Technology

Nice I guess, it adds 4g to the older T-deck. I guess with a SIP client app you could use it as a voice phone. The processor is an ESP32-S3 which has wifi and BLE though the Lilygo article doesn't mention either of those. I almost bought a used T-deck last year but figured it was another thing I didn't have a real use for.

I'd like to see a receive-only POCSAG pager built into a thing like this. I don't know to what extent 1-way pager services still exist in the US, but the idea is that it's a system that sends text messages in the SCA subcarrier of FM broadcast radio stations or sometimes other classes of transmitter. It has mostly been displaced now by cellular phones, but some people like doctors on call still use it, as it is supposed to be more reliable, plus the FM signal penetrates buildings better than cell signals do.

For me though, the main idea is privacy. It is receive-only, so there is no always-on connection sending your location anywhere. People can send you a text and if you're in the coverage area of the FM station, you receive it and can call the person back (in the old days, by finding a landline phone) or whatever. Some of the more expensive plans had regional or nationwide coverage, by broadcasting the message on a whole network of FM stations.

POCSAG itself is a digital protocol for which many software implementations exist, and it doesn't look too hard to write one. So the main challenge is having an RF receiver in the T-deck that gets a frequency where there is a pager service operating in your area.

I don't understand the attraction of small slow epaper displays. I'm fine with regular displays in a thing this size. I'd like to have a 13+ inch epaper tablet but no FOSS ones exist right now afaik.