This is really nice! It so happens that I’ve just bought a $10 4G dongle [1], guess I’ll have to check what’s inside now :-)
[1]: like this: https://img.joomcdn.net/ea91b4418997d83d802339fad0bbcf878b9d...
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Aside, but it appears some MSM8916-based dongles run Android UI despite having no display: https://github.com/u0d7i/uz801#screenshots
I did some funny software porting on one of those dongles. At one point, I had it connected to a battery pack for power, joined onto my home WiFi for LAN/WAN access... and had the stick running the Open5GS cellular core stack, allowing my CBRS LTE base station to serve users on an in-home private LTE network by connecting to the cellstick over WiFi for management. (No, the stick's own cellular modem wasn't being used here at all. Just scavenged compute for the tiniest LTE core!)
So... so cursed.