Society is getting pretty used to the idea that the data and applications on phones are completely controlled by large corporations.
Purism is working hard to change that with the Librem 5.
Because of the market capitalization and duopoly control of the phone OS vendors, the hardware tool vendors use are trapped into one of those two OSes (Android or iOS).
GPS debugging as a case example
We’ve been working on antenna tuning in the Librem 5 for awhile to get the best possible reception. The GPS antennas are especially important because their signal level is so close to the noise floor.
The available GPS antenna tuning procedure is a GPS simulator, but the simulator requires feedback from the phone OS to help tune the antenna. If you are on Android the simulator vendor provides an apk that converts the NMEA to a format that the tools can use to do the tuning.
So now we have a tool to do the tuning but no way to use it.
Interesting little conundrum and solution. I’d be interested to hear some time in the future - when nothing else more pressing is on the radar - about testing and signals and antennas. The RayZone-1800 must have given all kinds of lessons on what works and what doesn’t and where to compromise. A possibility to understand L5 (its “ability envelope”) much more in depth than almost any other phone.
Unless I’m missing something, I believe it should be possible to tune antennas using purely analog design methods, without requiring any software. Tools like the NanoVNA v3 are available for tuning and impedance-matching antennas with frequencies between 50kHz and 6GHz, which includes the 1.5GHz GPS band.