A community to discuss Meshtastic (https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction)
It's not just about the frequency. It's about the modulation. You need new/additional radio hardware. Constantly being on another band eats more battery, too.
But as we've seen in busy areas, there's just not enough bandwidth with many nodes on LoRa. It'd get congested real fast if it were built-in to mainstream phones.
Using the hardware that's there, something like briar let's you get your messages routed through whichever means. Bluetooth mesh, internet or tor.
At least from what I can tell, Briar does not seem to be a very well-designed application. As it seems more like it's a decentralized social media almost rather than a messaging app.
I'm just learning about, but their website saying it connects through "[...] Wi-Fi or Tor" left me a bit upset.
The way I understand it is that it can connect to local devices with Bluetooth. It can connect to local devices on the same Wi-Fi network or it can connect over the internet using Tor. What it seems like meshtastic has over Briar is the fact that LORA is much longer range than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
LoRa could have many applications on phones or anything with a radio.
I would personally love to see the hardware on a phone for working with LoRa, so much so.
It used to! I think old analog cell phones were on that band.
Last year I had to replace my phone that had GMRS capabilities. It had that due to the hardware, an additional board was installed for this. This would be what is needed for something akin to that.