I ported Android 16 to my blind mother's keypad phone to save it from e-waste
Porting Android 16 to my blind mother's keypad phone
My mother relies on a Nokia 1280 because she's visually impaired and needs physical buttons. When it died, I bought a $400 Kapsys SmartVision3, a keypad phone with a talking interface. It ran Android 11 with a 2024 security patch, lagged constantly, and crashed. Kapsys said Android 12 was 'not possible.' So I decompiled their system, discovered they patched libinput.so to route key presses to TalkBack, and set out to flash a modern Android 16 GSI while keeping the keypad working.
I don't really take 'not possible' well.
- zersiax
Whew, rough :)
The whole "let's make an Android device for seniors/the blind/whoever and pin it on an ancient Android version/spec it really low but charge a premium" thing is unfortunately not new.
If you look at the Blindshell 2 and 3 you see plenty of this happening as well, not to mention way more expensive hardware like the BrailleSense Polaris which last time I checked ran on Android 5, scary "Mind updating right now please?" Google Play warnings and everything.
If it helps any, Talkback does have a set of keyboard commands it responds to, perhaps making your keypad buttons fire those means the implementation might be less brittle but given what you've already had to deal with maybe just not touching it ever again might be thebest thing at this point :)
Disclaimer: Actually blind Android user/developer
- e12e
Great story and good write-up. Might have enjoyed a little more detail in places - so it would be more easily repeatable for someone else - but perhaps that would belong in a readme.
I guess this proves that android is still usefully more open than iOS.
- jrmg
So nice to read a write up like this. Not afraid to use AI tools, but still writing up the project personally from the perspective of the human running the show.
- Doohickey-d
I think the trouble with GSIs is that they often don't have everything working. For OP: did you actually test that stuff works? things like phone calls, camera, mobile internet?
- haunter
Interestingly back in 2007 Google demo'd Android on a Blackberry-like keypad phone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg