Hacking the NEC P3 mobile phone, 1990's style 

I worked at one of the companies where these was manufactured. I was a 'Board Tester'. The board testing section would test each circuit board. Listening in to other peoples phone conversations was a favourite of the repair techs because they were the only ones that had all the gear to be able to do it. They had to be careful that the repair boss did not catch them doing it because the company frowned upon such activity. Another favourite of theirs was using the HP spectrum analysers they had on their work benches to listen into the phone conversations because if you had a good enough aerial, you could tune into the frequencies and listen in :). The P3 brings back good memories of working there.

The little snippet of AMPS control channel at the end brings back happy memories...

That was my 1st phone. I remember the 8 - 10 hours standby, 45 - 60 minute talk time on the standard battery. One of the next phones I had actually allowed you to display the channel number & frequency you were talking on. Of course in those days I had a uniden handheld scanner which of course would scan the 800 Mhz range quite happily. I might have accidently tuned in on that frequency and accidently heard other peoples calls until it changed to a different tower. I had no idea about cloning or any of those illegal activities back then :D

Fantastic Memories! Many Thanks! I was a cell tech in the mid eighties with the old AMPS system in the US. Had almost every manual for almost any Manufacturer and their successive models until they went digital. Trained with, Motorola OKI NEC Mitsubishi Audiovox E.F. Johnson Nokia ( Radio Shack ) And a couple of others that evade my memory today, ah Uniden made a few. Cannot forget Marconi Instruments who made our cellular test set ( a few called them Macaroni who were Motorola die hards).

All that phreaking stuff seemed so cool when I was a kid, blue boxes and all that. But it was nearly all obsolete by that time. 😢

The flip antenna was a game changer. It can hold the call for a few seconds without a battery so one can drop and change the battery like changing magazines in an automatic pistol.

It's crazy how insecure many older technologies are.

i used to love the old analogue phones, they were too easy to hack or listen to with a radio scanner. good times lol

Enjoyed this one, took me back to the good old days when a phone did what you wanted it to do: receive and make phone calls without any fuss :)

I’ve got one of these with full test mode , lots of fun back in the day

I spent many hours in the 90s listening to people's phone conversations with my Yupiteru hand held scanner, great times.

Ah the old Italian ROM switch. One thing though was it was Woz who was interested in learning. Jobs was the business head who wanted to sell them. In the UK this caused all kinds of bother with newspapers listening into calls. Also remember they updated the network so you if the same NAM/ESN connected to one tower then minutes later appeared hundreds of miles away it would block them.

I'm surprised you call the OKI phone compromised. From all I've heard so far, that was some user friendly manufacturer.

The older motorolla bag phones (4800x?) were even easier to put into test mode. From what I remember, it was just connecting two pins on the data connector. I've saved one that was modified after finding it for sale at a radio rally (hamfest) in the early 2000's, after the analogue network was switched off. I think there is even a photocopied motorolla bible with it and some parallel port connection lead.

9:37 Even now it’s possible, in a way, by changing a caller ID using your own VoIP to GSM bridge, and so making your phone calls look like other persons ones

never heard of fingerprinting on uk networks, but all you needed was a pair from another far away area, as checking was done at a local level, so a pair from say Birmingham would happily work in London. Pair scanning in your area to swap with someone from another area became a thing. The original contract owner would soon cry foul at the end of the month and they would obviously see the pair being used all over England at the same time and have to admit it was cloned leaving the contract owner off the hook. If the pair was only used for a few calls then maybe not....

I remember to puting long code into the Motorola (pre startak) phone and do the scanning as well when i was a kid. I felt like a SPY. :) Thanks for the vid. Thumb up.

I’ve got one similar, slightly newer NEC MP5A1A2 Got it in 2012 and you could just get it to power on, battery was cooked then, it’d be pretty neat to make your own base station and be able to play around with it

Wait so they just used analog modulation in early cellphones? So its really just a UHF radio? Thats very cool, I did not know that!

I love and miss my NEC P3. It was honestly the best phone I ever owned

you can hear signals from a near by phone tower when u had it in scan mode i guess they haven't changed the rf frequencies that cell phones use for calling at least

Isn’t that Russell Wong in the film clip from tear down?

You mentioned the movie takedown, was this one of the phones that Kevin mitnick used? Or at least one similar? Or was that all dramatized for the movie?

I had this phone and it had extra antenna also owe them over £140s hahahaha

I hope we get to see you do some work on the old Kyocera QCP-6035.

my first was a Motorola, after that stuck with the 3310 for a long time. i still have it today. you also had this flute from a pack of cereal wat they used to trick phones in amerika hehe

Hi, very interesting video, I would have a problem removing the screws as I cannot find a suitable screwdriver. Would you know the name of the screw head? I've been trying for days, but nothing!

Thank you for timely, info.

You are a genius

So if I find a time machine it’s RCL %12 to open squelch and then start hacking someone’s calls 😅😅 was it really that easy if you knew the programming codes?

This was exactly what i was looking for

I got a p3 and I made the dongle but I can’t find the software. Does anyone know where I could find the p3test.exe file?

Wow! 🔥

I have several old phones from 80s and 90s anything you can do with them ?

I still have mine. Looks and sounds exactly the same but mine is labeled NEC P300

I have one, battery is good but won't boot up...any suggestions?

absolutely fascinating - you don't realise at the time how insecure these things are ( as a average joe anyway)

Any way one might be able to get these old phones on the air again?

This is an 1G phone. Which means you can make and receive calls. And that's it. ...Except you can't 🙃

I still have mine just need a battery 😅😅