It might even have to shun making calls because of the proprietary hardware/software stack. Is it possible to make an open/free mobile phone right now?
Alternatively you could use wifi, wireless and peer to peer. A very cheap instant grid/alt internet would be nice.
Interesting the way that Google have opted for their HDMI dongles. I'm surprised we haven't seen a similar offering from the Ubuntu camp. Do we really need the display?
Raspberry Pi and a battery?
> It might even have to shun making calls because of the proprietary hardware/software stack.
The cellular side can be on a separate baseband processor that talks to the outside world using good old fashioned AT commands[1] pretending to be a serial device. At that point you don't care how proprietary it is since any kernel and userspace can work with it. The current proprietary problem area is graphics (binary blobs abound) and often some other pieces (eg bluetooth, system initialization and bootloaders)
OpenMoko[2] did do open phones, although IIRC there was one proprietary piece.