of the marketing. The lozenge-shaped phone was being explicitly marketed that it could “beat the boss”. The boss in question here being the B.O.S.S chair—a scanning …read more

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Linger Keeps You Around After You’ve Gone

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We’re not sure if this is art, anti-snooping guerilla warfare, or just a cheeky hack, but we do know that we like it! [Jasper van Leonen]’s Linger keeps the SSIDs that your cell phone (for example) spits out whenever it’s not connected to a WiFi network, and replays them after you’re gone.

Some retail stores and other shady characters use MAC addresses and/or the unique collection of SSIDs that your phone submits in probe requests to fingerprint you and track your movement, either through their particular store or across stores that share a tracking provider. Did you know that you …read more

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Upgrading RAM on a Nexus 5X

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A denizen of the venerable XDA forums reports that it is possible to upgrade the RAM of the Nexus 5X from 2GB to 4GB.  Having suffered the dreaded bootloop, [Cathair2906] decided to send their phone off to China for repair. The technician advised that since reflow of the CPU was necessary anyway, it makes sense to upgrade the RAM as well. This is due to the RAM actually being fitted directly on top of the CPU, a method amusingly known as Package on Package (SFW).

Upgrading RAM in the average computer is a relatively trivial task. Pop the case open, …read more

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