@kensanata there’s some fun stuff out there like the pico-8: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Separately: I think with phones, it’s hard because the hardware is all closed, integrated, proprietary. I remember part of the reason my friends and I used to tinker when we were kids was because we were pretty poor but trying to assemble the coolest machine we could from the parts we could scrounge. I imagine it would be a different world if you could build a phone out of components the way you can build a pc.