Open Phone-Form-Factor Track
Open Phone-Form-Factor Track: scope, decisions, requirements, evidence, risks, and traceability for the Agent OS programme.
Open Phone-Form-Factor Track
This specification treats hardware support as an evidence programme with explicit documentation rights, recovery paths, quality gates, and replacement strategies.
Table of Contents
- Purpose and Scope
- Normative Position
- Operating Model
- Requirements
- Failure and Degradation
- Evidence and Acceptance
- Implementation Obligations
- Risks and Open Questions
- Related Documents
- Planning Reference Anchors
Purpose and Scope
Area: Hardware Programme.
This specification treats hardware support as an evidence programme with explicit documentation rights, recovery paths, quality gates, and replacement strategies.
This document owns the semantics implied by Open Phone-Form-Factor Track. It does not assert that every described subsystem already exists. It defines the target model, constraints, evidence needed to trust an implementation, and the boundary with adjacent documents.
Normative Position
- Score candidates separately for documentation, redistributable firmware, recovery, debug, IOMMU, display, camera, modem isolation, power control, longevity, unit availability, and vendor responsiveness.
- Run QEMU, documentation-first boards, open phone form factor, semi-open quality, Pixel 9, camera laboratory, and future custom-device tracks in parallel.
- A candidate is purchased only after SKU and documentation gates pass.
Operating Model
The operating model is contract-first and evidence-driven. A component declares its authority, resources, lifecycle, error model, cancellation and timeout behavior, observability, version, and compatibility promise. Backends are replaceable only when the same conformance suite passes and no forbidden platform type leaks into portable layers.
Implementation proceeds through a reference model or mock, deterministic QEMU evidence where relevant, documentation-first physical hardware, and quality-hardware evidence. Pixel 9 adapters remain quarantined according to ADR-0004.
Requirements
- R01. Score candidates separately for documentation, redistributable firmware, recovery, debug, IOMMU, display, camera, modem isolation, power control, longevity, unit availability, and vendor responsiveness.
- R02. Run QEMU, documentation-first boards, open phone form factor, semi-open quality, Pixel 9, camera laboratory, and future custom-device tracks in parallel.
- R03. A candidate is purchased only after SKU and documentation gates pass.
- R04. Specify normal, partial, denied, timeout, cancellation, restart, upgrade, and permanent-failure behavior.
- R05. Expose structured diagnostics without leaking secrets or vendor-specific implementation details.
- R06. Link material unknowns to a claim and, when testable, an experiment with an owner and gate.
- R07. Update affected documentation and task data when evidence changes the model.
Failure and Degradation
Degradation must be explicit rather than accidental. The system reports capability absence, reduced quality, unavailable provider, stale data, or unsafe condition through typed states. It must not silently fall back to broader authority, unrestricted legacy execution, unverified firmware, lossy data migration, or irreversible agent action.
Recovery defines what state is retained, reconstructed, re-enrolled, compensated, or intentionally discarded. Unsupported hardware or providers are rejected at binding time where possible.
Evidence and Acceptance
- Completed target dossier.
- Reproducible recovery and first-boot evidence.
- Second-vendor portability result.
- Evidence records target identity, hardware revision, firmware, source commit, toolchain, configuration, seed, timestamps, artifacts, expected result, actual result, and reviewer.
- Acceptance requires the referenced tasks to meet their own criteria; prose completion is not implementation completion.
Implementation Obligations
Risks and Open Questions
- “Open source” may cover only kernel sources, not datasheets, firmware, ISP or secure boot.
- Consumer boards can disappear or revise silently.
- A strong SoC without recovery/debug access is a weak research target.
- Open-question rule: an unanswered high-impact question becomes a claim/experiment record and cannot be hidden in meeting notes.
- Stop rule: work stops or changes track when legal rights, recovery, debug access, safety, or the required evidence path is unavailable.
Related Documents
- Product vision
- Portable system architecture
- Portable device-service contracts
- Hardware portfolio
- Decision gates
- Claim register
Planning Reference Anchors
Bring Up Sequence
AOS-OPEN-050 — Reach native early boot on PinePhone Pro; AOS-OPEN-050 — Reach native early boot on PinePhone Pro; AOS-OPEN-051 — Implement PinePhone Pro board and peripheral services
Connectivity
AOS-OPEN-053 — Enable open-phone Wi-Fi and Bluetooth baseline
Display Input Audio
AOS-OPEN-052 — Validate open-phone display, touch, and audio experience
Librem Role
AOS-OPEN-072 — Evaluate Librem 5 as modular-radio/manufacturing prior art
Modem Role
AOS-OPEN-057 — Integrate open-phone modem hardware with native cellular service; AOS-CELL-070 — Integrate cellular data/SMS into open-phone product experience
Pinephone Pro Role
AOS-OPEN-050 — Reach native early boot on PinePhone Pro; AOS-OPEN-050 — Reach native early boot on PinePhone Pro; AOS-OPEN-094 — Refresh the PinePhone Pro native phone-form dossier
Power Path
AOS-PLAT-041 — Implement power, thermal, battery, charging, and suspend service contracts; AOS-OPEN-055 — Measure and improve open-phone idle, suspend, wake, charging, and thermal behavior
Support Definition
AOS-OPEN-056 — Validate open-phone update and recovery