If it's a one-time thing, Prusa Slicer (and some other slicers too, probably) allow adding and subtracting simple shapes. So if, for example, you need to add a hole for a screw, you can do it directly in the slicer without messing with (and breaking the mesh of) an STL.
I read about lithium-ion and LiFePO batteries on Adafruit a few years ago, and saw similar projects elsewhere. The bootloader stuff is on Maemo wiki, along with tools to flash the device (which is also a bit of dark magic arts to me).
TBH, I didn't / don't exactly have a path. I started with Raspberry Pi (and Linux for the second time) 10+ years ago, which led me to Arduino, which led me to low-voltage electronics in general. At the same time, I had an unreasonable dislike of google, which led me to flashing LineageOS on a test phone, which then became my main phone, which eventually led to PinePhone, which didn't work out, but was fun.
It wasn't really abandoned so much as killed by PayPal.
The project used PayPal to gather downpayments, PayPal decided to lock the funds for months (almost a year or maybe longer IIRC) because they saw money coming in but no confirmation of goods coming out. And, you know, when it comes to big companies, no explanation is sufficient, you are guilty of something because some heuristic said so, so the funds were locked, legal threats didn't work (try threatening a company with the power of a small/medium country), and by the time they got their money back, key people who were going to work at a discount to cover key milestones had moved on.
This seems like weird revisionist history or I missed something. I never got a dime back that I spent on the Neo900, which I assumed they spent on their personal lifestyles and travel while trying and failing to design and manufacture a board.
If there was actually a holdup of funds that killed the project, and eventually the funds were released, that's an even worse story. I didn't think there could be a worse story. It would mean that the project fell apart while they were waiting on cash, then when they got it they just treated it like a personal windfall. IIRC I ended up out $1.5K on the thing.
Paypal released the funds to the project, not to the people making the downpayments. Paypal never returns money immediately to anyone, they sit on it for months while they "investigate".
I don't know who you are or where you were but the paypal problems were pretty well announced and _I_ was there. The project was already facing delays because a key person who was needed to make the board layouts was held up with the also now dead DragonBox Pyra handheld.
I have no idea where you think the money went, how much you think there was, but it was a constant game of trying to drum up enough activity to gain attention of potential customers to bring in enough down-payments to pay the salaries of the small number of people working on the project while having enough money to buy parts. The money went into salaries, parts, nobody bought hookers or blow with it, and certainly nobody got anything but stress out of that project in the end. I believe Joerg Reisenweber paid a lawyer out of pocket to try to get PayPal to release the funds.
I looked, but TBH, not sure what to make of "genuine" and "OEM" claims for a battery for a 16–year-old device (or 10-year-old if you count compatible Lumias). Descriptions usually do not mention manufacture dates either.
> not sure what to make of "genuine" and "OEM" claims for a battery for a 16–year-old device
They're lies, but the batteries work. There were Chinese lines manufacturing knockoff BL-5Js, and there may still be one or two, or just a bunch of crates filled with old ones. Source: still use an N900, but just for podcasts.
> 10-year-old if you count compatible Lumias
Worse, those Lumia BL-5Js aren't actually compatible. The slots cut into the battery aren't wide enough to fit into the N900. Unless you're willing to cut apart the battery itself, they're useless.
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