8 ms·

Librem 5 phone shows the cost of being different

124 points by Gedxx 7y ago

Thorrez 7y ago
So it's effectively unusable due to power management problems. Weird that they're selling something so broken. Let's hope they can fix the power management.
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  You have to opt in for an early batch to receive one right now. The regular release is planned for Q2 2020. Some problems mentioned in the article have been already fixed, by the way.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  The article describes in detail why this is such a challenging project: > ... It is hard to do something truly different in the smartphone industry. Companies, especially smaller companies, are all working from the same parts bin with the same manufacturing partners. You take your Qualcomm SoC, your Samsung display, and your Sony camera sensor—and you take a flight to China and visit Foxconn, which, in addition to manufacturing, will even do engineering for you if you want. Smartphones are so samey because they have an established, for-hire supply chain that has a certain way of doing things, and it's much cheaper, faster, and easier if you just "go with the flow" and do what everyone else is doing. > Big companies like Samsung and Apple have enough money, control, and connections to move the supply chain in whatever direction they want ... > ... If you haven't noticed, open source smartphone hardware is not a thing that existed before now. There have been phones that run open source builds of Android, but those are full of closed-source firmware from non-open components. The usual hardware companies cautiously guard their hardware designs and drivers, and Purism's hardline stance on open source has ruled out almost the entire established smartphone supply chain ... > ... "When we first approached hardware manufacturers almost two years ago with this project most of them instantly said 'No, sorry, impossible, we can not help you'." Others warned us, that it could never work, that it was too complicated, 'the industry does not do that,' and so forth." > The thing to keep in mind here is that Purism has taken on an absolutely gargantuan task. It somehow scraped together a new supply chain of mostly open source components, it came up with a smartphone design from scratch, and it is building its own smartphone distribution of Linux. Two years is not enough time to do this. The OS and app package is not nearly finished, and it lacks basic smartphone functionality. The hardware is nearly finished, but you'll have a hard time taking advantage of it right now since the power management isn't really implemented, and support for things like the cameras are non-existent. If you really want open source smartphones to be a thing, though, this is where you need to start. The Librem 5 is a proof of concept. > "Open source at any cost" really feels like the mantra the Librem 5 was made with. That cost is going to be significant, since 1) the need to go out and build its own supply chain means Purism is doing this with zero economies of scale, and 2) the company needs funding to build the OS. Get ready for some sticker shock: the Librem 5 is currently $750. That's up from the $700 early-bird price it had in 2019, and when the "Evergreen" 1.0 version launches, the price will go up again to $800. This is high-end smartphone money—and remember, you're not really buying a finished product. The Librem 5 is only for true believers in the idea of an open source smartphone ...
  - m4rtink 7y ago
    >open source smartphone hardware is not a thing that existed before now See, this is something I really dislike about the Librem 5 - they are pretty much trying to rewrite history to pain themselves in a better light. "We are the first ones tryin to do this, no one ever tried before, so all those bad decissions we did that make our phone unusable are not our fault!" This is of course incorrect, as they totally fail to mention the Neo FreeRunner project, a open source smartphone from ~2009: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner I've had it and many issues it had pretty much mirror the issues Librem 5 is having at the moment - problematic hardware component, buggy calling and issues with power management. Mybe thats why Purism fails to mention it, to hide the fact they managed to repicate the mistakes 10 years later ? Still even http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunnerwith http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunnerwith all its faults the Neo FreeRunner pretty much jumpstarted the open mobile community, with many of its users then bein involved in the Maemo and Sailfish OS communities and now with the Pinephone or Fxtec Pro1. For that reason it makes me sad how Purism fails to mention the Neo FreeRunner & paint themselves as being first. It's really rude to all the hard work the open mobile community did since then & that they are heavilly building on.
    - Multicomp 7y ago
      > Foxtex Pro Do you get autocorrected from Fxtec Pro1 ? I've not heard of Foxtex, ducking for it appears to show speakers and monitors, but not phones.
      - m4rtink 7y ago
        Indeed, made a typo here, fixed. :)
    - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
      Neither Maemo nor Sailfish were "open mobile" in terms of hardware. They ran on the same kind of commodity mobile-phone hardware fraught with privacy risks as any mainstream phone, and the appeal of Librem has been that its design was going to overcome that. Also, while the software on Maemo and Sailfish devices was mostly open and hackable, the actual UI layer and some of the stock apps were closed-source.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  The expectation is that these are software-only issues that can ultimately be fixed. Weirdly enough, there really is a case for buying the phone now "as a show of support" to the Librem folks - so that they can actually work on fixing this.
- kop316 7y ago
  It is actually much better now. I have a Birch phone and it is very close to being a viable daily driver. The only thing that stops me from using the Librem 5 as a daily driver is that MMS does not work. I think when they get to mass production batch, the Librem 5 will be a usable replacement phone.
  - ac29 7y ago
    Hows power management? Can you get 24 hours on a charge?
    - kop316 7y ago
      Power management is much better now. It stays much cooler than before. Right now its around 4-5 hours on screen time. Assuming they upgrade to the 3500 man battery, it could reasonably go all day.
gridlockd 7y ago
The unintended consequence of this phone being modular and, in theory, upgradable, is interesting. Some people wouldn't mind having a thicker phone as a consequence. Unfortunately, the case is just awful and there's no excuse for this. Low standards - as seen in many consumer-facing FOSS products - must be to blame here.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Sounds like an opportunity to deliver high quality FOSS products. Why did the major manufacturers fail to capture this market?
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    The vast majority of customers do not care, while the remainder isn't willing to pay the premium to make it worthwhile.
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    They're just not a big enough market to target, and there are advantages to locking someone in to your platform.
znpy 7y ago
wait, so is it purchasable right now ?
- djaychela 7y ago
  Their site [1] says 'buy now, get in 6 months', so sort of... [1] - https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
jokoon 7y ago
They really need to lower their specs to make this more affordable. I have no problem using slower hardware, on the contrary, it saves battery. Maybe they planned a cheaper version? I'm also a little curious why they didn't choose an open android fork.
- tsukurimashou 7y ago
  why don't you go with the pinephone then?
  - jokoon 7y ago
    I agree that the pinephone is cheaper, but the specs are still too high for my taste.
    - stamps 7y ago
      $150 for the PinePhone is a lot cheaper. I'm not sure how much cheaper you want it to be.
      - jokoon 7y ago
        There are cheaper phones, it's not hard to find pretty good phones that are around 70 euros.
        ta999999171 7y ago
        Why don't you use those ones, out of curiosity?
        jokoon 7y ago
        Because they're often full of malware or bloated with other stuff.
        7y ago
fouc 7y ago
We should all buy a librem 5 phone as a show of support.
- m4rtink 7y ago
  Or maybe rather buy the Pine Phone that comes from a company with actual embedded/mobile hardware experience (Pine64 boards, Pinebook, etc.) and based on early prototypes seems to work fine ? Not to mention costing less & not being shrouded in tons of marketing like Librem 5 does.
  - alex_duf 7y ago
    Both should be encouraged
    - dangus 7y ago
      After reading the article it seems like Purism made fundamental design mistakes and started selling this phone to the public long before it's ready. I don't think that should be encouraged. If you follow their blog and product description page and then place an order you're just about hoodwinked into buying something that's claimed to be at least mostly working. I don't think that's ethical, even if the hardware and software itself is.
      - darau1 7y ago
        I just want my devices to be as upgradeable and future proof as my desktop is. If giving my money to either of these companies brings me to closer to that dream, I'll do it. Though the pinephone's $150 is a much better way to show my support than the librem's $750+
        beatgammit 7y ago
        Yup, and at $150, I might just buy multiple. I want one to tinker with, and if it works well, I might ditch my current phone and get one for my kids as an emergency phone. I might give them a gifts. At $800, I might buy one, but it has to be really good.
dangus 7y ago
> The most frustrating part of the Librem 5 right now is easily the power management, which isn't nearly complete. The phone is dead nearly all the time, because so many basic charging features we normally take for granted don't work. First, the phone doesn't seem like it has any kind of idle power mode. It is hot from the minute you power on until the battery dies, even with the screen off. You can't leave the phone on the charger overnight to charge it—you'll wake up to a dead phone. I think what is happening is that there's no trickle charge, so the phone charges to full, then stops charging, then the battery dies. Yikes. In my mind, this isn't actually a phone in its current form. It's like a small desktop computer put into a plastic case with a battery. I have never seen the case up close until this point. It truly looks like a crude hobby project, almost to the level of being 3D printed. I have no idea why Purism didn't leave most of the hardware design to someone who already has a generic modern smartphone done and completed, then they could have added on to it by swapping out some proprietary bits. Instead we get this Frankenstein of a project, sold to the public long before it's done (along with marketing copy that makes the company look unethical - there should be big warnings on the store page about how far along this project truly is and what you're getting for your $750). The worst part about this is that it makes all open source projects look bad. It makes them look like a bad compromise. And that's not true at all - a lot of open source projects are great alternatives, and many are even better than their proprietary competitors. $750 gets you an iPhone with sophisticated cameras, the fastest mobile processor on the market, and software support for 5 years if not longer. Walk into stores across the country to get service and support. What Purism is telling us is, essentially, if you want to take a stand against the proprietary world, you have to give up everything. You have to use a chunky, ugly, crudely assembled phone. You have to give up acceptable power management. And you still have to pay $750, all of this on the cusp of Apple releasing a new $399 phone according to rumors, Google selling $399 phones, and budget brands like Motorola providing an absolutely acceptable experience for under $200 on some models.
- vxNsr 7y ago
  > I have no idea why Purism didn't leave most of the hardware design to someone who already has a generic modern smartphone done and completed, then they could have added on to it by swapping out some proprietary bits. Either you didn’t actually read the article or you’re being intentionally obtuse. They very clearly state the reason that they couldn’t use the regular supply chain. All the usual suppliers refused to work within the “confines” of OSS. They were lucky to find a CPU that works at all within their definition and needs. If you read the article you’d know that the author spends the entire first page explaining the compromises that were made in favor of OSS. There is no supply chain for this sort of project. Purism is the first company to actually attempt it. Look, I have no horse in this race, I’m a happy Win and iOS user, I have no plans on changing that. But I commend the effort and definitely believe in the mission. OSS hardware is a compromise right now! That’s just a fact. People like you who can only see the flaws and refuse to understand how we got here are unhelpful.
teddyh 7y ago
I again quote /u/whiteinge on Reddit¹: “Let's assume the project is over-promised and will be late and under-deliver. […] None of that is as bad as NO smartphone alternative to Google and Apple, let alone an open and privacy-focused alternative. I'm a Linux user and I very much want a Linux phone. And there has been so, so many false starts and near misses over almost a decade. My patience and goodwill for Purism and the Librem 5 is effectively infinite. It's not over until they shutter the doors or can the project. Until that happens I will continue to hope they limp over that finish line no matter what.” 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/dm2smy/is_the_librem_5_being_targeted_in_a_viral_media/f54gaur/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/dm2smy/is_the_libre...
- xorcist 7y ago
  There are also the Pinephone and perhaps the Fairphone, for varying degrees of openness. Maybe a few others even? Neither of these are completely in the open but all three are probably good enough for making an enthusiast operating system run. They are all variations of relatively well known, sometimes even documented, hardware, with lots of necessary peripherals with non-free firmware blobs. Some make efforts to only communicate with these non-free peripherals over standardized protcols, which is the "good enough" part. For community oriented mobile operating systems, 2020 is probably going to be the best year yet. Price is also a factor. Many more people will tinker with a $200 phone than a $800 one. It's probably better to cut corners with your first model in order to hit a price point that gets enthusiasts on board. Raspberry Pi did that and have gotten incrementally more open with time.
  - teddyh 7y ago
    For me, the first one to recieve RYF certification gets my support. As far as I know, all (or at least many) of them claim to be aiming for it, but none have gotten it yet.
    - seba_dos1 7y ago
      I'm not aware of any that claims to aim for it other than the Librem 5, which already got a "tentative recommendation" and is on track to be certified when released: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-on-the-free-software-foundations-ethical-tech-gift-giving-guide/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-on-the-free-software-foundati...
creekpld 7y ago
Did they solder the vibration motor to the motherboard?
codedokode 7y ago
The hardware is fine but the price... Isn't that too much for a toy?
- stamps 7y ago
  The PinePhone is a much better price ($150) and quite a fun toy as the OSes develop to a much more usable state.
solarkraft 7y ago
The article doesn't mention the PinePhone, which I consider pretty shoddy journalism. The PinePhone is a competing project with slightly lower specs, similarly good FOSS purity, that is slimmer, ships today and costs 1/5 of the price. They clearly market it as being for tinkerers at this point and all the software support Pine64 is working on is getting the kernel running, leaving the rest up to the 5 (!) involved distribution communities.
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  Disclaimer: I work for Purism. I have received a PinePhone (early "BraveHeart" batch - the regular one doesn't ship yet, mind you) a few days ago. Although the specs seem "slightly lower" on the paper, I think it's important to note that Librem 5 has twice as fast RAM bandwidth and its GPU easily goes rounds around the PinePhone's. The eMMC is also around 30% faster on the Librem 5, and its killswitches are actually usable in everyday scenarios. The difference is quite easily perceivable when using both devices with the same software. It is a pretty neat device, sure, but I think it's important to be honest about how those phones compare to each other. Also, PinePhone requires firmware blobs being stored on your rootfs for WiFi, Bluetooth, and (optionally) camera autofocus. Librem 5 has them stored on separate flash, making the peripherals that need them self-contained as per FSF recommendations. Both devices are pretty FLOSS-friendly in my book, but some people do care about that difference.
  - ntw1103 7y ago
    More information on blobs for the PinePhone https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straight-pinephone-misconceptions/ https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straigh... "The WiFi module communicates with the CPU over SDIO and BT is over UART – neither of these connections provide direct access to CPU memory." Also, for the modem, it doesn't have any shared memory with the CPU. Communication is via USB and I2S.
    - seba_dos1 7y ago
      Yes; the interfaces are pretty much the same as on Librem 5 - the differences are in WiFi/BT firmware blob loading and the fact that L5 has them on replaceable M.2 cards, while on PinePhone they're soldered to the board. Librem 5 also has a separate GPS module, while PinePhone uses the one integrated to the GSM modem. (PinePhone BraveHeart edition also has some sensors connected via the modem, but AFAIK that's going to change in later revisions)
chris_wot 7y ago
So if they are using Gnome, no wonder they don’t have icons on the front screen. They’ll need a Gnome extension for that.
songshuu 7y ago
FTA: "You can make phone calls, and you can receive text messages, but you can't start a new conversation with a contact." Did the author actually make a phone call? If so, what was the quality? FTA : "There's no way to access the camera." So no idea if the device actually will take a photo or video or know what the quality of those outputs will be. Considering that an iPhone 11 Pro would cost $60 per month over 2 years, could some of us Patreon this project at like $30 a month and let them hire up enough to land this? I have doubts that a sales model vs the incumbents is going to have enough runway. Given the quote from teddyh / whiteinge, maybe it's just better to do more upfront funding instead of expecting open projects to follow the same physics as venture capital.
- kop316 7y ago
  You can make phone calls. The call quality is fine. I don't think its VoLTE yet, but its the same quality you get on an Android phone. You can also start a text via contacts too now. There's been a lot of progress in a month. Source: I have a Burch phone, and made a phone call. I don't know if you realized this, but that's exactly what they did. They made a kickstarter on their website to finance making the phone. They released some of the hardware iterations to earlier backers, and made sure they understood that its a beta product now.

124 points by Gedxx 7y ago

So it's effectively unusable due to power management problems. Weird that they're selling something so broken. Let's hope they can fix the power management.

seba_dos1 7y ago
You have to opt in for an early batch to receive one right now. The regular release is planned for Q2 2020. Some problems mentioned in the article have been already fixed, by the way.
webmobdev 7y ago
The article describes in detail why this is such a challenging project: > ... It is hard to do something truly different in the smartphone industry. Companies, especially smaller companies, are all working from the same parts bin with the same manufacturing partners. You take your Qualcomm SoC, your Samsung display, and your Sony camera sensor—and you take a flight to China and visit Foxconn, which, in addition to manufacturing, will even do engineering for you if you want. Smartphones are so samey because they have an established, for-hire supply chain that has a certain way of doing things, and it's much cheaper, faster, and easier if you just "go with the flow" and do what everyone else is doing. > Big companies like Samsung and Apple have enough money, control, and connections to move the supply chain in whatever direction they want ... > ... If you haven't noticed, open source smartphone hardware is not a thing that existed before now. There have been phones that run open source builds of Android, but those are full of closed-source firmware from non-open components. The usual hardware companies cautiously guard their hardware designs and drivers, and Purism's hardline stance on open source has ruled out almost the entire established smartphone supply chain ... > ... "When we first approached hardware manufacturers almost two years ago with this project most of them instantly said 'No, sorry, impossible, we can not help you'." Others warned us, that it could never work, that it was too complicated, 'the industry does not do that,' and so forth." > The thing to keep in mind here is that Purism has taken on an absolutely gargantuan task. It somehow scraped together a new supply chain of mostly open source components, it came up with a smartphone design from scratch, and it is building its own smartphone distribution of Linux. Two years is not enough time to do this. The OS and app package is not nearly finished, and it lacks basic smartphone functionality. The hardware is nearly finished, but you'll have a hard time taking advantage of it right now since the power management isn't really implemented, and support for things like the cameras are non-existent. If you really want open source smartphones to be a thing, though, this is where you need to start. The Librem 5 is a proof of concept. > "Open source at any cost" really feels like the mantra the Librem 5 was made with. That cost is going to be significant, since 1) the need to go out and build its own supply chain means Purism is doing this with zero economies of scale, and 2) the company needs funding to build the OS. Get ready for some sticker shock: the Librem 5 is currently $750. That's up from the $700 early-bird price it had in 2019, and when the "Evergreen" 1.0 version launches, the price will go up again to $800. This is high-end smartphone money—and remember, you're not really buying a finished product. The Librem 5 is only for true believers in the idea of an open source smartphone ...
- m4rtink 7y ago
  >open source smartphone hardware is not a thing that existed before now See, this is something I really dislike about the Librem 5 - they are pretty much trying to rewrite history to pain themselves in a better light. "We are the first ones tryin to do this, no one ever tried before, so all those bad decissions we did that make our phone unusable are not our fault!" This is of course incorrect, as they totally fail to mention the Neo FreeRunner project, a open source smartphone from ~2009: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner I've had it and many issues it had pretty much mirror the issues Librem 5 is having at the moment - problematic hardware component, buggy calling and issues with power management. Mybe thats why Purism fails to mention it, to hide the fact they managed to repicate the mistakes 10 years later ? Still even http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunnerwith http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunnerwith all its faults the Neo FreeRunner pretty much jumpstarted the open mobile community, with many of its users then bein involved in the Maemo and Sailfish OS communities and now with the Pinephone or Fxtec Pro1. For that reason it makes me sad how Purism fails to mention the Neo FreeRunner & paint themselves as being first. It's really rude to all the hard work the open mobile community did since then & that they are heavilly building on.
  - Multicomp 7y ago
    > Foxtex Pro Do you get autocorrected from Fxtec Pro1 ? I've not heard of Foxtex, ducking for it appears to show speakers and monitors, but not phones.
    - m4rtink 7y ago
      Indeed, made a typo here, fixed. :)
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    Neither Maemo nor Sailfish were "open mobile" in terms of hardware. They ran on the same kind of commodity mobile-phone hardware fraught with privacy risks as any mainstream phone, and the appeal of Librem has been that its design was going to overcome that. Also, while the software on Maemo and Sailfish devices was mostly open and hackable, the actual UI layer and some of the stock apps were closed-source.
zozbot234 7y ago
The expectation is that these are software-only issues that can ultimately be fixed. Weirdly enough, there really is a case for buying the phone now "as a show of support" to the Librem folks - so that they can actually work on fixing this.
kop316 7y ago
It is actually much better now. I have a Birch phone and it is very close to being a viable daily driver. The only thing that stops me from using the Librem 5 as a daily driver is that MMS does not work. I think when they get to mass production batch, the Librem 5 will be a usable replacement phone.
- ac29 7y ago
  Hows power management? Can you get 24 hours on a charge?
  - kop316 7y ago
    Power management is much better now. It stays much cooler than before. Right now its around 4-5 hours on screen time. Assuming they upgrade to the 3500 man battery, it could reasonably go all day.

gridlockd 7y ago

The unintended consequence of this phone being modular and, in theory, upgradable, is interesting. Some people wouldn't mind having a thicker phone as a consequence. Unfortunately, the case is just awful and there's no excuse for this. Low standards - as seen in many consumer-facing FOSS products - must be to blame here.

imtringued 7y ago
Sounds like an opportunity to deliver high quality FOSS products. Why did the major manufacturers fail to capture this market?
- gridlockd 7y ago
  The vast majority of customers do not care, while the remainder isn't willing to pay the premium to make it worthwhile.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  They're just not a big enough market to target, and there are advantages to locking someone in to your platform.

znpy 7y ago

wait, so is it purchasable right now ?

djaychela 7y ago
Their site [1] says 'buy now, get in 6 months', so sort of... [1] - https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

jokoon 7y ago

They really need to lower their specs to make this more affordable. I have no problem using slower hardware, on the contrary, it saves battery. Maybe they planned a cheaper version? I'm also a little curious why they didn't choose an open android fork.

tsukurimashou 7y ago
why don't you go with the pinephone then?
- jokoon 7y ago
  I agree that the pinephone is cheaper, but the specs are still too high for my taste.
  - stamps 7y ago
    $150 for the PinePhone is a lot cheaper. I'm not sure how much cheaper you want it to be.
    - jokoon 7y ago
      There are cheaper phones, it's not hard to find pretty good phones that are around 70 euros.
      - ta999999171 7y ago
        Why don't you use those ones, out of curiosity?
        jokoon 7y ago
        Because they're often full of malware or bloated with other stuff.
        7y ago

fouc 7y ago

We should all buy a librem 5 phone as a show of support.

m4rtink 7y ago
Or maybe rather buy the Pine Phone that comes from a company with actual embedded/mobile hardware experience (Pine64 boards, Pinebook, etc.) and based on early prototypes seems to work fine ? Not to mention costing less & not being shrouded in tons of marketing like Librem 5 does.
- alex_duf 7y ago
  Both should be encouraged
  - dangus 7y ago
    After reading the article it seems like Purism made fundamental design mistakes and started selling this phone to the public long before it's ready. I don't think that should be encouraged. If you follow their blog and product description page and then place an order you're just about hoodwinked into buying something that's claimed to be at least mostly working. I don't think that's ethical, even if the hardware and software itself is.
    - darau1 7y ago
      I just want my devices to be as upgradeable and future proof as my desktop is. If giving my money to either of these companies brings me to closer to that dream, I'll do it. Though the pinephone's $150 is a much better way to show my support than the librem's $750+
      - beatgammit 7y ago
        Yup, and at $150, I might just buy multiple. I want one to tinker with, and if it works well, I might ditch my current phone and get one for my kids as an emergency phone. I might give them a gifts. At $800, I might buy one, but it has to be really good.

dangus 7y ago

> The most frustrating part of the Librem 5 right now is easily the power management, which isn't nearly complete. The phone is dead nearly all the time, because so many basic charging features we normally take for granted don't work. First, the phone doesn't seem like it has any kind of idle power mode. It is hot from the minute you power on until the battery dies, even with the screen off. You can't leave the phone on the charger overnight to charge it—you'll wake up to a dead phone. I think what is happening is that there's no trickle charge, so the phone charges to full, then stops charging, then the battery dies. Yikes. In my mind, this isn't actually a phone in its current form. It's like a small desktop computer put into a plastic case with a battery. I have never seen the case up close until this point. It truly looks like a crude hobby project, almost to the level of being 3D printed. I have no idea why Purism didn't leave most of the hardware design to someone who already has a generic modern smartphone done and completed, then they could have added on to it by swapping out some proprietary bits. Instead we get this Frankenstein of a project, sold to the public long before it's done (along with marketing copy that makes the company look unethical - there should be big warnings on the store page about how far along this project truly is and what you're getting for your $750). The worst part about this is that it makes all open source projects look bad. It makes them look like a bad compromise. And that's not true at all - a lot of open source projects are great alternatives, and many are even better than their proprietary competitors. $750 gets you an iPhone with sophisticated cameras, the fastest mobile processor on the market, and software support for 5 years if not longer. Walk into stores across the country to get service and support. What Purism is telling us is, essentially, if you want to take a stand against the proprietary world, you have to give up everything. You have to use a chunky, ugly, crudely assembled phone. You have to give up acceptable power management. And you still have to pay $750, all of this on the cusp of Apple releasing a new $399 phone according to rumors, Google selling $399 phones, and budget brands like Motorola providing an absolutely acceptable experience for under $200 on some models.

vxNsr 7y ago
> I have no idea why Purism didn't leave most of the hardware design to someone who already has a generic modern smartphone done and completed, then they could have added on to it by swapping out some proprietary bits. Either you didn’t actually read the article or you’re being intentionally obtuse. They very clearly state the reason that they couldn’t use the regular supply chain. All the usual suppliers refused to work within the “confines” of OSS. They were lucky to find a CPU that works at all within their definition and needs. If you read the article you’d know that the author spends the entire first page explaining the compromises that were made in favor of OSS. There is no supply chain for this sort of project. Purism is the first company to actually attempt it. Look, I have no horse in this race, I’m a happy Win and iOS user, I have no plans on changing that. But I commend the effort and definitely believe in the mission. OSS hardware is a compromise right now! That’s just a fact. People like you who can only see the flaws and refuse to understand how we got here are unhelpful.

teddyh 7y ago

I again quote /u/whiteinge on Reddit¹: “Let's assume the project is over-promised and will be late and under-deliver. […] None of that is as bad as NO smartphone alternative to Google and Apple, let alone an open and privacy-focused alternative. I'm a Linux user and I very much want a Linux phone. And there has been so, so many false starts and near misses over almost a decade. My patience and goodwill for Purism and the Librem 5 is effectively infinite. It's not over until they shutter the doors or can the project. Until that happens I will continue to hope they limp over that finish line no matter what.” 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/dm2smy/is_the_librem_5_being_targeted_in_a_viral_media/f54gaur/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/dm2smy/is_the_libre...

xorcist 7y ago
There are also the Pinephone and perhaps the Fairphone, for varying degrees of openness. Maybe a few others even? Neither of these are completely in the open but all three are probably good enough for making an enthusiast operating system run. They are all variations of relatively well known, sometimes even documented, hardware, with lots of necessary peripherals with non-free firmware blobs. Some make efforts to only communicate with these non-free peripherals over standardized protcols, which is the "good enough" part. For community oriented mobile operating systems, 2020 is probably going to be the best year yet. Price is also a factor. Many more people will tinker with a $200 phone than a $800 one. It's probably better to cut corners with your first model in order to hit a price point that gets enthusiasts on board. Raspberry Pi did that and have gotten incrementally more open with time.
- teddyh 7y ago
  For me, the first one to recieve RYF certification gets my support. As far as I know, all (or at least many) of them claim to be aiming for it, but none have gotten it yet.
  - seba_dos1 7y ago
    I'm not aware of any that claims to aim for it other than the Librem 5, which already got a "tentative recommendation" and is on track to be certified when released: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-on-the-free-software-foundations-ethical-tech-gift-giving-guide/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-on-the-free-software-foundati...

creekpld 7y ago

Did they solder the vibration motor to the motherboard?

codedokode 7y ago

The hardware is fine but the price... Isn't that too much for a toy?

stamps 7y ago
The PinePhone is a much better price ($150) and quite a fun toy as the OSes develop to a much more usable state.

solarkraft 7y ago

The article doesn't mention the PinePhone, which I consider pretty shoddy journalism. The PinePhone is a competing project with slightly lower specs, similarly good FOSS purity, that is slimmer, ships today and costs 1/5 of the price. They clearly market it as being for tinkerers at this point and all the software support Pine64 is working on is getting the kernel running, leaving the rest up to the 5 (!) involved distribution communities.

seba_dos1 7y ago
Disclaimer: I work for Purism. I have received a PinePhone (early "BraveHeart" batch - the regular one doesn't ship yet, mind you) a few days ago. Although the specs seem "slightly lower" on the paper, I think it's important to note that Librem 5 has twice as fast RAM bandwidth and its GPU easily goes rounds around the PinePhone's. The eMMC is also around 30% faster on the Librem 5, and its killswitches are actually usable in everyday scenarios. The difference is quite easily perceivable when using both devices with the same software. It is a pretty neat device, sure, but I think it's important to be honest about how those phones compare to each other. Also, PinePhone requires firmware blobs being stored on your rootfs for WiFi, Bluetooth, and (optionally) camera autofocus. Librem 5 has them stored on separate flash, making the peripherals that need them self-contained as per FSF recommendations. Both devices are pretty FLOSS-friendly in my book, but some people do care about that difference.
- ntw1103 7y ago
  More information on blobs for the PinePhone https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straight-pinephone-misconceptions/ https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straigh... "The WiFi module communicates with the CPU over SDIO and BT is over UART – neither of these connections provide direct access to CPU memory." Also, for the modem, it doesn't have any shared memory with the CPU. Communication is via USB and I2S.
  - seba_dos1 7y ago
    Yes; the interfaces are pretty much the same as on Librem 5 - the differences are in WiFi/BT firmware blob loading and the fact that L5 has them on replaceable M.2 cards, while on PinePhone they're soldered to the board. Librem 5 also has a separate GPS module, while PinePhone uses the one integrated to the GSM modem. (PinePhone BraveHeart edition also has some sensors connected via the modem, but AFAIK that's going to change in later revisions)

chris_wot 7y ago

So if they are using Gnome, no wonder they don’t have icons on the front screen. They’ll need a Gnome extension for that.

songshuu 7y ago

FTA: "You can make phone calls, and you can receive text messages, but you can't start a new conversation with a contact." Did the author actually make a phone call? If so, what was the quality? FTA : "There's no way to access the camera." So no idea if the device actually will take a photo or video or know what the quality of those outputs will be. Considering that an iPhone 11 Pro would cost $60 per month over 2 years, could some of us Patreon this project at like $30 a month and let them hire up enough to land this? I have doubts that a sales model vs the incumbents is going to have enough runway. Given the quote from teddyh / whiteinge, maybe it's just better to do more upfront funding instead of expecting open projects to follow the same physics as venture capital.

kop316 7y ago
You can make phone calls. The call quality is fine. I don't think its VoLTE yet, but its the same quality you get on an Android phone. You can also start a text via contacts too now. There's been a lot of progress in a month. Source: I have a Burch phone, and made a phone call. I don't know if you realized this, but that's exactly what they did. They made a kickstarter on their website to finance making the phone. They released some of the hardware iterations to earlier backers, and made sure they understood that its a beta product now.