3 ms·

PinePhones are due to ship next month for $200. Is a Librem 5 worth waiting for and paying 4x the price?

curtis3389 6y ago
If you just want a Linux phone, probably not. A lot of the price of the Librem 5 goes towards subsidizing the software development. Pine64 only produces the hardware and leaves the rest to the community, but everyone benefits from much of the work Purism is doing in the software stack. I got a PineTab recently and am currently running Mobian w/ Phosh on it. I'm also still frustratedly awaiting my Librem 5, but those Mobian PinePhones look nice. Someone might say the Librem 5 has better specs, but it's also huge and really not targeted at the average consumer (they probably don't care about the physical kill switches or convergence).
l5newbie 6y ago
I got my Librem 5 last week, and I'm sad to say that it isn't. The software is just not there. It's in a state that would have been disappointing if it had actually shipped on time two years ago. A device that cannot reliably connect to a wifi network in 2021 is... mindboggling. I wrote up some of my first impressions here in the Purism forum: https://forums.puri.sm/t/myl5-librem-5-evergreen-arrived-in-austria/11648 https://forums.puri.sm/t/myl5-librem-5-evergreen-arrived-in-... My current plan is to sell it on at half price, which should roughly cover a new Fairphone.
- linmob 6y ago
  If you are really selling it, please get in touch - hello@linmob.net is my email, I am in Germany.
emacsen 6y ago
I've had the first gen PinePhone and my view on it is that this is not really a mass market device yet. The PinePhone is just too slow to use. It's frustratingly unresponsive. I hoped the LibreM would be fast enough to make the phone usable. And then after that, there need to be apps that work, but the Free Phone ecosystem is fractured. There's Android derivatives such as the Lineage or /e/ OS, there are pure Linux variants running Phosh, which was developed by Pureism, but also runs on Mobian and postmarketOS, and there is Plasma Mobile, and UBPorts, as well as GerdaOS, which is based on KaiOS, which is a fork of FirefoxOS.
- linmob 6y ago
  This sounds you did have a Braveheart edition and have given it away since. I got started with the UBports Edition PinePhone in June and I think it's amazing how much the software has improved since. I have quite a backlog of new apps I need to add to https://linmobapps,frama.io https://linmobapps,frama.io, and overall it has gotten more stable and smoother as more and more is being upstreamed and hardware enablement happens. BTW: I am writing this on my PinePhone.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    UBports is arguably obsolete, it is based on 2014-era Ubuntu-specific code that even Ubuntu moved away from and is now bitrotting. Mobian has a more promising software stack, but I agree with the OP that the PinePhone is painfully slow, and it doesn't matter which edition you have, because they all have the same underpowered A64 CPU.
  - emacsen 6y ago
    I didn't give it away, it's functional. As for UBPorts, it stoppped updating! It just fails to update. It also insists I'm on a captive portal when I'm on my home wifi.

If you just want a Linux phone, probably not. A lot of the price of the Librem 5 goes towards subsidizing the software development. Pine64 only produces the hardware and leaves the rest to the community, but everyone benefits from much of the work Purism is doing in the software stack. I got a PineTab recently and am currently running Mobian w/ Phosh on it. I'm also still frustratedly awaiting my Librem 5, but those Mobian PinePhones look nice. Someone might say the Librem 5 has better specs, but it's also huge and really not targeted at the average consumer (they probably don't care about the physical kill switches or convergence).

l5newbie 6y ago

I got my Librem 5 last week, and I'm sad to say that it isn't. The software is just not there. It's in a state that would have been disappointing if it had actually shipped on time two years ago. A device that cannot reliably connect to a wifi network in 2021 is... mindboggling. I wrote up some of my first impressions here in the Purism forum: https://forums.puri.sm/t/myl5-librem-5-evergreen-arrived-in-austria/11648 https://forums.puri.sm/t/myl5-librem-5-evergreen-arrived-in-... My current plan is to sell it on at half price, which should roughly cover a new Fairphone.

linmob 6y ago
If you are really selling it, please get in touch - hello@linmob.net is my email, I am in Germany.

emacsen 6y ago

I've had the first gen PinePhone and my view on it is that this is not really a mass market device yet. The PinePhone is just too slow to use. It's frustratingly unresponsive. I hoped the LibreM would be fast enough to make the phone usable. And then after that, there need to be apps that work, but the Free Phone ecosystem is fractured. There's Android derivatives such as the Lineage or /e/ OS, there are pure Linux variants running Phosh, which was developed by Pureism, but also runs on Mobian and postmarketOS, and there is Plasma Mobile, and UBPorts, as well as GerdaOS, which is based on KaiOS, which is a fork of FirefoxOS.

linmob 6y ago
This sounds you did have a Braveheart edition and have given it away since. I got started with the UBports Edition PinePhone in June and I think it's amazing how much the software has improved since. I have quite a backlog of new apps I need to add to https://linmobapps,frama.io https://linmobapps,frama.io, and overall it has gotten more stable and smoother as more and more is being upstreamed and hardware enablement happens. BTW: I am writing this on my PinePhone.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  UBports is arguably obsolete, it is based on 2014-era Ubuntu-specific code that even Ubuntu moved away from and is now bitrotting. Mobian has a more promising software stack, but I agree with the OP that the PinePhone is painfully slow, and it doesn't matter which edition you have, because they all have the same underpowered A64 CPU.
- emacsen 6y ago
  I didn't give it away, it's functional. As for UBPorts, it stoppped updating! It just fails to update. It also insists I'm on a captive portal when I'm on my home wifi.