Newbie guidance: flashing a mobile phone?

[not_a_clue]

Hi all,

Hope this isn’t the world’s dumbest question - I’m new to the entire “home hacker” world of building custom media devices. That said, I know I want to work with CoreElec. So… some context for the question:

Been kicking around ideas to build some sort of Bluetooth enabled box with speakers that will connect to a phone but also stream by itself. Yes - just like all the commercial things already available!

I love the idea of SOC components, and indeed they’re plenty cheap when available. But by the time I’d thought through how to connect together a Bluetooth receiver, connect it to some sort of single board amp… some sort of power supply… ideally a screen (Yes! Because I don’t want a device that’s only configurable via an app) I felt that in large part I’d simply be reinventing a mobile phone.

So why not embed a cheap-ish mobile phone into a boombox? Because as they stand I would NOT be interested in navigating past all the “no SIM card detected” and related content and settings - which would no doubt want to keep sending notifications, or perhaps not work at all. I would want to essentially re-purpose a mobile phone as a dedicated media server, without any phone features.

Which leads me to my question:

Is/could it be possible to install CoreElec onto a mobile phone using a custom kernel such that once booted the device forgets all about being a phone and simply provides me with a touch screen enabled Bluetooth device with its own audio out, power, and charging circuits?

I might add that I would expect to tweak some code etc. and as a long time Linux user, am fairly familiar with things like flashing devices, installing an OS etc. At this stage I’m simply trying to determine whether what I’d like to do is even remotely sensible/achievable.

Comments and links obviously welcomed

[vpeter]

CoreELEC is a ‘Just enough OS’ Linux distribution based on Kodi technology for popular Amlogic hardware.

which means it runs on Amlogic SoC. So the answer is no: there is no CoreELEC for a phone.

[JohnBoyz]

Would not a cheap AMLogic box do what you want?
Put that in the box in place of the phone …

I am probably misunderstanding your requirements … you could use the phone or other device to access Kodi on the CE device.

[bikike]

I understand and appreciate CE is designed to be run on Amlogic powered devices and it does this very well for me. Having said that, I do find the idea to convert redundant mobile devices into something useful quite charming.
I assume that work on such a project has to be done outside the CE cosmos. Nevertheless I am curious about feasibility and would like to be updated. Please feel free to pm me.

[wizardknight]

Why not just deblote the phone, and install Kodi? Otherwise you would be better off going to a group like lineageos for help if you really want to make your custom phone rom.