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I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker with

I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker with it and stuff. But I have this sinking feeling that the Librem 5 is just vaporware, or worse, that it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. On the former, the thing is that the affordences for bad UI design are a LOT tighter on mobile devices and it's taken a long time for desktop Linux to get their game together. Plus, all of Librem's other stuff is over priced and a bit cheap looking, and I'm not sure I want a phone like that.

TylerE 7y ago
I'm getting a lot of Ouya vibes from this project. Good UI/UX is hard, and "open platform" might get some kickstarter monies, but it isn't really something 99.9% of people care about.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  At the very least, they won't be trying to chase the fickle gamer market. It seems like Librem 5 is trying to cater to hackers, who would be the most tolerant of deficiencies in the UX.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    That's a pretty small market, and they're on the wrong end of the economy-of-scale curve to begin with.
RandomBacon 7y ago
It doesn't look like vaporware to me. The videos and updates seem legit. > it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. Have you even looked into the project? It's running Gnome, on Linux, all the regular apps are there. Check out the videos in this link, it's not half-baked: https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3/ https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3...
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  I have been following this for a while and am likely to buy it if/when it is released. Even though that will require me to change to a much more expensive cell carrier. The software seems good. After all, it is just GNU/Linux/GNOME - all you need to do is get a C compiler and hardware drivers and then it just works. An older video did show major stutter during scrolling but that can probably be mitigated. What's concerning is the hardware side of things. I don't think many people expected it to actually ship on the original planned release date, but the delay has been getting quite large. All the stuff on their blog is about software running on the dev kit; we have no idea what progress is like on the hardware. Turning it from that bare PCB into a phone is a lot of work. Their marketing guy also released a video a month or two ago comparing the Librem boot time to that of an old Android phone, complete with OEM crapware. If they have nothing better to do than make such stupid comparisons, then it is hard to believe it isn't vaporware.
  - RandomBacon 7y ago
    I highly recommend looking into an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator). There are inexpensive pre-paid plans that use the major cell network towers, and you get the same speeds. I recommend Straight Talk; their plans are very cheap for the data you get, but there might be other cheaper services. I agree it's taking them a while, but I've never built a phone before, so I am cutting them slack. I find it easy to believe that it is not vaporware. They have videos of working devices, something that can be replicated in mass, not renders etc. They've shipped dev boards.
- logicprog 7y ago
  I've been following them for only a few months, sure, but I've seen that link and others, and watched many of their videos. It's extremely concerning that they use a stylus, they clearly don't have multitouch support, copy/paste is based on a control key, screen tearing is significant and some of the UIs aren't scaled properly, I haven't seen them do text selection and the keyboard didn't give feedback. That's just a few issues. Also, the videos are legit for the software, but they are all running on the Dev Kit, not the actual phone hardware, which we haven't seen and have no idea what the progress on is like. So the hardware kinda does look like vaporware. In the link you have, for instance, the best they can do is take a fake circuit board image and fade it into a fake phone image. That's not encouraging.
alexkavon 7y ago
> On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. I don't understand what the problem is exactly. There already exist phones that have the latest apps. I don't think Librem is trying to be a market leader, just build a device that's more open, so to say. The demographic isn't Google or Apple users, it's those who wish more control. They're not going to fix the app gap problem because it's not a real problem, it's a meaningless metric for phone advertisements. These videos are to demonstrate that they are working on filling the mobile usability gaps as well as building a phone that can run Linux software, not just mobile UI software.
- comex 7y ago
  I agree with most of your post, but lacking apps is definitely a real problem. As someone who preordered the Librem 5, I know I'm not going to get an operating system with the polish of iOS or Android. I'm willing to live with that; the phone is attractive for other reasons, both practical (easy to hack) and ideological (freedom!). Heck, even if the final product turns out so poorly that I end up never using it at all, I won't be too upset: even if my $600 didn't end up benefiting me personally, at least it went toward a serious attempt at achieving a worthy cause (an open phone). Still, I would like to try actually using the phone as a daily driver, and for that to be viable, I'll need to be able to access the services I depend on. Luckily, I don't use that many services, and many of the ones I do use mostly have web versions; as much as I hate the experience of using webapps, I should be able to get by with them. But I can think of several that I'll have trouble accessing at all: - 1Password - iMessage (I guess I could try to set up the Matrix bridge.) - Slack? Discord? (Both have desktop web versions, but not sure if they have usable mobile web versions. That said, I have bitlbee set up to connect to Discord already and I know there are bridges for Slack.) I'm lucky that none of these seem to be hard blockers for me... but other people may not be so lucky. And, well, if things work but are a poor experience, at some point I'll probably get fed up with it and switch back to my iPhone. Some people are more ideologically committed than I, but many are less. Though I'm not counting on it, I would love if Librem's OS gained momentum and became a sustainable ongoing project, rather than dying off as a prototype like so many prior attempts (webOS, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, etc.). For that to happen, it will need users.
danShumway 7y ago
It's Linux -- if it's missing something, I can just build it. And I don't have to write my code in something horrible like Java, or boot up an emulator to test things, or submit my code to an app store, or figure out how to root it so I can remove all the bundled spyware. If I write a command line utility, I don't need to have a separate codebase between my computer and my phone. It's what I have always wanted my smartphone to be -- just a computer that I completely control, with access to a phone network. It might be terrible. I'm kind of on the fence about it. The hardware needs to be reliable, the drivers need to be reliable, it needs to be compatible with common carriers. There a few other things. But the software on this device just needs to be passable. I don't need it to be particularly good. When thinking about the Librem phone, mentally move it out of the iPhone category and into the Raspberry Pi category. Even if it comes out and gets terrible reviews and the software is all half-baked, even if it can't replace my normal phone for most things, I still might be tempted to buy one even just as a secondary device.
- dangus 7y ago
  Besides the hardware kill switches and replaceable battery, I think this experience is going to compare poorly to LineageOS, which has a lot of the same software freedom and privacy advantages with a much more refined and complete operating system. This phone is months from shipping and we haven’t even been shown multi touch have we? Is that even a feature being promised? Ultimately the difference between this and the Raspberry Pin is tangible - $614 to be exact. I know that Purism isn’t out to sell a mainstream phone, but my doubts are seriously strong that they’ll sell enough of these to justify the effort. I can build anything that’s missing in Linux as long as someone invents the fountain of youth so that I can spent a few thousand engineering years on implementation.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    I look forward to leaving LineageOS behind. First of all, Lineage builds for particular phones are abandoned frequently, because they are made by a single maintainer as a hobby and he can get bored and leave. The fact that the Android development environment is so arcane, and the hardware usually closed in various ways, makes it hard for anyone else to pick the project up. Secondly, there are a lot of things that one can do in an ordinary desktop-Linux environment that are much more complicated in the Android world. On my old Nokia N900, I frequently wrote Python scripts that interacted with the system D-bus to automate things, and I did not have to install a big development environment or download someone else’s solution.
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
A lot of Nokia N900 users were very happy with a “barebones list of apps” and the only reason that they had to eventually abandon that phone was because the closed hardware required a specific kernel version and certain other libraries could not be upgraded for interoperability and security’s sake. If the Librem offers a more upgradable device, then that is already enough for the hacker community. Most of my time is either spent in a web browser, Emacs, or sending SMS. Also, many Android users who eschew Google apps and install LineageOS with F-droid as their app source, would probably find Librem a comfortable enviroment.
- dangus 7y ago
  I totally understand that these phones are very much intended for highly tech literate people with specific priorities, but Librem will not see success selling a $650 phone that can essentially only barely use a texting app, a web browser that already exists, and stumble its way through Gnome like these videos are doing. I also need to challenge you to look up a video of LineageOS and compare it to these videos. LineageOS would be like going forward 20 years into the future compared to this. This is a very rough tech demo at best, and this thing is supposed to ship this year. LineageOS is giving you 95% of the privacy and freedom benefits while giving you a nearly infinitely better software library and UI along with it. As a $100 tech toy phone I can see success but not $650. That’s iPhone money.
  - RandomBacon 7y ago
    All the other Librems are Linux devices too, and thus have the same limitations. They've seen success selling those Linux laptops. > 95% of the privacy and freedom This phone is for the people who want the other 5%. It's not trying to compete with the iPhone. > stumble its way through Gnome like these videos are doing. Odd. I didn't see that at all in those videos.
    - dangus 7y ago
      The difference is that Librem laptops can run any OS like a standard PC. Many users perhaps don’t even use PureOS and put something else on. It’s this software or nothing, essentially. I realize it’s open and that we could theoretically make our own, but phones are still an incredible beast to tame at this point. This is going to work with basically zero carrier features and won’t even activate on important cellular networks like Verizon. I don’t expect it to compete with the iPhone, but I have doubts that it will be a stable business for Purism. I guess we will find out. I do see the stumbling. Have they shown us multi-touch at any point? Did you notice how this is a phone that depends on a control key to copy and paste text? Every single finger touch screen UX convention that Apple sent down to us from the heavens in 2007 has been bafflingly ignored in this effort. It’s a great start but this is a phone they’re shipping this year and they can’t even tell us many of the specs.
beatgammit 7y ago
I'm also stoked about the PinePhone. The PinePhone goals are a little more modest, and so is the price. If the Librem 5 fails to be interesting, at least it'll have a competitor at a much lower price. I'm holding off preordering either, but I may order one or the other next year once the bugs and whatnot have been ironed out. I'm stoked to have a phone that I can tinker with like I do my Linux desktop.

TylerE 7y ago

I'm getting a lot of Ouya vibes from this project. Good UI/UX is hard, and "open platform" might get some kickstarter monies, but it isn't really something 99.9% of people care about.

Apocryphon 7y ago
At the very least, they won't be trying to chase the fickle gamer market. It seems like Librem 5 is trying to cater to hackers, who would be the most tolerant of deficiencies in the UX.
- TylerE 7y ago
  That's a pretty small market, and they're on the wrong end of the economy-of-scale curve to begin with.

RandomBacon 7y ago

It doesn't look like vaporware to me. The videos and updates seem legit. > it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. Have you even looked into the project? It's running Gnome, on Linux, all the regular apps are there. Check out the videos in this link, it's not half-baked: https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3/ https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3...

the_pwner224 7y ago
I have been following this for a while and am likely to buy it if/when it is released. Even though that will require me to change to a much more expensive cell carrier. The software seems good. After all, it is just GNU/Linux/GNOME - all you need to do is get a C compiler and hardware drivers and then it just works. An older video did show major stutter during scrolling but that can probably be mitigated. What's concerning is the hardware side of things. I don't think many people expected it to actually ship on the original planned release date, but the delay has been getting quite large. All the stuff on their blog is about software running on the dev kit; we have no idea what progress is like on the hardware. Turning it from that bare PCB into a phone is a lot of work. Their marketing guy also released a video a month or two ago comparing the Librem boot time to that of an old Android phone, complete with OEM crapware. If they have nothing better to do than make such stupid comparisons, then it is hard to believe it isn't vaporware.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  I highly recommend looking into an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator). There are inexpensive pre-paid plans that use the major cell network towers, and you get the same speeds. I recommend Straight Talk; their plans are very cheap for the data you get, but there might be other cheaper services. I agree it's taking them a while, but I've never built a phone before, so I am cutting them slack. I find it easy to believe that it is not vaporware. They have videos of working devices, something that can be replicated in mass, not renders etc. They've shipped dev boards.
logicprog 7y ago
I've been following them for only a few months, sure, but I've seen that link and others, and watched many of their videos. It's extremely concerning that they use a stylus, they clearly don't have multitouch support, copy/paste is based on a control key, screen tearing is significant and some of the UIs aren't scaled properly, I haven't seen them do text selection and the keyboard didn't give feedback. That's just a few issues. Also, the videos are legit for the software, but they are all running on the Dev Kit, not the actual phone hardware, which we haven't seen and have no idea what the progress on is like. So the hardware kinda does look like vaporware. In the link you have, for instance, the best they can do is take a fake circuit board image and fade it into a fake phone image. That's not encouraging.

alexkavon 7y ago

> On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. I don't understand what the problem is exactly. There already exist phones that have the latest apps. I don't think Librem is trying to be a market leader, just build a device that's more open, so to say. The demographic isn't Google or Apple users, it's those who wish more control. They're not going to fix the app gap problem because it's not a real problem, it's a meaningless metric for phone advertisements. These videos are to demonstrate that they are working on filling the mobile usability gaps as well as building a phone that can run Linux software, not just mobile UI software.

comex 7y ago
I agree with most of your post, but lacking apps is definitely a real problem. As someone who preordered the Librem 5, I know I'm not going to get an operating system with the polish of iOS or Android. I'm willing to live with that; the phone is attractive for other reasons, both practical (easy to hack) and ideological (freedom!). Heck, even if the final product turns out so poorly that I end up never using it at all, I won't be too upset: even if my $600 didn't end up benefiting me personally, at least it went toward a serious attempt at achieving a worthy cause (an open phone). Still, I would like to try actually using the phone as a daily driver, and for that to be viable, I'll need to be able to access the services I depend on. Luckily, I don't use that many services, and many of the ones I do use mostly have web versions; as much as I hate the experience of using webapps, I should be able to get by with them. But I can think of several that I'll have trouble accessing at all: - 1Password - iMessage (I guess I could try to set up the Matrix bridge.) - Slack? Discord? (Both have desktop web versions, but not sure if they have usable mobile web versions. That said, I have bitlbee set up to connect to Discord already and I know there are bridges for Slack.) I'm lucky that none of these seem to be hard blockers for me... but other people may not be so lucky. And, well, if things work but are a poor experience, at some point I'll probably get fed up with it and switch back to my iPhone. Some people are more ideologically committed than I, but many are less. Though I'm not counting on it, I would love if Librem's OS gained momentum and became a sustainable ongoing project, rather than dying off as a prototype like so many prior attempts (webOS, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, etc.). For that to happen, it will need users.

danShumway 7y ago

It's Linux -- if it's missing something, I can just build it. And I don't have to write my code in something horrible like Java, or boot up an emulator to test things, or submit my code to an app store, or figure out how to root it so I can remove all the bundled spyware. If I write a command line utility, I don't need to have a separate codebase between my computer and my phone. It's what I have always wanted my smartphone to be -- just a computer that I completely control, with access to a phone network. It might be terrible. I'm kind of on the fence about it. The hardware needs to be reliable, the drivers need to be reliable, it needs to be compatible with common carriers. There a few other things. But the software on this device just needs to be passable. I don't need it to be particularly good. When thinking about the Librem phone, mentally move it out of the iPhone category and into the Raspberry Pi category. Even if it comes out and gets terrible reviews and the software is all half-baked, even if it can't replace my normal phone for most things, I still might be tempted to buy one even just as a secondary device.

dangus 7y ago
Besides the hardware kill switches and replaceable battery, I think this experience is going to compare poorly to LineageOS, which has a lot of the same software freedom and privacy advantages with a much more refined and complete operating system. This phone is months from shipping and we haven’t even been shown multi touch have we? Is that even a feature being promised? Ultimately the difference between this and the Raspberry Pin is tangible - $614 to be exact. I know that Purism isn’t out to sell a mainstream phone, but my doubts are seriously strong that they’ll sell enough of these to justify the effort. I can build anything that’s missing in Linux as long as someone invents the fountain of youth so that I can spent a few thousand engineering years on implementation.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  I look forward to leaving LineageOS behind. First of all, Lineage builds for particular phones are abandoned frequently, because they are made by a single maintainer as a hobby and he can get bored and leave. The fact that the Android development environment is so arcane, and the hardware usually closed in various ways, makes it hard for anyone else to pick the project up. Secondly, there are a lot of things that one can do in an ordinary desktop-Linux environment that are much more complicated in the Android world. On my old Nokia N900, I frequently wrote Python scripts that interacted with the system D-bus to automate things, and I did not have to install a big development environment or download someone else’s solution.

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

A lot of Nokia N900 users were very happy with a “barebones list of apps” and the only reason that they had to eventually abandon that phone was because the closed hardware required a specific kernel version and certain other libraries could not be upgraded for interoperability and security’s sake. If the Librem offers a more upgradable device, then that is already enough for the hacker community. Most of my time is either spent in a web browser, Emacs, or sending SMS. Also, many Android users who eschew Google apps and install LineageOS with F-droid as their app source, would probably find Librem a comfortable enviroment.

dangus 7y ago
I totally understand that these phones are very much intended for highly tech literate people with specific priorities, but Librem will not see success selling a $650 phone that can essentially only barely use a texting app, a web browser that already exists, and stumble its way through Gnome like these videos are doing. I also need to challenge you to look up a video of LineageOS and compare it to these videos. LineageOS would be like going forward 20 years into the future compared to this. This is a very rough tech demo at best, and this thing is supposed to ship this year. LineageOS is giving you 95% of the privacy and freedom benefits while giving you a nearly infinitely better software library and UI along with it. As a $100 tech toy phone I can see success but not $650. That’s iPhone money.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  All the other Librems are Linux devices too, and thus have the same limitations. They've seen success selling those Linux laptops. > 95% of the privacy and freedom This phone is for the people who want the other 5%. It's not trying to compete with the iPhone. > stumble its way through Gnome like these videos are doing. Odd. I didn't see that at all in those videos.
  - dangus 7y ago
    The difference is that Librem laptops can run any OS like a standard PC. Many users perhaps don’t even use PureOS and put something else on. It’s this software or nothing, essentially. I realize it’s open and that we could theoretically make our own, but phones are still an incredible beast to tame at this point. This is going to work with basically zero carrier features and won’t even activate on important cellular networks like Verizon. I don’t expect it to compete with the iPhone, but I have doubts that it will be a stable business for Purism. I guess we will find out. I do see the stumbling. Have they shown us multi-touch at any point? Did you notice how this is a phone that depends on a control key to copy and paste text? Every single finger touch screen UX convention that Apple sent down to us from the heavens in 2007 has been bafflingly ignored in this effort. It’s a great start but this is a phone they’re shipping this year and they can’t even tell us many of the specs.

beatgammit 7y ago

I'm also stoked about the PinePhone. The PinePhone goals are a little more modest, and so is the price. If the Librem 5 fails to be interesting, at least it'll have a competitor at a much lower price. I'm holding off preordering either, but I may order one or the other next year once the bugs and whatnot have been ironed out. I'm stoked to have a phone that I can tinker with like I do my Linux desktop.