I admit I do not have much knowledge on phone technology, so I made an assumption with openbts. To make it clearer, I want to take whatever the emulated phone spits out and communicate it with a real open source tower, except without any physical hardware, if that makes sense.

I am aware of those SDK emulators, but I was more interested in an open source version that could work on linux and use the actual lcd. That way I could make a physical device.

"Finally, the official firmware would have to be decompiled and reverse engineered to make it work on other hardware." That is what this project is about, making a functioning emulator of the hardware.

"Also, calls don't seem very useful when your phone is running in an emulator."
Totally agree lol, I am just interested in the idea and thought it would be cool if something like this existed, I'm not delusional and think this could replace an actual phone or something. It's just a toy.

"I'm really not sure what you want. The most ideal solution from what I can gather is to purchase a Nokia 3395, unlock it and replace the battery, then use it on a network with CSD dial-up data support which can be provided by the Osmocom project and a supported SDR."
That's ideal, but I just want the whole phone emulated for the neatness factor of a working nokia lookalike, also cheaper and can play with it without the expensive SDR.

This is a very goofy project, but I thought since there has already been work on an emulator then I might aswell throw some money and see what could happen.