Using ThinkPad T480 as a mobile phone

Posted by marosgrego 4 hours ago

Using ThinkPad T480 as a mobile phone(grego.site)

87 points | 31 comments

jubilee33 18 minutes ago|

Great work! I have 4 t480s...and I buy new ones to cannibalize rather than replace the parts as works out to be still cheaper. they are the last of the period that still have an extra memory slot so can be upgraded and put to good everyday use.

This just makes it perfect as I only use the handphone for 2FA and no longer need the dying and hard(er) to find OnePlus 6/T

Thank you!

Scene_Cast2 2 hours ago||

I love the hackability of Thinkpads circa that generation.

binsquare 1 hour ago|

it's incredibly repairable. I still use the t480 for modern workloads because I've been able to switch out the battery, the fan, the keyboard with fairly abundant aftermarket parts.

sudopluto 1 hour ago||

sadly my t480's usb c port is no longer able to charge the device, do you know of a way to fix it without replacing the mobo / getting god tier soldering skills? i'm kinda attached since i did a bunch of upgrades like two heatpipes and glass touchpad, sad to see my laptop from college die for a reason like the port dying

jubilee33 6 minutes ago|||

This happens often on old ones. Its kind of a consumable part unless you get a magnetic usb-c adaptor. the sub-board is replaceable but does need soldering....not god tier skills at all though, I think most people with some soldering experience could do it as it's just a few pins, but I guess it's not plug and play. It's really the one weakness in this model.

orhmeh09 9 minutes ago||||

I have the same issue. For all the talk of USB-C's supposed design for redirecting damage from the ports to the connector, it failed pretty badly here for probably thousands of people. Never had these issues with a barrel connector.

sb057 45 minutes ago|||

You probably have a bad Thunderbolt chip. No way around it besides SPI flash (which is honestly pretty easy):

https://gitlab.com/MobileAZN/lenovo-t480-thunderbolt-firmwar...

summermusic 42 minutes ago||

Is there an easy way to make any generic computer work as a phone without hacking it?

tarpitt 39 minutes ago|

Plug in an EG25-G USB module. It has good driver suppport on linux as this is the same modem that's in the pinephone. About $60 plus the antennas. It also gives you GPS.

I'm actually working on this right now. I made a case for the module + antennas if you want.

EDIT: oops I hadn't read the article yet LOL. But the wisdom about the USB module still applies. There are also adapters for mpcie or m.2 or whatever modules to convert them to USB modules. Also you probably want to have a module or adapter with a sim card tray.

I bought mine off of aliexpress and also bought the LTE antennas. You need a separate antenna for GPS as well.

Lastly, with some of these adapters, the sim card goes in backwards relative to how you normally think it goes in. This had me stuck for a couple hours.

yjftsjthsd-h 57 minutes ago||

> You can even use Android apps natively with Waydroid

Is that what's shown in the video? Or just another phone app that coincidentally looks like Android?

mid-kid 45 minutes ago|

That's the gnome dialer, yeah.

marosgrego 4 hours ago||

ThinkPad T480 can be used as a fully featured mobile phone, supporting calls, SMS and mobile data.

fuzzfactor 1 hour ago||

Nice, I know these mainly had a spare NVMe slot right next to the WiFi, in case you had the optional WWAN adapter, and the essential SIM card holder itself is also there already regardless. The separate unused (apparently non-standardized) cellular antenna connectors are also there and taped off from the factory otherwise.

I would have never imagined that the Lenovo WWAN approach would not even support audio calling, good findings and excellent workaround :)

What I did was use a 2242 size NVMe SSD in that WWAN slot for extra storage, plugged in right next to the standard Wifi card.

Unfortunately I can not get this 500GB NVMe SSD to boot in the Lenovo WWAN slot, even though it works good in a regular NVMe SSD position. Even with functional boot files on the main working SSD which point to the proven OS on the NVMe in the WWAN slot.

Still good for additional SSD storage at least.

And it's good to know you figured out how to get WWAN calling working better than new on an older laptop, that's hacking that non-tech people can see how worthwhile it is :)

HardwareLust 2 hours ago||

Great hack! Is it possible to use a Bluetooth headset?

marosgrego 2 hours ago||

Of course! You can connect it to any audio source a sink. I had fun with piping music to phone calls with friends.

HardwareLust 1 hour ago||

Nice, thanks!

dvorka 45 minutes ago||

I still use my beloved t480 ... and there is still more amazing things it can do :) thank you!

PunchyHamster 54 minutes ago||

It has whitelist for wireless cards ? That's just evil

mmh0000 37 minutes ago||

Lenovo has whitelists for both wifi and cell cards. It's highly annoying.

A decade ago, I had a Lenovo Yoga 2. The Wi-Fi card it came with only supported 802.11g, or something old and outdated at the time. I learned about the whitelist the hard way when I bought a decently (then) up-to-date wifi card to upgrade, and the computer refused to boot.

But! I refuse to let a computer tell me no... So, after many many (too many) hours of reading forums, dumping firmware, flipping bits, and pushing firmware, I got the stupid card to work. And of course I took no notes, so if I had to do it again, I'd be starting from scratch.

vitally3643 42 minutes ago||

Supposedly it's for FCC compliance. Makes perfect sense if you believe it, but I'm not super convinced.

fsflover 1 hour ago||

Alternatively you could use a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone), which allows to freely choose the OS and supports ordinary mobile use cases. It is small, but if you connect a screen and keyboard, you get the full PC.

yjftsjthsd-h 28 minutes ago|

Between a T480, Librem 5, or Pinephone, I wonder which is most powerful. I have a soft spot for my Pinephone, but fast it is not.

portugueasey 1 hour ago||

I’m disappointed in the lack of a Trigger Happy TV skit, but I’ll let it slide for reminding everyone that repairable laptops exist, and are still great

Ambolia 4 hours ago|

A setup like this but in phone size would be ideal. The free software mobile world has really been a dumpster fire from the beginning.

daledavies 1 hour ago||

Yes, whoever can shrink this down to the size of something that would fit in your pocket would make a killing. Imagine not only being able to make phone calls, but use productivity software and even browse the internet.

mmh0000 35 minutes ago|||

May your wish be granted:

https://www.amazon.com/GPD-Pocket-LPDDR5X-Bluetooth-Handheld...

plus this: https://gpdstore.net/gpd-pocket-4-4g-lte-module/

tarpitt 28 minutes ago||

I have been following this one for a while, but I have never seen anyone report on its status in linux.

emerongi 1 hour ago||||

A big issue is that the keyboard would take up valuable screen estate.

mypalmike 1 hour ago|||

I can imagine it! It should be called the Imagine Phone, or iPhone for short.

fuzzfactor 31 minutes ago||

Nope they just called it a smartphone when you could hook it up to your laptop and connect the phone by infrared, USB, or later Bluetooth when it appeared. Using the phone manufacturers software that was naturally free for Windows 98 but also W2K, XP and even Mac sometimes.

You really want the headphones when you're using the laptop as a phone because it can have audio feedback otherwise, especially if using the built-in laptop mic.

iPhones just weren't that smart when they finally arose, you did have to use your imagination but it wouldn't get you far in actual computer interaction like smartpones are supposed to, compared to a Motorola or Sony-Ericsson true smartphone.

You can only imagine how much better it would have been if more choices would have maintained their leadership and there were still other options besides only the relatively shoddy Android and iOS.

adrian_b 2 hours ago||

That modem or a few others can be used with some of the small SBCs, which have a smartphone size or even a smaller size.

If you connect then to some battery pack with a USB charger, you have a mobile solution, though one more cumbersome than a real smartphone.