10 ms·

The Speed of the Librem 5

poopooracoocoo 3y ago
Incredible. Purism has come a long way. It's amazing to have a truly open phone. A lot of people don't know how hard it is to mod an Android phone. You have to worry about drivers and firmware, security protections and attestation. For me the value of this comes from its freedom. Not from its privacy necessarily, but the hardware switches are great. I hate that I rely on the very many apps for Android and iOS that don't have a web counterpart like Discord. Linux apps on phones are very much a chicken-egg problem and I don't think we can break the duopoly
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> A single intrusive Android, Apple, or Microsoft app enables the developer to conduct audio, video, and physical surveillance on the end user while data mining highly confidential personal, business, medical, legal, employment, and location information from the end user to exploit for profits. Y'all do know that modern Android and iOS have permission prompts to prevent this kind of thing, right? And at best this would still be "don't worry that our hardware is inferior because at least we make it harder to install malware" - deflecting doesn't convince me that speed isn't a problem.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > Y'all do know that modern Android and iOS have permission prompts to prevent this kind of thing, right? You know these apps completely disable themselves if you don't grant them the permissions because the OS tells them when you do that, right?
  - crop_rotation 3y ago
    That doesn't happen on iOS. Apps completely disabling themselves if not granted permissions is explicitly against Apple's terms IIRC. This is how I was able to install Truecaller (yes that invasive app) without giving it my contacts permission and then disable my number from it (which seems to be the only way). You can not do this on android as truecaller would refuse to move forward without permissions.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      > You can not do this on android as truecaller would refuse to move forward without permissions. Then it's only iOS that allows that. My point still stands though because the commenter said that "android and iOS" allow you to do this but they don't. Back when Android allowed you to root the phone, XPrivacyLua let you spoof granted permissions so that apps thought they were tracking data that was actually fake. But now you can't do this. Some distributions like GrapheneOS and maybe LineageOS also let you do this nowadays, but it's still not enough.
    - callalex 3y ago
      I encounter this all the time with App Store apps. Citizen will disable itself if you don’t grant live, high precision location data even though it would work fine with “when open” and an approximate location. The app for sketchy WiFi cameras I bought requires location to register the cameras, and will refuse to activate them without the permission.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    (Taking the claim at face value) Okay, then nothing is safe regardless of platform; apps on every platform can just demand permissions and be given them, and PureOS is no better because "we demand that you disable technical measures that would protect you" is effective on all OSs. This still leaves the Librem 5 no better than anything else.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      > This still leaves the Librem 5 no better than anything else. It doesn't. The security model of GNU/Linux is that you run trusted FLOSS apps from a signed repository. Try to find malware in there.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        Okay, then the security model of Android can be that you run trusted apps from a signed repository (say, f-droid). If you don't install apps that aren't from a publisher you trust, both OSs should be fine. If you do, then the only advantage of PureOS is that it's less likely to be targeted, not that it actually has better security. Edit: As a worked example, let's say the app for some social network does something nasty. If they released their app for PureOS, it would still do something nasty. If they don't release such an app, then you can't use it, but you could also just not use it on Android and enjoy the same security.
        fsflover 3y ago
        Yes, sandboxing should be improved on GNU/Linux. Still, you can use the smart card on Librem 5 and kill switches if you need to be 100% sure malware has no access to some things.
- kiba 3y ago
  These permission prompts is useless because way too many app asks for all these things.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    There is still better security. On Android apps can't start using the microphone or camera while in the background. If an app is using the microphone or camera while in the background the app has to show itself on the notification bar. The notification bar will also have an indicator showing that you are being recorded. Meanwhile on PureOS you can install a package and then it is free to spy on you all it wants without you even knowing about it.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      This is not better security, it is wholesale: android and ios has security, while almost every linux distro lacks any form of meaningful security, which is a huge shame.
      - fsflover 3y ago
        Linux phones have a different threat model. Saying they lack any form of security implies you know nothing about them: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#43-how-secure-is-the-librem-5-compared-to-an-android-phone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
  - 0xffff2 3y ago
    Do people not just say no? I reflexively deny any unexpected permission prompts these days.
- neilsimp1 3y ago
  And how can you verify that those permissions are behaving the way that you asked them to? Google themselves have publicly stated that turning off GPS in your settings menu doesn't actually turn it off physically. So how do we know that apps still aren't accessing GPS data?
strangus 3y ago
I can't believe this company is still around.
- crop_rotation 3y ago
  I don't think they will be around for long. Their products went from being the highly anticipated to most trashed for being totally non functional and hostile behaviour towards customers.
  - NewJazz 3y ago
    Luckily they have plenty of competition around: FairPhone, PinePhone, SHIFT [1] on the phone side and FrameWork, System76 on the laptop side. [1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SHIFT_SHIFT6mq_(shift-axolotl) https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SHIFT_SHIFT6mq_(shift-axo...
    - fsflover 3y ago
      > PinePhone Not a competitor without a dedicated software developers team: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37914312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37914312. All others don't offer GNU/Linux phones.
      - eloisant 3y ago
        Fairphone provides a version with a de-Googled Android (/e/OS) and I think that enough for people who care about their privacy and don't want to share their data with Big Tech. Having an actual Linux phone with the same userspace as a Linux Desktop is cool, but it's even more niche.
        fsflover 3y ago
        It's definitely niche, but the exclusive features can be useful to quite a few people I believe: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#11-why-buy-the-librem-5 https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
curt15 3y ago
The header bar with nothing but the app's name seems redundant and gives me the impression that I'm looking at a phone-sized window in GNOME rather than an app designed for the entire screen.
- fsflover 3y ago
  Actually, it is a phone-sized window in GNOME: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085
yellow_lead 3y ago
The touch interactions look laggy from my perspective, but I could be wrong.
Bud 3y ago
[dead]
renewiltord 3y ago
Really hard to make this stuff. It would be pretty neat if whiteboxed phones would show up that are the equivalent of Clevo/Sager that other brands could specialize to and relabel. I imagine there's a lot of work in making the next phone in each of these cases that is probably better spent on the software platform. Good for them for trying, of course. Impressive work.
akioni 3y ago
stop using and promoting linux phones https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux-phones.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux-phones.html
- rsolva 3y ago
  Thanks for providing a nice list of security drawbacks for Linux phones. Nice to have them all gathered in one place :) However, I did not buy my Librem 5 to get a phone with feature parity with Android or iOS, I wanted a hackable phone that behaves more like my other devices running Linux and to support a future where users have the option to control and inspect their phones. I'm following Fedoras efforts of making an immutable base system for the Librem 5 with great interest. I believe their approach will address at least some of your security concerns.
  - akioni 3y ago
    I use silverblue. It does nothing to address the concerns listed in the article.
    - rsolva 3y ago
      Does Fedora/Silverblue have the same security problems (not applying exec-shield patch, disabling kexec etc) as PureOS does?
      - akioni 3y ago
        The article is somewhat poorly written despite making salient points. The core point is this part: > There is not yet a single Linux phone with a sane security model. They do not have modern security features, such as full system MAC policies, verified boot, strong app sandboxing, modern exploit mitigations and so on, which modern Android phones already deploy. The example about PureOS is that their hardening is minimal even for desktop linux, let alone for mobile. If you wanted to harden linux well enough to be on par with android, you would end up with android. That's the core point. More info: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html Any mention of silverblue/immutability is not relevant here. It has nothing to do with the above concerns.
acdha 3y ago
> In 2017, Apple admitted to intentionally slowing down older iPhones. The claim was this would increase your phone’s lifespan. But really, it made your once snappy phone feel much more sluggish, leading some to upgrade their phones to a newer model with marginally better specs I doubt any of their marketing people are reading this but outright lying like that is not how you build trust in your products. They’re referring to the phone throttling its power draw when a degraded battery could no longer provide full output, and the alternative would be shutting down suddenly at a time when the phone was doing something demanding like playing a game. Other devices do this as well for the same reason, and anyone selling battery powered devices has no excuse for not knowing this. A company which shipped a phone in 2020 with 5 hours of battery life when new must be painfully aware of the challenges. Similarly, anyone buying another phone rather than a much cheaper battery replacement is probably doing so because they want the additional performance, camera quality, etc. or simply normal wear and tear has added up over time and the repair costs are closer to replacement. A company delivering a phone with performance slower than competing devices made a decade earlier similarly has no business claiming that the gains for most users are marginal just because their hardware has lagged far behind. There’s a great example of deceptive marketing here: > The Librem 5 utilizes a quad-core arm based CPU, where Purism is the first company to include this CPU in a mobile phone https://puri.sm/pages/iphone-vs-librem-5/ https://puri.sm/pages/iphone-vs-librem-5/ Someone who doesn’t know that quad core ARM CPUs started shipping in phones around 2011 would not understand that to mean “nobody else uses this specific CPU for phones” rather than what they’re hoping the reader will think: “this thing isn’t slower than an iPhone 4S” The security claims are similarly broad and designed to be read as more persuasive than is actually warranted. This is disappointing because I like the idea of more open hardware, and it’s certainly the case that a lot of phones are thrown out because they stop getting support, but the more I read their copy the less I trust this company. They’re trying to make an argument for why you shouldn’t hold slower hardware against them, but they way they do it makes me less inclined to trust anything they say without carefully validating it.
- slikrick 3y ago
  they are not lying, apple was quite literally sued successfully in France and are currently settling class action lawsuits over the exact thing. apple can say otherwise but that doesn't mean you need to regurgitate their lies. Apple only slowed the phones after a software update, not as a natural response to battery degradation. if that were the case it wouldn't be unique to that specific phone anyways. God, apple makes good hardware but the people who just makes things up to stand in the fire of criticism are the strangest
mrstone 3y ago
The phone itself looks like junk from 2011. The ghosting on the screen is apparent in the video demonstrating its "speed". The apps they are demoing look very poorly designed, but all of this to be forgiven because "they aren't collecting your data". Disappointing but I didn't really expect much from them.
whalesalad 3y ago
Absolutely nothing about the demo video looks fast.
- MerelyMortal 3y ago
  Maybe you're looking for "instant"? I just picked up a Pixel 8 Pro, and even that's not "instant".
neilsimp1 3y ago
FWIW, I have been daily driving a Librem 5 for about 5 months now. It is NOT slow. Some JS heavy pages take a long time to load (FF is mostly fine, GNOME Web is not) in the browser. Other apps work totally fine speed-wise. There's a lot of opinions in this thread but not a lot of people with firsthand experience.
- canadiantim 3y ago
  What do you do for apps like uber or other similar apps?
  - neilsimp1 3y ago
    I have never used Uber/Lyft, so I cannot say. There is one Android app I am using through Waydroid. It's a 2FA app I need to log in to work. Uber/Lyft may also work through Waydroid, but I have no idea.
- MerelyMortal 3y ago
  There's also a lot of opinions trying to be passed off as fact, e.g. saying Purism is lying when they said Apple intentionally slowed down their phones.
MerelyMortal 3y ago
The video looks pretty good, time to dust off the Librem 5 in my closet and update its software.

Incredible. Purism has come a long way. It's amazing to have a truly open phone. A lot of people don't know how hard it is to mod an Android phone. You have to worry about drivers and firmware, security protections and attestation. For me the value of this comes from its freedom. Not from its privacy necessarily, but the hardware switches are great. I hate that I rely on the very many apps for Android and iOS that don't have a web counterpart like Discord. Linux apps on phones are very much a chicken-egg problem and I don't think we can break the duopoly

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> A single intrusive Android, Apple, or Microsoft app enables the developer to conduct audio, video, and physical surveillance on the end user while data mining highly confidential personal, business, medical, legal, employment, and location information from the end user to exploit for profits. Y'all do know that modern Android and iOS have permission prompts to prevent this kind of thing, right? And at best this would still be "don't worry that our hardware is inferior because at least we make it harder to install malware" - deflecting doesn't convince me that speed isn't a problem.

LoganDark 3y ago
> Y'all do know that modern Android and iOS have permission prompts to prevent this kind of thing, right? You know these apps completely disable themselves if you don't grant them the permissions because the OS tells them when you do that, right?
- crop_rotation 3y ago
  That doesn't happen on iOS. Apps completely disabling themselves if not granted permissions is explicitly against Apple's terms IIRC. This is how I was able to install Truecaller (yes that invasive app) without giving it my contacts permission and then disable my number from it (which seems to be the only way). You can not do this on android as truecaller would refuse to move forward without permissions.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    > You can not do this on android as truecaller would refuse to move forward without permissions. Then it's only iOS that allows that. My point still stands though because the commenter said that "android and iOS" allow you to do this but they don't. Back when Android allowed you to root the phone, XPrivacyLua let you spoof granted permissions so that apps thought they were tracking data that was actually fake. But now you can't do this. Some distributions like GrapheneOS and maybe LineageOS also let you do this nowadays, but it's still not enough.
  - callalex 3y ago
    I encounter this all the time with App Store apps. Citizen will disable itself if you don’t grant live, high precision location data even though it would work fine with “when open” and an approximate location. The app for sketchy WiFi cameras I bought requires location to register the cameras, and will refuse to activate them without the permission.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  (Taking the claim at face value) Okay, then nothing is safe regardless of platform; apps on every platform can just demand permissions and be given them, and PureOS is no better because "we demand that you disable technical measures that would protect you" is effective on all OSs. This still leaves the Librem 5 no better than anything else.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    > This still leaves the Librem 5 no better than anything else. It doesn't. The security model of GNU/Linux is that you run trusted FLOSS apps from a signed repository. Try to find malware in there.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      Okay, then the security model of Android can be that you run trusted apps from a signed repository (say, f-droid). If you don't install apps that aren't from a publisher you trust, both OSs should be fine. If you do, then the only advantage of PureOS is that it's less likely to be targeted, not that it actually has better security. Edit: As a worked example, let's say the app for some social network does something nasty. If they released their app for PureOS, it would still do something nasty. If they don't release such an app, then you can't use it, but you could also just not use it on Android and enjoy the same security.
      - fsflover 3y ago
        Yes, sandboxing should be improved on GNU/Linux. Still, you can use the smart card on Librem 5 and kill switches if you need to be 100% sure malware has no access to some things.
kiba 3y ago
These permission prompts is useless because way too many app asks for all these things.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  There is still better security. On Android apps can't start using the microphone or camera while in the background. If an app is using the microphone or camera while in the background the app has to show itself on the notification bar. The notification bar will also have an indicator showing that you are being recorded. Meanwhile on PureOS you can install a package and then it is free to spy on you all it wants without you even knowing about it.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    This is not better security, it is wholesale: android and ios has security, while almost every linux distro lacks any form of meaningful security, which is a huge shame.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      Linux phones have a different threat model. Saying they lack any form of security implies you know nothing about them: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#43-how-secure-is-the-librem-5-compared-to-an-android-phone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  Do people not just say no? I reflexively deny any unexpected permission prompts these days.
neilsimp1 3y ago
And how can you verify that those permissions are behaving the way that you asked them to? Google themselves have publicly stated that turning off GPS in your settings menu doesn't actually turn it off physically. So how do we know that apps still aren't accessing GPS data?

strangus 3y ago

I can't believe this company is still around.

crop_rotation 3y ago
I don't think they will be around for long. Their products went from being the highly anticipated to most trashed for being totally non functional and hostile behaviour towards customers.
- NewJazz 3y ago
  Luckily they have plenty of competition around: FairPhone, PinePhone, SHIFT [1] on the phone side and FrameWork, System76 on the laptop side. [1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SHIFT_SHIFT6mq_(shift-axolotl) https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SHIFT_SHIFT6mq_(shift-axo...
  - fsflover 3y ago
    > PinePhone Not a competitor without a dedicated software developers team: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37914312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37914312. All others don't offer GNU/Linux phones.
    - eloisant 3y ago
      Fairphone provides a version with a de-Googled Android (/e/OS) and I think that enough for people who care about their privacy and don't want to share their data with Big Tech. Having an actual Linux phone with the same userspace as a Linux Desktop is cool, but it's even more niche.
      - fsflover 3y ago
        It's definitely niche, but the exclusive features can be useful to quite a few people I believe: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#11-why-buy-the-librem-5 https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

curt15 3y ago

The header bar with nothing but the app's name seems redundant and gives me the impression that I'm looking at a phone-sized window in GNOME rather than an app designed for the entire screen.

fsflover 3y ago
Actually, it is a phone-sized window in GNOME: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085

yellow_lead 3y ago

The touch interactions look laggy from my perspective, but I could be wrong.

Bud 3y ago

[dead]

renewiltord 3y ago

Really hard to make this stuff. It would be pretty neat if whiteboxed phones would show up that are the equivalent of Clevo/Sager that other brands could specialize to and relabel. I imagine there's a lot of work in making the next phone in each of these cases that is probably better spent on the software platform. Good for them for trying, of course. Impressive work.

akioni 3y ago

stop using and promoting linux phones https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux-phones.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux-phones.html

rsolva 3y ago
Thanks for providing a nice list of security drawbacks for Linux phones. Nice to have them all gathered in one place :) However, I did not buy my Librem 5 to get a phone with feature parity with Android or iOS, I wanted a hackable phone that behaves more like my other devices running Linux and to support a future where users have the option to control and inspect their phones. I'm following Fedoras efforts of making an immutable base system for the Librem 5 with great interest. I believe their approach will address at least some of your security concerns.
- akioni 3y ago
  I use silverblue. It does nothing to address the concerns listed in the article.
  - rsolva 3y ago
    Does Fedora/Silverblue have the same security problems (not applying exec-shield patch, disabling kexec etc) as PureOS does?
    - akioni 3y ago
      The article is somewhat poorly written despite making salient points. The core point is this part: > There is not yet a single Linux phone with a sane security model. They do not have modern security features, such as full system MAC policies, verified boot, strong app sandboxing, modern exploit mitigations and so on, which modern Android phones already deploy. The example about PureOS is that their hardening is minimal even for desktop linux, let alone for mobile. If you wanted to harden linux well enough to be on par with android, you would end up with android. That's the core point. More info: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html Any mention of silverblue/immutability is not relevant here. It has nothing to do with the above concerns.

acdha 3y ago

> In 2017, Apple admitted to intentionally slowing down older iPhones. The claim was this would increase your phone’s lifespan. But really, it made your once snappy phone feel much more sluggish, leading some to upgrade their phones to a newer model with marginally better specs I doubt any of their marketing people are reading this but outright lying like that is not how you build trust in your products. They’re referring to the phone throttling its power draw when a degraded battery could no longer provide full output, and the alternative would be shutting down suddenly at a time when the phone was doing something demanding like playing a game. Other devices do this as well for the same reason, and anyone selling battery powered devices has no excuse for not knowing this. A company which shipped a phone in 2020 with 5 hours of battery life when new must be painfully aware of the challenges. Similarly, anyone buying another phone rather than a much cheaper battery replacement is probably doing so because they want the additional performance, camera quality, etc. or simply normal wear and tear has added up over time and the repair costs are closer to replacement. A company delivering a phone with performance slower than competing devices made a decade earlier similarly has no business claiming that the gains for most users are marginal just because their hardware has lagged far behind. There’s a great example of deceptive marketing here: > The Librem 5 utilizes a quad-core arm based CPU, where Purism is the first company to include this CPU in a mobile phone https://puri.sm/pages/iphone-vs-librem-5/ https://puri.sm/pages/iphone-vs-librem-5/ Someone who doesn’t know that quad core ARM CPUs started shipping in phones around 2011 would not understand that to mean “nobody else uses this specific CPU for phones” rather than what they’re hoping the reader will think: “this thing isn’t slower than an iPhone 4S” The security claims are similarly broad and designed to be read as more persuasive than is actually warranted. This is disappointing because I like the idea of more open hardware, and it’s certainly the case that a lot of phones are thrown out because they stop getting support, but the more I read their copy the less I trust this company. They’re trying to make an argument for why you shouldn’t hold slower hardware against them, but they way they do it makes me less inclined to trust anything they say without carefully validating it.

slikrick 3y ago
they are not lying, apple was quite literally sued successfully in France and are currently settling class action lawsuits over the exact thing. apple can say otherwise but that doesn't mean you need to regurgitate their lies. Apple only slowed the phones after a software update, not as a natural response to battery degradation. if that were the case it wouldn't be unique to that specific phone anyways. God, apple makes good hardware but the people who just makes things up to stand in the fire of criticism are the strangest

mrstone 3y ago

The phone itself looks like junk from 2011. The ghosting on the screen is apparent in the video demonstrating its "speed". The apps they are demoing look very poorly designed, but all of this to be forgiven because "they aren't collecting your data". Disappointing but I didn't really expect much from them.

whalesalad 3y ago

Absolutely nothing about the demo video looks fast.

MerelyMortal 3y ago
Maybe you're looking for "instant"? I just picked up a Pixel 8 Pro, and even that's not "instant".

neilsimp1 3y ago

FWIW, I have been daily driving a Librem 5 for about 5 months now. It is NOT slow. Some JS heavy pages take a long time to load (FF is mostly fine, GNOME Web is not) in the browser. Other apps work totally fine speed-wise. There's a lot of opinions in this thread but not a lot of people with firsthand experience.

canadiantim 3y ago
What do you do for apps like uber or other similar apps?
- neilsimp1 3y ago
  I have never used Uber/Lyft, so I cannot say. There is one Android app I am using through Waydroid. It's a 2FA app I need to log in to work. Uber/Lyft may also work through Waydroid, but I have no idea.
MerelyMortal 3y ago
There's also a lot of opinions trying to be passed off as fact, e.g. saying Purism is lying when they said Apple intentionally slowed down their phones.

MerelyMortal 3y ago

The video looks pretty good, time to dust off the Librem 5 in my closet and update its software.