13 ms·

Librem 5 Evergreen vs. Pinephone

176 points by ThatGeoGuy 6y ago

fsflover 6y ago
About the USA-made version of Librem 5: > it’s kind of appalling that literally anyone would pay this much. It’s kind of appalling that Purism would charge this much. I can imagine a scheme where the parts are shipped from China, and verified and assembled by a part-time college student in the States and they’d likely still be able to price it cheaper than $1999.00. There are definitely valid reasons not to buy Chinese products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_Chinese_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_Chinese_products. Also what are the other competing smartphones which are made in USA?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Are there any? It costs the Earth to build in America. It might not even be possible. Maybe you can assemble in America but it seems like a fool's errand. Like five people want this and they're also so obsessive about other things that they won't buy your stuff unless it's perfect anyway.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    The problem in the US is that everything is aligned against making stuff here. The unions have been in damage control mode for decades, trying to avoid losing the factories that employ two hundred to the more automated factories that employ twenty, but then as a result losing 100% rather than 90% of the jobs to China. We impose labor and environmental rules on products made in the US but don't require the same standards for products made overseas, even though we could. China is basically a trust that uses profits in industries it has already taken over to subsidize its entry into industries it hasn't yet, and for decades we did nothing so we could get cheaper shit, claiming that we would keep making the high tech stuff, until we turn around and every phone and computer is made in China. There are solutions to this. Obvious solutions. But it would imply paying more for stuff because it's not being made in a polluting sweatshop in an undemocratic country which is acting like the nation state version of a 19th century robber baron. (At least initially; you know what stage two of the robber baron playbook is if we do nothing.)
    - baybal2 6y ago
      > There are solutions to this. Obvious solutions. But it would imply paying more for stuff. Well, even if you do, you are up to myriad of other issues. The progressing general business unfriendliness of the West will not go anywhere. If it does not go, the situation will not change even if you put 1000000% tariff on Chinese goods. I myself been working on setting up a small knock down kit assembly factory 6 years ago in Richmond, Canada. It was a nightmare. We also attempted going across the border to Washington with same results. If doing even something as simple is that is a guaranteed to fail endeavour, than, what else you think you can do?
      - flubert 6y ago
        Was it a regulator paperwork hurdle? Regulations themselves? High cost of labor? No skilled labor available? High cost of warehouse/manufacturing floor space? All-of-the-above?
        baybal2 6y ago
        All of the above, times 10. The Ease of Doing Business index is a complete BS. Western countries in their majority should not be far away from countries they scorn as "third world" for how hard it is to run a business. If you calculate costs purely on paper, running a factory in South China is already more expensive than in USA. It was so for quite some time. You do not see Chinese factory moving to US in droves, despite some early optimism. Chinese entrepreneurs saw for themselves that behind attractive land, utility, services, and some times labour costs, hides an impassible bog.
      - freeopinion 6y ago
        Trump just fought China with tariffs. That is not the answer and I don't think is one of the "obvious solutions" referenced. Let me put it this way... Should we allow a factory in Indiana to avoid environmental regulation if they just pay a 30% tariff? Is it ok to have a 5% mortality rate at a factory in Alabama if they pay a 60% tariff? Should U.S. companies be allowed to just pay fees to become exempt from FDA/EPA/OSHA/etc. rules? I know some will argue that it is the case in the U.S. A mining company can break the rules, kill a dozen workers, then pay a million dollar fine and go back to business as usual. But we don't investigate, we don't fine, we don't punish in any way foreign companies that don't follow U.S. environment/labor/safety rules. We open the door and put their products on the shelf right next to U.S. products. The answer is not to levy a tariff to make them price-neutral. The answer is to ban them just like we should ban U.S.-made products that don't follow the rules. If a company can pass inspection and certify that they meet U.S. rules the same as U.S. manufacturers, and still have a price advantage, I say let them clobber U.S. competition. But the U.S. company gets regulator inspections as part of their taxes. Foreign companies have to pay for U.S.-recognized inspectors on their own dime. Same thing for U.S. soy farmers selling into China or Norway. They should have to meet the standards of those countries and pay for the inspections that prove it.
  - catherd 6y ago
    I think having visible pricing differences for made-in-USA phones is good purely because it will make a lot of starry eyed kids starting hardware companies reconsider their assumption that they can make the economics of manufacturing in America work out just because they want it to. I've seen so many go through that cycle, and if they aren't involved in an industry with strong reasons other than money to manufacture locally it invariably wastes time and talent, and often kills the company.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > There are definitely valid reasons not to buy Chinese products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_Chinese_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_Chinese_products. Also what are the other competing smartphones which are made in USA? Made in USA is a big stretch when nearly all components are imported from abroad. Better to say "Few screws inserted in USA" On why you cannot really make thing outside of China: The biggest proponents of very purposefully locking manufacturing in China are major American companies... I heard from multiple first hand accounts if Apple trying really hard to move out of China, and putting a concerted multi-year strategy of moving suppliers to TW, and Vietnam. If they cannot move, who will? The emphasis on the later is because there is positive precedent of any major company succeeding in moving, and that validates beancounter opinion "If multinational A doesn't move, why should we?"
  - ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
    Author here: I think this reply and the reply by AnthonyMouse in another sub-thread [1] nail it. I'd also add that just because you don't want to buy Chinese products != Buy USA made products. There are a vast number of other countries that would jump at the notion of becoming your supply chain, and don't necessarily have all the ethical grievances of supporting China. I actually think my main objection though had nothing to do with "buying Chinese goods" vs. "not buying Chinese goods." Mainly: why would you buy a $2k smartphone that is grossly overpriced and isn't really providing much more than the base model? As the above comment here says, it should really be closer to "few screws inserted in USA" than "Made in USA." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25339390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25339390
    - db579 6y ago
      Because you have to start somewhere and by paying $2k today for a few screws inserted in the USA you hopefully prove the demand for full manufacturing to be supplied in the USA. And hopefully not just in the USA, centralising the entire worlds manufacturing capacity in one region is not particularly anti-fragile.
      - 6y ago
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  I'm not sure why they even offer the USA option. It hardly adds any real value, no one will buy it and people will just whinge about it. At least it does provide one data point on what it costs to do though.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Certified crimping tools can cost more than this phone. I don't think you can draw any conclusions based on this data point. The price is that high because they will be made to order. They never expected more than a hundred orders in the first place.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Is there an open source phone where you can get the board done at one of the pcb huts, order parts from Mouser, 3D print the case and put everything together?
  - Const-me 6y ago
    One gonna need at least a few grands worth of strange equipment normally used by people who repair electronics (the strange equipment used by manufacturers costs millions). Having prior experience with these tools is recommended. Another obstacle is 3d printed case, phones need both high precision and high strength, AFAIK many 3d printers/materials lack at least one of these properties. Still it looks doable, and apparently some people actually did similar stuff. http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html https://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/09/diy-mobile-phone-with-3d-printable.html https://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/09/diy-mobile-phone-...
    - varispeed 6y ago
      You can certainly do microsoldering in $1000 area now. Not sure about BGA as I have not done those, but I can imagine an oven wouldn't cost more than $1000 as well. There are so many affordable tools available now, it is within reach to build your own phone.
      - Const-me 6y ago
        Phones are small, you gonna need a microscope or at least a magnifier with good lighting. BGA is not too hard but you need these laser-cut reballing stencils, ideally not universal but specific to particular chips. AFAIK lead-free solder is very hard to do at home, to use leaded solder you gonna need a setup with good ventilation. If the goal is to make just a single phone, and you don’t already own all that stuff, I’m afraid the required equipment is going to be above $1000. Maybe if you live in China will be cheaper, but not for the rest of the world.
fsflover 6y ago
> It’s obviously not really appropriate to compare the Librem 5 and the Pinephone spec for spec. If you still want to do it, check this: https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-phones/6827 https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p....
seba_dos1 6y ago
It's worth noting that postmarketOS and Mobian already support Librem 5, and running other distros like Arch, Fedora etc. on it by yourself is not a challenge for someone reasonably comfortable with GNU/Linux. Running Plasma Mobile via pmOS is a no brainer, and I've almost got UBports (Ubuntu Touch) to run there already as well (it struggled with one quirk of the etnaviv driver last time I tried it, resulting in garbled display content, but it worked otherwise).
phh 6y ago
When reading this, it feels like the goal of those projects have derived? For me, the "goal" of mainline GNU/Linux smartphones is that we get like PCs. I prefer fedora, you prefer Debian, they prefer Slackware, all is well, we are all free to choose whatever we want for our computer. Here I'm reading it's all fragmented? And if it's fragmented, I guess it means it doesn't rely enough on Linux drivers, so long term support won't be there? Is someone "wrong"? Like Librem is saying they are going mainline but actually aren't? Or is it Pinephone? Or I'm misrepreaentating what mainline should mean?
- dmm 6y ago
  The pinephone can run the mainline kernel so it will probably have support for a while. There are several distros available for it because people are excited to develop free/libre mobile devices and they are experimenting.
  - seba_dos1 6y ago
    The Librem 5 can also run the mainline kernel. Enabling all the component drivers upstream is of course an ongoing process, but it's going rather well. See https://debconf20.debconf.org/talks/13-my-phone-runs-debian-and-it-does-phone-calls/ https://debconf20.debconf.org/talks/13-my-phone-runs-debian-... (around 20:30)
- ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
  The two projects (Pinephone and Librem) have definitely diverged in terms of their goals, but that's fine. I don't see any lack of contribution to the mainline kernel or upstream code from either community. The main divergence between the two is the price point and how the communities are run. As for fragmentation, well, if you want a choice in distro, then fragmentation does kind of happen as a result of that. But overall a lot of the momentum is in the same direction. The biggest sticking point I see happened years ago, when Purism opted to make Phosh + PureOS and make it GNOME based instead of rallying more effort to the UBPorts project. That said, it's free software, so this happens all the time. (Don't get me wrong though, I really love what Ubuntu Touch has become, and the UBPorts community too!)
Causality1 6y ago
I'm all for more variety of hardware and more control over software. That said, what makes these a better option, for anyone, than buying an android phone with an unlockable bootloader and loading a Google-less version of Android on it?
- ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
  Right now? Probably not a whole lot. Eventually once the software is more refined, there are definitely some features worth adopting for. The kill-switches are a decent feature, and I would love to have something like that on every phone (especially the cam & mic one, since I don't tend to put tape over my phone cameras!). For the Pinephone, the hope is that one day you'll be able to buy one (or some successor) and be able to load whatever distro you want on it. It's vastly easier to work with than installing a custom bootloader, and then flashing a new version of Android. So as far as that goes, there's a lot to be desired.
- ben-schaaf 6y ago
  Mainline Linux support means the device is going to be supported for a very long time. For Android phones you're always relying on the manufacturer - even with the likes of the FairPhone you're still beholden to qualcomm's willingness to provide updates. You also get the same software running as you do on desktop Linux - just hook up a display and you've got a regular Linux desktop. You can print from the device itself, because of course it can just run CUPS. You can direct audio output from each application (including to the earpiece) because it's just running pulseaudio. Hook up a webcam, a Wii mote, once you have actual control of the hardware the possibilities are endless.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    The desktop environment is nice, but android can do all the rest of it. I've never had problems with printing from my phone and webcams and gamepads work just fine over USB.
- minhm 6y ago
  The efficiency of developing software on GNU/Linux. (edit: rewording)
O1111OOO 6y ago
> For the vast majority of people, the Librem 5 and Pinephone are probably not worth even considering. The GNU userspace and associated “mobile” paradigms within it are very much not ready for daily use. > Linux phones are definitely not yet ready to be daily drivers Despite the author making this point twice and some of the negativity regarding Purism's pricing - I still feel very good about the state of Linux phones and the incredible work these two entities are doing. We can't lose sight of this. It wasn't too long ago that the mere mention of a Linux phone was pure fantasy. We now have two companies (and two passionate communities) that are helping move Open Source Linux forward. I'm still very excited about how things are developing and the trickle down effect it will have as we move forward. > One of the neat things about the Pinephone is the ability to boot and use a variety of Linux distributions on the hardware itself. It’s as easy as loading the distro onto an SD card, and then booting the phone. You don’t even have to flash anything to the internal eMMC in order to run it! This is such a killer feature for me - while also providing a modern-ish platform for the various distributions and app developers to test their wares. It's probably the biggest single most important thing about the PinePhone right now. No more unsuccessful rooting, flashing and possibly bricking. No more nagging feeling that you are merely renting a device and are constantly at the whim of a corporate overlord (which never ends well). I think, like the author, I'm a bit more excited about the flexibility of the PinePhone but acknowledge the importance of the work Purism is doing to try and bring a First Tier Linux phone to market. We all benefit from this.
- girvo 6y ago
  My Nokia N9 proved to me that a Linux-based phone without having to be an entirely different world like Android is possible — and I’m stoked to see Librem and the PinePhone take this even further! We’ve come a long way since the OpenMoko :)
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    As did my Nokia N900 more than 10 years ago.
- seba_dos1 6y ago
  > It’s as easy as loading the distro onto an SD card, and then booting the phone. You don’t even have to flash anything to the internal eMMC in order to run it! FWIW while the Librem 5 can't run the bootloader straight from the SD card, the kernel can use the rootfs from SD card just fine - I have multiple distros installed on SD card there this way. The Librem 5 also supports booting via fastboot (uuu), which personally I find to be a more convenient option for emergency fallbacks than having to juggle with SD cards like you have to do on the PinePhone. FYI - the reason why L5 doesn't boot straight from the SD card is that the SD card reader is on the USB interface behind a hub, because both SDIO interfaces available on i.MX8MQ are already taken (one by eMMC and other by WiFi).
blendergeek 6y ago
I should point out that very little of this article compares the hardware of these two devices. This article has two main comparisons. One of these is Pine64 vs Purism and the others Phosh vs LoMiri. For those who haven't read the article but want to quickly skim to the sections with actual comparison between the Librem 5 and the Pinephone, here are the relevant headers: - Kill Switches - Charging the battery - Temperature - Phone shape The rest of the article is not about Librem 5 vs Pinephone. While the sections on the apps could have compared the two phones, instead they compare two operating systems. I would have loved a discussion of the performance differences between the two phones or the screen brightness or the speakers. However, most of this article is largely irrelevant to the phones.
cookiengineer 6y ago
I own a Pinephone with the latest revision board which was bought in the July 31st batch this year (and got shipped in September/November within the EU). I have to say that hardware-wise, the Pinephone got very _very_ far already. It's an amazing hacker's device, especially with the USB-C host. The only issue that persists is software. Phosh is pretty much useless because not a single app will work as a real mobile app, let alone act in a responsive manner with their underlying design philosophies. It all feels like Android 1.x, which was barely useable outside the context of shitty car navigation handhelds. The available cross-compiled versions of Browsers (e.g. Firefox or Chromium) are totally broken, as they are made for Desktop and do not even downscale their user interface, and are neither responsive anyhow. So for now, I am using my own (prototypical) Browser Stealth [1] due to lack for alternatives because there at least the UI doesn't crash every few seconds when being used within a WebKit2GTK webview. I don't have many requirements for my phone, to be honest. I don't use social apps, and only communicate via telegram. But currently the amount of software that's available for phosh is still the one reminding me of a developer environment or say, an Android emulator image. I seriously thought about taking ownership in creating a few apps for it, like one for openstreetmaps, notes, text editor, which are the more important ones for me. But to be bluntly honest, I don't even know where to start with the whole GTK shitshow. It's absolutely impossible to develop an app without any working examples. There's no non-auto-transpiled-bindings-documentation, there's no libhandy examples that actually work, and there's certainly not any responsive GTK app examples that would show how to make a "real mobile" app. How do people develop apps for mobile GTK? Seriously, I cannot understand it. I want to, but there's no way anyone can keep the mood up digging through a _mobile phone's gdb output while the on screen keyboard crashed_ to figure out how the API works. I think what GTK really needs is something like Electron, but maybe based on WebKit2GTK and (maybe?) gjs. Something that allows bundling your assets to build an app that is offline-ready, and is easy to build with common methodologies of UI frameworks. Because currently I don't see the reason why libhandy exists. It tries to fix a problem, and doesn't fix the underlying cause. GTK boxes and their layouting (and reflow?) concept just isn't made for an adaptive/responsive UI, so you'll always end up with a totally broken UX by modern standards. (You're welcome to challenge me on this, but as long as "make a sidebar that can fade-in/fade-out with a swipe" takes more than a week to build, I think you're wrong.) [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth
m463 6y ago
> It too has kill-switches, but these are not easy to access on the side of the phone and instead are inside the case of the phone. Ha, I can't help but think this is something linux folks won't even think twice about. :)
- Valkhyr 6y ago
  Hmm, I would not underestimate the convenience of having them out the outside easily accessible, especially when you consider that switching off radios at the moment should also help with battery consumption? (<- this is an assumption; I don't own either device and cannot test this)
  - m463 6y ago
    Ha, I meant linux folks don't mind inconveniences like having to recompile the kernel, like having to use jtag and having the take the back off to access switches. :)
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I'm impressed with the rate of progress in the Linux distros for smartphones due to these devices, especially the Pinephone as it's more accessible. But I honestly expected few major phone manufacturers to join these development effort in some manner after seeing the fate of Huawei with Android or specifically Google Play Services/OHA(Open Handset Alliance), I'm surprised it didn't happen yet or perhaps it's because of OHA it's not happening. Tizen didn't work out for smartphones although it seems to be gaining market share in wearables, why not direct the smartphone investment part of it to PostmarketOS, UBPorts etc. I presume Linux Foundation has to play a role in it.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Huawei now is pushing their mikro-kernel based OS, nothing to do with Linux, Harmony OS. Ironically it used to be a research project demoed a few times at FOSDEN and US gave them a reason to bring it into production. Tizen is also being used in Samsung's smart TVs. LG has WebOS and Sharp Aquos. And then there is ChromeOS as well. Basically, GNU/Linux desktop has proven to not be something that general public even considers when it comes with strings attached about FOSS politics and little UI/UX that those people actually care about, without the apps all their friends use.
  - chrononaut 6y ago
    As well as Sailfish OS, which is supported on a number of Sony devices among others. Development of the OS is happening at a faster clip now due to the support of the Aurora (Avrora) OS developers. Huawei is considering shipping phones with Sailfish in the future as well. EDIT: Typos.
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    There is no doubt on the issue of chicken-and-egg problem with the app ecosystem, but wouldn't it be the only problem or even say the major problem to address if the manufacturers get on to supporting mainline Linux for smartphones instead of developing a completely new operating system from the scratch.
ansible 6y ago
> Both phones can run fairly hot. I think given how I hold the phone (closer to the base of the phone) I tend to notice the Librem 5 more often than I notice the Pinephone getting hotter. This is mostly because the frame / chassis for the Librem 5 is metal, and conducts the heat around the sides of the phone. So you’ll notice it getting hot after you’ve used your phone for a good bit. Power management is complex these days. You'll often get a minimal implementation from the chip vendor, and it is a fair amount of work to really polish the lower level support. On top of that, you have to integrate this with the rest of the OS, so that active apps can increase the clocks, which then get automatically scaled back as system load decreases. So there's a lot to do on the userspace side as well.
- Valkhyr 6y ago
  This is the major reason I deferred my Evergreen Librem 5 order for the Fir batch (set to ship in ~1 year), which will (a) have a smaller process size (14nm vs 28nm currently) and (b) allow for more time for optimizations.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Fir batch will probably have its own disadvantages: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#71-what-will-be-the-changes-in-the-fir-batch-and-should-i-wait-for-it https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
    - Valkhyr 6y ago
      Thank you for that link - I had not seen that - my impression was that Fir would be a die shrink and otherwise identical. Reading through the explanation, I think the tradeoff is still worth it for me since I care more about battery life and heat than full convergence (I plan to use this device as a portable Linux machine on the go, not so much (if at all) docked). I do think Purism should have been clearer about this though.
beyondcompute 6y ago
It’s not obvious for me why wouldn’t they install better cameras. For me camera system is one of the most important parts of a smartphone specification. Don’t those makers realize that there are people for whom those things are important?
- driminicus 6y ago
  I understand that the camera can be an important feature of a smartphone for some people, but I for one, don't care about it at all above a certain "eh, good enough" threshold, that is currently easily met by any smartphone. If I want to take good pictures, I use an actual camera, with a proper lens. All this to say: you can't always serve everyone.
  - 37eydyhrh 6y ago
    Isn't the whole goal to serve as close to everyone as possible? Or is the idea that these will always be niche phones sold at flagship prices but without flagship features? I get that universal appeal is an impossible objective, even for popular brands, but surely a part of the grand scheme of all this is to prove that these sorts of phones can have mainstream appeal if given the time and support needed to develop into competitive products.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > I understand that the camera can be an important feature of a smartphone for some people, but I for one, don't care about it at all above a certain "eh, good enough" threshold, that is currently easily met by any smartphone. Judging by many, many reviews of smartphones, most people do deeply care about the quality and features of their phone's camera, and it's very likely to be the only camera many people have.
- linmob 6y ago
  With the PinePhone 5MP is the limit of the AllWinner A64 SoC, and IIRC it‘s similar with the Librem 5. Also, it‘s important to remember that what makes smartphone cameras great is an advanced software stack, which does not exist for GNU/Linux yet (developments like the Megapixels app are showing some promise though).
fsflover 6y ago
Discussion on the Purism forum: https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-vs-librem-5/9092/81 https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-vs-librem-5/9092/81.
floatboth 6y ago
Meanwhile in the "repurpose existing phones" camp: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SDM845_Mainlining https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SDM845_Mainlining Yeah, sure, the Librem5/Pinephone boot directly into open source firmware instead of some Qualcomm monstrosity that even acts as a hypervisor, but. Near-mainline Linux with GPU support on actually powerful devices with 3-ish-GHz fast cores, 8GiB RAM, and so on. And you can buy these on the used market rather than investing in more new e-waste.
- fsflover 6y ago
  GNU/Linux phones provide a few things which are not achievable elsewhere: convergence, lifetime updates, killswitches and so on.
- swiley 6y ago
  I threw out my Qualcomm phones long ago because the lack of software updates had made them useless and freedreno really didn't look like it was going to catch up. Part of me wishes I hadn't but also the Pinephone is better than my Samsung galaxy S3 in terms of specs and with actually competent software. If people on qualcomm phones had any amount of faith the company wouldn't screw them over or the community would be able to make a huge leap in terms of compatibility they probably would keep the phones but that's not how things have worked for about a decade.
mike-cardwell 6y ago
I'm surprised battery life isn't mentioned. My understanding is that it's abysmal for Librem 5? I could live with a phone that has software issues, but I can't live with a phone that spends most of the day turned off because it needs charging every few hours...
- fsflover 6y ago
  > My understanding is that it's abysmal for Librem 5? It's more or less fine, especially considering that suspend is not yet implemented at all: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-4500mah-battery-upgrade/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-4500mah-battery-upgrade/.
  - mike-cardwell 6y ago
    That article basically says that if I turn wifi off and don't use the phone, it still wont even last a whole day, in the best case... To me, that's abysmal.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      True, but it will be sufficiently improved with software updates.
      - mike-cardwell 6y ago
        If that happens, then the phone becomes viable. Until that date, it's just an expensive toy to tinker with.
kevsim 6y ago
Kind of annoying to have a review and not have a single picture of the phones, screenshots, etc. Yes, I can google them myself, but c'mon. Also $1999 and the camera doesn't work yet? Yikes.
paulcarroty 6y ago
There's the third way: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices You can buy the used devices cheaper than Pinephone and play with them. Not perfect hardware support, but enough for hackable mobile device with privacy and low-distraction mode.
- fsflover 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25343592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25343592 >with privacy There is no privacy with all proprietary drivers. There is no security either.
BenGosub 6y ago
I have a question, does Google's Android licenses allow Android apps to be used on non-android operating systems? I know that some Google provided APIs will be missing, but still, we could soon have alternatives, like OpenStreet for maps.
mark_l_watson 6y ago
For now, I sort of trust Apple enough on privacy and security, PRISM disclosures and their being a huge corporation. What will get me to buy a product like Librem or Pinephone in the future would be as a universal device, that is a dock that would make it my only digital device - and feel secure against hacks, etc.
asjkaehauisa 6y ago
I really like alternatives, but imo AOSP is really secure and private OS. What I need is a AOSP smartphone with frequently OTA updates (like in Pixel's phone), working out of box. I wouldn't compromise my security by choosing one of this smartphones.
- fsflover 6y ago
  Technically, nothing prevents you from installing AOSP on these smartphones. Even better, you can have lifetime updates and verifiable drivers. In practice, GloDroid exists on Pinephone [0], but it's far from usable. [0] https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10613 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10613
- kop316 6y ago
  Frankly, good luck with that. I attempted for a few months to do that for my Pixel 3a (which in theory is officially supported). When I followed the official guide to compile android, I found that a LOT of things did not work that I expected it to, including: VoLTE, SMS over LTE, and wifi-calling. The phone was useless on LTE, I had to force it onto 3G for any phone functionality. I also had a weird issue where a new SIM would refuse to work in it, I had to activate a new SIM in a Google Stock android, then it would work in AOSP. I had to manually search through the Google image to find what libraries existed, manually extract them, add them to my AOSP build, THEN compile. I was only able to do this because others had done much of the grunt work already (i.e. GrapheneOS), but when it was "upgraded" to Android 10, it all changed and all my work went out the window. Now I just use GrapheneOS and accept the comprimises I have to deal with.
s_gourichon 6y ago
I *did not* / will *not* test: Phone calls & SMS / MMS functionality I haven’t bothered plugging them into a display. Email (...) I’ve been too lazy to try setting this up Cameras GPS / location Anyone who expected an article like "I actually tested those phones in real life and will tell if they are actually suitable as phones", don't expect. (Article is not empty, does mentions how these machines behave on the GUI side, data-only SIM, web browsing, music, charging.)
- busrf 6y ago
  I was honestly really surprised that this was the “will not test” list rather than the “must test” list!
DobryMorozov 6y ago
I wonder if they have ever tried to shop their tech to China. Chinese mobile companies are interested in building an alternative mobile operating system and have the resources to make it work
amosbatto 6y ago
ThatGeoGuy, Since you called me that "crazy uncle at Thankgiving," I feel that the "crazy uncle" should have a chance to respond to the arguments that you made in your review: https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-vs-librem-5/9092/83 https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-vs-librem-5/9092/83

176 points by ThatGeoGuy 6y ago

About the USA-made version of Librem 5: > it’s kind of appalling that literally anyone would pay this much. It’s kind of appalling that Purism would charge this much. I can imagine a scheme where the parts are shipped from China, and verified and assembled by a part-time college student in the States and they’d likely still be able to price it cheaper than $1999.00. There are definitely valid reasons not to buy Chinese products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_Chinese_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_Chinese_products. Also what are the other competing smartphones which are made in USA?

renewiltord 6y ago
Are there any? It costs the Earth to build in America. It might not even be possible. Maybe you can assemble in America but it seems like a fool's errand. Like five people want this and they're also so obsessive about other things that they won't buy your stuff unless it's perfect anyway.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  The problem in the US is that everything is aligned against making stuff here. The unions have been in damage control mode for decades, trying to avoid losing the factories that employ two hundred to the more automated factories that employ twenty, but then as a result losing 100% rather than 90% of the jobs to China. We impose labor and environmental rules on products made in the US but don't require the same standards for products made overseas, even though we could. China is basically a trust that uses profits in industries it has already taken over to subsidize its entry into industries it hasn't yet, and for decades we did nothing so we could get cheaper shit, claiming that we would keep making the high tech stuff, until we turn around and every phone and computer is made in China. There are solutions to this. Obvious solutions. But it would imply paying more for stuff because it's not being made in a polluting sweatshop in an undemocratic country which is acting like the nation state version of a 19th century robber baron. (At least initially; you know what stage two of the robber baron playbook is if we do nothing.)
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > There are solutions to this. Obvious solutions. But it would imply paying more for stuff. Well, even if you do, you are up to myriad of other issues. The progressing general business unfriendliness of the West will not go anywhere. If it does not go, the situation will not change even if you put 1000000% tariff on Chinese goods. I myself been working on setting up a small knock down kit assembly factory 6 years ago in Richmond, Canada. It was a nightmare. We also attempted going across the border to Washington with same results. If doing even something as simple is that is a guaranteed to fail endeavour, than, what else you think you can do?
    - flubert 6y ago
      Was it a regulator paperwork hurdle? Regulations themselves? High cost of labor? No skilled labor available? High cost of warehouse/manufacturing floor space? All-of-the-above?
      - baybal2 6y ago
        All of the above, times 10. The Ease of Doing Business index is a complete BS. Western countries in their majority should not be far away from countries they scorn as "third world" for how hard it is to run a business. If you calculate costs purely on paper, running a factory in South China is already more expensive than in USA. It was so for quite some time. You do not see Chinese factory moving to US in droves, despite some early optimism. Chinese entrepreneurs saw for themselves that behind attractive land, utility, services, and some times labour costs, hides an impassible bog.
    - freeopinion 6y ago
      Trump just fought China with tariffs. That is not the answer and I don't think is one of the "obvious solutions" referenced. Let me put it this way... Should we allow a factory in Indiana to avoid environmental regulation if they just pay a 30% tariff? Is it ok to have a 5% mortality rate at a factory in Alabama if they pay a 60% tariff? Should U.S. companies be allowed to just pay fees to become exempt from FDA/EPA/OSHA/etc. rules? I know some will argue that it is the case in the U.S. A mining company can break the rules, kill a dozen workers, then pay a million dollar fine and go back to business as usual. But we don't investigate, we don't fine, we don't punish in any way foreign companies that don't follow U.S. environment/labor/safety rules. We open the door and put their products on the shelf right next to U.S. products. The answer is not to levy a tariff to make them price-neutral. The answer is to ban them just like we should ban U.S.-made products that don't follow the rules. If a company can pass inspection and certify that they meet U.S. rules the same as U.S. manufacturers, and still have a price advantage, I say let them clobber U.S. competition. But the U.S. company gets regulator inspections as part of their taxes. Foreign companies have to pay for U.S.-recognized inspectors on their own dime. Same thing for U.S. soy farmers selling into China or Norway. They should have to meet the standards of those countries and pay for the inspections that prove it.
- catherd 6y ago
  I think having visible pricing differences for made-in-USA phones is good purely because it will make a lot of starry eyed kids starting hardware companies reconsider their assumption that they can make the economics of manufacturing in America work out just because they want it to. I've seen so many go through that cycle, and if they aren't involved in an industry with strong reasons other than money to manufacture locally it invariably wastes time and talent, and often kills the company.
baybal2 6y ago
> There are definitely valid reasons not to buy Chinese products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_Chinese_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott_Chinese_products. Also what are the other competing smartphones which are made in USA? Made in USA is a big stretch when nearly all components are imported from abroad. Better to say "Few screws inserted in USA" On why you cannot really make thing outside of China: The biggest proponents of very purposefully locking manufacturing in China are major American companies... I heard from multiple first hand accounts if Apple trying really hard to move out of China, and putting a concerted multi-year strategy of moving suppliers to TW, and Vietnam. If they cannot move, who will? The emphasis on the later is because there is positive precedent of any major company succeeding in moving, and that validates beancounter opinion "If multinational A doesn't move, why should we?"
- ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
  Author here: I think this reply and the reply by AnthonyMouse in another sub-thread [1] nail it. I'd also add that just because you don't want to buy Chinese products != Buy USA made products. There are a vast number of other countries that would jump at the notion of becoming your supply chain, and don't necessarily have all the ethical grievances of supporting China. I actually think my main objection though had nothing to do with "buying Chinese goods" vs. "not buying Chinese goods." Mainly: why would you buy a $2k smartphone that is grossly overpriced and isn't really providing much more than the base model? As the above comment here says, it should really be closer to "few screws inserted in USA" than "Made in USA." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25339390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25339390
  - db579 6y ago
    Because you have to start somewhere and by paying $2k today for a few screws inserted in the USA you hopefully prove the demand for full manufacturing to be supplied in the USA. And hopefully not just in the USA, centralising the entire worlds manufacturing capacity in one region is not particularly anti-fragile.
    - 6y ago
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
I'm not sure why they even offer the USA option. It hardly adds any real value, no one will buy it and people will just whinge about it. At least it does provide one data point on what it costs to do though.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Certified crimping tools can cost more than this phone. I don't think you can draw any conclusions based on this data point. The price is that high because they will be made to order. They never expected more than a hundred orders in the first place.
varispeed 6y ago
Is there an open source phone where you can get the board done at one of the pcb huts, order parts from Mouser, 3D print the case and put everything together?
- Const-me 6y ago
  One gonna need at least a few grands worth of strange equipment normally used by people who repair electronics (the strange equipment used by manufacturers costs millions). Having prior experience with these tools is recommended. Another obstacle is 3d printed case, phones need both high precision and high strength, AFAIK many 3d printers/materials lack at least one of these properties. Still it looks doable, and apparently some people actually did similar stuff. http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html https://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/09/diy-mobile-phone-with-3d-printable.html https://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/09/diy-mobile-phone-...
  - varispeed 6y ago
    You can certainly do microsoldering in $1000 area now. Not sure about BGA as I have not done those, but I can imagine an oven wouldn't cost more than $1000 as well. There are so many affordable tools available now, it is within reach to build your own phone.
    - Const-me 6y ago
      Phones are small, you gonna need a microscope or at least a magnifier with good lighting. BGA is not too hard but you need these laser-cut reballing stencils, ideally not universal but specific to particular chips. AFAIK lead-free solder is very hard to do at home, to use leaded solder you gonna need a setup with good ventilation. If the goal is to make just a single phone, and you don’t already own all that stuff, I’m afraid the required equipment is going to be above $1000. Maybe if you live in China will be cheaper, but not for the rest of the world.

fsflover 6y ago

> It’s obviously not really appropriate to compare the Librem 5 and the Pinephone spec for spec. If you still want to do it, check this: https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-phones/6827 https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p....

seba_dos1 6y ago

It's worth noting that postmarketOS and Mobian already support Librem 5, and running other distros like Arch, Fedora etc. on it by yourself is not a challenge for someone reasonably comfortable with GNU/Linux. Running Plasma Mobile via pmOS is a no brainer, and I've almost got UBports (Ubuntu Touch) to run there already as well (it struggled with one quirk of the etnaviv driver last time I tried it, resulting in garbled display content, but it worked otherwise).

phh 6y ago

When reading this, it feels like the goal of those projects have derived? For me, the "goal" of mainline GNU/Linux smartphones is that we get like PCs. I prefer fedora, you prefer Debian, they prefer Slackware, all is well, we are all free to choose whatever we want for our computer. Here I'm reading it's all fragmented? And if it's fragmented, I guess it means it doesn't rely enough on Linux drivers, so long term support won't be there? Is someone "wrong"? Like Librem is saying they are going mainline but actually aren't? Or is it Pinephone? Or I'm misrepreaentating what mainline should mean?

dmm 6y ago
The pinephone can run the mainline kernel so it will probably have support for a while. There are several distros available for it because people are excited to develop free/libre mobile devices and they are experimenting.
- seba_dos1 6y ago
  The Librem 5 can also run the mainline kernel. Enabling all the component drivers upstream is of course an ongoing process, but it's going rather well. See https://debconf20.debconf.org/talks/13-my-phone-runs-debian-and-it-does-phone-calls/ https://debconf20.debconf.org/talks/13-my-phone-runs-debian-... (around 20:30)
ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
The two projects (Pinephone and Librem) have definitely diverged in terms of their goals, but that's fine. I don't see any lack of contribution to the mainline kernel or upstream code from either community. The main divergence between the two is the price point and how the communities are run. As for fragmentation, well, if you want a choice in distro, then fragmentation does kind of happen as a result of that. But overall a lot of the momentum is in the same direction. The biggest sticking point I see happened years ago, when Purism opted to make Phosh + PureOS and make it GNOME based instead of rallying more effort to the UBPorts project. That said, it's free software, so this happens all the time. (Don't get me wrong though, I really love what Ubuntu Touch has become, and the UBPorts community too!)

Causality1 6y ago

I'm all for more variety of hardware and more control over software. That said, what makes these a better option, for anyone, than buying an android phone with an unlockable bootloader and loading a Google-less version of Android on it?

ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
Right now? Probably not a whole lot. Eventually once the software is more refined, there are definitely some features worth adopting for. The kill-switches are a decent feature, and I would love to have something like that on every phone (especially the cam & mic one, since I don't tend to put tape over my phone cameras!). For the Pinephone, the hope is that one day you'll be able to buy one (or some successor) and be able to load whatever distro you want on it. It's vastly easier to work with than installing a custom bootloader, and then flashing a new version of Android. So as far as that goes, there's a lot to be desired.
ben-schaaf 6y ago
Mainline Linux support means the device is going to be supported for a very long time. For Android phones you're always relying on the manufacturer - even with the likes of the FairPhone you're still beholden to qualcomm's willingness to provide updates. You also get the same software running as you do on desktop Linux - just hook up a display and you've got a regular Linux desktop. You can print from the device itself, because of course it can just run CUPS. You can direct audio output from each application (including to the earpiece) because it's just running pulseaudio. Hook up a webcam, a Wii mote, once you have actual control of the hardware the possibilities are endless.
- Causality1 6y ago
  The desktop environment is nice, but android can do all the rest of it. I've never had problems with printing from my phone and webcams and gamepads work just fine over USB.
minhm 6y ago
The efficiency of developing software on GNU/Linux. (edit: rewording)

O1111OOO 6y ago

> For the vast majority of people, the Librem 5 and Pinephone are probably not worth even considering. The GNU userspace and associated “mobile” paradigms within it are very much not ready for daily use. > Linux phones are definitely not yet ready to be daily drivers Despite the author making this point twice and some of the negativity regarding Purism's pricing - I still feel very good about the state of Linux phones and the incredible work these two entities are doing. We can't lose sight of this. It wasn't too long ago that the mere mention of a Linux phone was pure fantasy. We now have two companies (and two passionate communities) that are helping move Open Source Linux forward. I'm still very excited about how things are developing and the trickle down effect it will have as we move forward. > One of the neat things about the Pinephone is the ability to boot and use a variety of Linux distributions on the hardware itself. It’s as easy as loading the distro onto an SD card, and then booting the phone. You don’t even have to flash anything to the internal eMMC in order to run it! This is such a killer feature for me - while also providing a modern-ish platform for the various distributions and app developers to test their wares. It's probably the biggest single most important thing about the PinePhone right now. No more unsuccessful rooting, flashing and possibly bricking. No more nagging feeling that you are merely renting a device and are constantly at the whim of a corporate overlord (which never ends well). I think, like the author, I'm a bit more excited about the flexibility of the PinePhone but acknowledge the importance of the work Purism is doing to try and bring a First Tier Linux phone to market. We all benefit from this.

girvo 6y ago
My Nokia N9 proved to me that a Linux-based phone without having to be an entirely different world like Android is possible — and I’m stoked to see Librem and the PinePhone take this even further! We’ve come a long way since the OpenMoko :)
- Fnoord 6y ago
  As did my Nokia N900 more than 10 years ago.
seba_dos1 6y ago
> It’s as easy as loading the distro onto an SD card, and then booting the phone. You don’t even have to flash anything to the internal eMMC in order to run it! FWIW while the Librem 5 can't run the bootloader straight from the SD card, the kernel can use the rootfs from SD card just fine - I have multiple distros installed on SD card there this way. The Librem 5 also supports booting via fastboot (uuu), which personally I find to be a more convenient option for emergency fallbacks than having to juggle with SD cards like you have to do on the PinePhone. FYI - the reason why L5 doesn't boot straight from the SD card is that the SD card reader is on the USB interface behind a hub, because both SDIO interfaces available on i.MX8MQ are already taken (one by eMMC and other by WiFi).

blendergeek 6y ago

I should point out that very little of this article compares the hardware of these two devices. This article has two main comparisons. One of these is Pine64 vs Purism and the others Phosh vs LoMiri. For those who haven't read the article but want to quickly skim to the sections with actual comparison between the Librem 5 and the Pinephone, here are the relevant headers: - Kill Switches - Charging the battery - Temperature - Phone shape The rest of the article is not about Librem 5 vs Pinephone. While the sections on the apps could have compared the two phones, instead they compare two operating systems. I would have loved a discussion of the performance differences between the two phones or the screen brightness or the speakers. However, most of this article is largely irrelevant to the phones.

cookiengineer 6y ago

I own a Pinephone with the latest revision board which was bought in the July 31st batch this year (and got shipped in September/November within the EU). I have to say that hardware-wise, the Pinephone got very _very_ far already. It's an amazing hacker's device, especially with the USB-C host. The only issue that persists is software. Phosh is pretty much useless because not a single app will work as a real mobile app, let alone act in a responsive manner with their underlying design philosophies. It all feels like Android 1.x, which was barely useable outside the context of shitty car navigation handhelds. The available cross-compiled versions of Browsers (e.g. Firefox or Chromium) are totally broken, as they are made for Desktop and do not even downscale their user interface, and are neither responsive anyhow. So for now, I am using my own (prototypical) Browser Stealth [1] due to lack for alternatives because there at least the UI doesn't crash every few seconds when being used within a WebKit2GTK webview. I don't have many requirements for my phone, to be honest. I don't use social apps, and only communicate via telegram. But currently the amount of software that's available for phosh is still the one reminding me of a developer environment or say, an Android emulator image. I seriously thought about taking ownership in creating a few apps for it, like one for openstreetmaps, notes, text editor, which are the more important ones for me. But to be bluntly honest, I don't even know where to start with the whole GTK shitshow. It's absolutely impossible to develop an app without any working examples. There's no non-auto-transpiled-bindings-documentation, there's no libhandy examples that actually work, and there's certainly not any responsive GTK app examples that would show how to make a "real mobile" app. How do people develop apps for mobile GTK? Seriously, I cannot understand it. I want to, but there's no way anyone can keep the mood up digging through a _mobile phone's gdb output while the on screen keyboard crashed_ to figure out how the API works. I think what GTK really needs is something like Electron, but maybe based on WebKit2GTK and (maybe?) gjs. Something that allows bundling your assets to build an app that is offline-ready, and is easy to build with common methodologies of UI frameworks. Because currently I don't see the reason why libhandy exists. It tries to fix a problem, and doesn't fix the underlying cause. GTK boxes and their layouting (and reflow?) concept just isn't made for an adaptive/responsive UI, so you'll always end up with a totally broken UX by modern standards. (You're welcome to challenge me on this, but as long as "make a sidebar that can fade-in/fade-out with a swipe" takes more than a week to build, I think you're wrong.) [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth

m463 6y ago

> It too has kill-switches, but these are not easy to access on the side of the phone and instead are inside the case of the phone. Ha, I can't help but think this is something linux folks won't even think twice about. :)

Valkhyr 6y ago
Hmm, I would not underestimate the convenience of having them out the outside easily accessible, especially when you consider that switching off radios at the moment should also help with battery consumption? (<- this is an assumption; I don't own either device and cannot test this)
- m463 6y ago
  Ha, I meant linux folks don't mind inconveniences like having to recompile the kernel, like having to use jtag and having the take the back off to access switches. :)

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

I'm impressed with the rate of progress in the Linux distros for smartphones due to these devices, especially the Pinephone as it's more accessible. But I honestly expected few major phone manufacturers to join these development effort in some manner after seeing the fate of Huawei with Android or specifically Google Play Services/OHA(Open Handset Alliance), I'm surprised it didn't happen yet or perhaps it's because of OHA it's not happening. Tizen didn't work out for smartphones although it seems to be gaining market share in wearables, why not direct the smartphone investment part of it to PostmarketOS, UBPorts etc. I presume Linux Foundation has to play a role in it.

pjmlp 6y ago
Huawei now is pushing their mikro-kernel based OS, nothing to do with Linux, Harmony OS. Ironically it used to be a research project demoed a few times at FOSDEN and US gave them a reason to bring it into production. Tizen is also being used in Samsung's smart TVs. LG has WebOS and Sharp Aquos. And then there is ChromeOS as well. Basically, GNU/Linux desktop has proven to not be something that general public even considers when it comes with strings attached about FOSS politics and little UI/UX that those people actually care about, without the apps all their friends use.
- chrononaut 6y ago
  As well as Sailfish OS, which is supported on a number of Sony devices among others. Development of the OS is happening at a faster clip now due to the support of the Aurora (Avrora) OS developers. Huawei is considering shipping phones with Sailfish in the future as well. EDIT: Typos.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  There is no doubt on the issue of chicken-and-egg problem with the app ecosystem, but wouldn't it be the only problem or even say the major problem to address if the manufacturers get on to supporting mainline Linux for smartphones instead of developing a completely new operating system from the scratch.

ansible 6y ago

> Both phones can run fairly hot. I think given how I hold the phone (closer to the base of the phone) I tend to notice the Librem 5 more often than I notice the Pinephone getting hotter. This is mostly because the frame / chassis for the Librem 5 is metal, and conducts the heat around the sides of the phone. So you’ll notice it getting hot after you’ve used your phone for a good bit. Power management is complex these days. You'll often get a minimal implementation from the chip vendor, and it is a fair amount of work to really polish the lower level support. On top of that, you have to integrate this with the rest of the OS, so that active apps can increase the clocks, which then get automatically scaled back as system load decreases. So there's a lot to do on the userspace side as well.

Valkhyr 6y ago
This is the major reason I deferred my Evergreen Librem 5 order for the Fir batch (set to ship in ~1 year), which will (a) have a smaller process size (14nm vs 28nm currently) and (b) allow for more time for optimizations.
- fsflover 6y ago
  Fir batch will probably have its own disadvantages: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#71-what-will-be-the-changes-in-the-fir-batch-and-should-i-wait-for-it https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
  - Valkhyr 6y ago
    Thank you for that link - I had not seen that - my impression was that Fir would be a die shrink and otherwise identical. Reading through the explanation, I think the tradeoff is still worth it for me since I care more about battery life and heat than full convergence (I plan to use this device as a portable Linux machine on the go, not so much (if at all) docked). I do think Purism should have been clearer about this though.

beyondcompute 6y ago

It’s not obvious for me why wouldn’t they install better cameras. For me camera system is one of the most important parts of a smartphone specification. Don’t those makers realize that there are people for whom those things are important?

driminicus 6y ago
I understand that the camera can be an important feature of a smartphone for some people, but I for one, don't care about it at all above a certain "eh, good enough" threshold, that is currently easily met by any smartphone. If I want to take good pictures, I use an actual camera, with a proper lens. All this to say: you can't always serve everyone.
- 37eydyhrh 6y ago
  Isn't the whole goal to serve as close to everyone as possible? Or is the idea that these will always be niche phones sold at flagship prices but without flagship features? I get that universal appeal is an impossible objective, even for popular brands, but surely a part of the grand scheme of all this is to prove that these sorts of phones can have mainstream appeal if given the time and support needed to develop into competitive products.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  > I understand that the camera can be an important feature of a smartphone for some people, but I for one, don't care about it at all above a certain "eh, good enough" threshold, that is currently easily met by any smartphone. Judging by many, many reviews of smartphones, most people do deeply care about the quality and features of their phone's camera, and it's very likely to be the only camera many people have.
linmob 6y ago
With the PinePhone 5MP is the limit of the AllWinner A64 SoC, and IIRC it‘s similar with the Librem 5. Also, it‘s important to remember that what makes smartphone cameras great is an advanced software stack, which does not exist for GNU/Linux yet (developments like the Megapixels app are showing some promise though).

fsflover 6y ago

Discussion on the Purism forum: https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-vs-librem-5/9092/81 https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-vs-librem-5/9092/81.

floatboth 6y ago

Meanwhile in the "repurpose existing phones" camp: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SDM845_Mainlining https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SDM845_Mainlining Yeah, sure, the Librem5/Pinephone boot directly into open source firmware instead of some Qualcomm monstrosity that even acts as a hypervisor, but. Near-mainline Linux with GPU support on actually powerful devices with 3-ish-GHz fast cores, 8GiB RAM, and so on. And you can buy these on the used market rather than investing in more new e-waste.

fsflover 6y ago
GNU/Linux phones provide a few things which are not achievable elsewhere: convergence, lifetime updates, killswitches and so on.
swiley 6y ago
I threw out my Qualcomm phones long ago because the lack of software updates had made them useless and freedreno really didn't look like it was going to catch up. Part of me wishes I hadn't but also the Pinephone is better than my Samsung galaxy S3 in terms of specs and with actually competent software. If people on qualcomm phones had any amount of faith the company wouldn't screw them over or the community would be able to make a huge leap in terms of compatibility they probably would keep the phones but that's not how things have worked for about a decade.

mike-cardwell 6y ago

I'm surprised battery life isn't mentioned. My understanding is that it's abysmal for Librem 5? I could live with a phone that has software issues, but I can't live with a phone that spends most of the day turned off because it needs charging every few hours...

fsflover 6y ago
> My understanding is that it's abysmal for Librem 5? It's more or less fine, especially considering that suspend is not yet implemented at all: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-4500mah-battery-upgrade/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-4500mah-battery-upgrade/.
- mike-cardwell 6y ago
  That article basically says that if I turn wifi off and don't use the phone, it still wont even last a whole day, in the best case... To me, that's abysmal.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    True, but it will be sufficiently improved with software updates.
    - mike-cardwell 6y ago
      If that happens, then the phone becomes viable. Until that date, it's just an expensive toy to tinker with.

kevsim 6y ago

Kind of annoying to have a review and not have a single picture of the phones, screenshots, etc. Yes, I can google them myself, but c'mon. Also $1999 and the camera doesn't work yet? Yikes.

paulcarroty 6y ago

There's the third way: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices You can buy the used devices cheaper than Pinephone and play with them. Not perfect hardware support, but enough for hackable mobile device with privacy and low-distraction mode.

fsflover 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25343592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25343592 >with privacy There is no privacy with all proprietary drivers. There is no security either.

BenGosub 6y ago

I have a question, does Google's Android licenses allow Android apps to be used on non-android operating systems? I know that some Google provided APIs will be missing, but still, we could soon have alternatives, like OpenStreet for maps.

mark_l_watson 6y ago

For now, I sort of trust Apple enough on privacy and security, PRISM disclosures and their being a huge corporation. What will get me to buy a product like Librem or Pinephone in the future would be as a universal device, that is a dock that would make it my only digital device - and feel secure against hacks, etc.

asjkaehauisa 6y ago

I really like alternatives, but imo AOSP is really secure and private OS. What I need is a AOSP smartphone with frequently OTA updates (like in Pixel's phone), working out of box. I wouldn't compromise my security by choosing one of this smartphones.

fsflover 6y ago
Technically, nothing prevents you from installing AOSP on these smartphones. Even better, you can have lifetime updates and verifiable drivers. In practice, GloDroid exists on Pinephone [0], but it's far from usable. [0] https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10613 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10613
kop316 6y ago
Frankly, good luck with that. I attempted for a few months to do that for my Pixel 3a (which in theory is officially supported). When I followed the official guide to compile android, I found that a LOT of things did not work that I expected it to, including: VoLTE, SMS over LTE, and wifi-calling. The phone was useless on LTE, I had to force it onto 3G for any phone functionality. I also had a weird issue where a new SIM would refuse to work in it, I had to activate a new SIM in a Google Stock android, then it would work in AOSP. I had to manually search through the Google image to find what libraries existed, manually extract them, add them to my AOSP build, THEN compile. I was only able to do this because others had done much of the grunt work already (i.e. GrapheneOS), but when it was "upgraded" to Android 10, it all changed and all my work went out the window. Now I just use GrapheneOS and accept the comprimises I have to deal with.

s_gourichon 6y ago

I *did not* / will *not* test: Phone calls & SMS / MMS functionality I haven’t bothered plugging them into a display. Email (...) I’ve been too lazy to try setting this up Cameras GPS / location Anyone who expected an article like "I actually tested those phones in real life and will tell if they are actually suitable as phones", don't expect. (Article is not empty, does mentions how these machines behave on the GUI side, data-only SIM, web browsing, music, charging.)

busrf 6y ago
I was honestly really surprised that this was the “will not test” list rather than the “must test” list!

DobryMorozov 6y ago

I wonder if they have ever tried to shop their tech to China. Chinese mobile companies are interested in building an alternative mobile operating system and have the resources to make it work

amosbatto 6y ago

ThatGeoGuy, Since you called me that "crazy uncle at Thankgiving," I feel that the "crazy uncle" should have a chance to respond to the arguments that you made in your review: https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-vs-librem-5/9092/83 https://forums.puri.sm/t/pinephone-vs-librem-5/9092/83