New FP2 Motherboard

The NOR flash ICs cost only around 5€ and the are from good quality, made by winbond and they also consume just 1mA and that’s under full operation. The SMC can even write/read them at the same time

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I can now post renders that will look almost final, beacuse now all the important components are placed. There will still be changes, but only some filter capacitors here and there some temperature sensors. If you have any questions, I can answer them for you.

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Here is a view of the board without soldermask so that it appears semi-transparent. Be aware that this is for show-purpose only, beacuse such a transparent board is impossible to manufacture. But it shows all the traces in the PCB.


And in this render I removed one RAM chip and the CPU to expose the traces for the RAM signals

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I now start to get to the point where I’m almost finished and maybe some of you know somebody that can look over it. I think there are quite some things I did wrong, so my next stept would be to let sb have a look at the whole board. If somebody likes to look over it, I can send him the files, I did everything in KiCat, but KiCat if free and opensource and even available on Windows and Linux.

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It would be great if someone knew sb at fairphone, because I still need some help with my design, so every help is needed to complete this project.

Have you tried at these channels?

There is at least one Fairphone employee lurking around. :smirk:

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I talked to them and they were interested, but I need to talk an engineer at fairphone, because I need some technical help and some dimensions of the PCB.

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@Leo_TheCrafter any news on the support through the Fairphone team?

Could update the OP we the current hardware specifications as this thread got quite long and I reckon only daily users know all details

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Thx, for your request.
Here are the detailed specifications:

  • Intel Atom x7-z8750

  • 8Gb LPDDR3 800mHz

  • Sierra Wireless AirPrime WP7607 Cat-4 LTE

  • Texas Instruments WL1837MODGI WiFi+BLE

  • 128Gb Micron eMMC

  • Microchip MEC1703 SMC

  • Texas Instruments TLV320AIC3212 Audio IC

  • Molex SIM + SIM/MicroSD Combo

  • Texas Instruments LP8758-E0 CPU Buck converter

  • Texas Instruments BQ25601 Charging IC

  • Texas Instruments BQ51025 QI WPC compilant charger

  • 2x Texas Instruments LM26420 Buck converters for siderails

  • 2x Winbond W25Q64FW BIOS/UEFI

These are all the important ICs on the board.
Thanks for reminding me

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@Leo_TheCrafter just saw your reference to your post in answer to my request

:+1: great, I just some little questions

that means that you either use 2 SIMS or one SIM plus MicroSD, don’t you?
what about GPS?

btw. how do you get along with the Fairphone guys? The posts in Why I won't buy a Fairphone - #25 don’t sound that promising?

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I used one SIM slot and one connector that can handle 1 SIM and 1MicroSD, both at the same time.

The module has got GNSS, GPS, Galileo and Beidou support.

There are a lot of posts, can you please quote that specific post ?

don’t get this, so you can use 2 SIM plus 1 MicroSD? I’m confused by mentioning slot and connector

here we go:

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Basicly these are 2 connectors, one of them got one SIM slot the other one got 2 slots, but is still a conector

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I hope I provided enough information, so you can evaluate if you want to support my project. I can always provide schematics and even the board layout files

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To the fairphoneteam:

If you don’t like my project, just because you don’t like the choice of my CPU, I can change that, I just want to use a CPU that has got datasheets that are availeble for everyone or at least one that isn’t manufactured by qualcomm. If you have a better choice for a CPU, I would be able to change my design

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Did you have any hint from Fairphone that they didn’t “like” your project? I think the idea was to get help from them regarding sourcing components in a fair way. Maybe they (mis)understood your project as competition?

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“We all are on the forums, thus they would answer there. But keep in mind what I said, if there is silence it means that you are currently making a “Leophone” compatible with Fairphone 2 parts, and not a “Fairphone 2 Leo edition”.”
-Johnny

Johnny wrote me this, he is Supervisor at the support.
Yes, maybe they undestand my project as competition, but I want to cooparate with them to make a new motherboard, I do not want to compete

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OK, I thought you were creating a phone from scratch and I kind of forgot you “just” wanted to replace the motherboard… So I guess they see you as a competitor who could be selling its own platform instead of them (even though it’s not the case).

Then they should hire you :slight_smile: but you’d have to switch the CPU to one they’re used to (i.e. probably Qualcomm) because it’s a really big hassle to develop drivers for other CPU architectures (not to mention the proprietary binary blobs) and moving out of Android OS for a small company making phones is heading for big troubles (see the failures of FirefoxOS, UbuntuTouch and other great OSes).

I read that as bad news though :disappointed_relieved: but it makes sense for a company not to shoot itself in the foot…

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The reason I choose this CPU is because the datasheets are availeble to everyone and that there are devices that run the CPU with similar hardware. Software development shouldn’t be too hard

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Understandable statement from their side of view.
But nevertheless there should be cooperation between you an the Fairphone guys from my side of view.
Your design will just stand for an optional upgrade for the nerds of us. Most of them know what they do if they get one of your motherboards, so there shouldn´t be to much questions for the support team and even then, they could reply that it is a community based upgrade. Support will be done here at the forum.
Nothing to loose for the company, on the contrary it could make it into some tech based magazines like the c´t i. e. what would be like an advertising for Fairphone.

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