[ndiddy]

What is the purpose of refurbishing old phones like this? Is it just to sell to enthusiasts/collectors? In most of the world, 3G has been shut down and 2G is either already shut down or in the process of being shut down, so you wouldn't be able to get much practical use out of the phone.

[jkestner]

Tell you what though, I would jump on a modern N95. I only really want a basic phone with a good camera, and sure, Python. Only need LTE and a thinner form factor.

[ricardonunez]

Have you checked the fair phone?

[numpad0]

It's probably just old stocks and newly built surplus parts. People don't care too much about book values of unsold items in parts markets in China and/or third world Asian countries.

[kotaKat]

fun thing is a bunch of hobbyists are running around with SDRs and old cell hardware and running low power experimental cell networks in their houses, questionable legality be damned.

OpenBTS/YateBTS/OsmoBTS and friends are useful here to spin up a working network and relive a happier time.

I've been meaning to get one of the tiny SDR cards like an XRTX and place it into a Pi or similar device and build a "mobile mobile hotspot" - LTE/5G in, 2G/3G out for old crap.

EDIT: I almost forgot, too. The N95 has Wi-Fi and a SIP client, so it's not completely useless even in 2026!

[lxgr]

SIP over Wi-Fi was so amazing on Symbian. Free international phone calls over Eduroam long before mobile Skype was a thing!

[Melatonic]

That's actually a very interesting idea - do you have any good resources for setting this up ?

There are some cars that can only access 3G for certain features and it would be cool to test around and see what my vehicle can do and if I want to disable it for reliability reasons

[rahimnathwani]

802.11b/g :(

[lxgr]

Live a little, allow horribly inefficient delightful retro device clients on a 2.4 GHz channel :)

WEP is where I’d personally draw the line, but the N95 fortunately supports WPA.

[vitally3643]

54Mbps is enough for anyone!

[joe_mamba]

My powerful Android tablet is limited to 72mbps link due to a quirk with the way the XDA developer implemented wifi support on the lineageos branch of my tablet, meaning the device can't see the region specific 5ghz band of the modem of my ISP is outputting, so it can only connect to the 2,4ghz band of that SSID meaning it's stuck to 72mbps.

And despite this, it works ok for what I used it: Brave web browsing, youtube via newpipe, Plex and Jellyfin streaming.

Like I'm bummed I don't get the Gigabit and Wifi 6 speeds of the router and my internet plan is theoretically capable of, but somehow 72mbps seems sufficient in most of my use cases of that device so .. yay advanced video codecs I guess!?.

[mschuster91]

> OpenBTS/YateBTS/OsmoBTS and friends are useful here to spin up a working network and relive a happier time.

Indeed, but good luck setting something like that up and not upset a legitimate cell tower or other user of a frequency band that can be spoken by LTE equipment.