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Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

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Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#51

Post by RandomBacon »

redwards510 wrote: post #16
RandomBacon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, I want to get one of those also, but they're not selling it and I don't see any links about when we can buy it, for how much, and when it will ship.

I can't find the info for the price, but I remember seeing it before and it was very low, like $200, which would make this a very exciting entry into the notAndroidOrIOS market. The Librem 5 was cool at first, until they started delaying it indefinitely and the price is too high for mass adoption. By having a very low price on the Pinephone they are courting a lot more tinkerers to get one and help develop the OS ver…

Thank you! I will keep an eye on this.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#52

Post by RandomBacon »

rtkwe wrote: post #31
RandomBacon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's on par with most other phones, which I agree is huge. Smaller would take a lot more work, so I'm okay with a larger first version.

Yeah larger screens gives them some more leeway internally but does kind of restrain them a bit too because the larger screen wants more battery which requires a certain amount of space. If you've ever seen a tear down of the iPhone X for example the boards are actually stacked to maximize the space available for battery in the thin form. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+X+Teardown/98975#s182...

I think the larger screen is also beneficial for the interface since it is based on Gnome and not some touch-only gui.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#53

Post by mrob »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #41
mrob wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer LCD. AFAIK, all OLED screens on the market use PWM brightness control in the 100s of Hz range, which for many people causes phantom array effect during eye movement. LCDs can have DC backlights, avoiding this annoyance.

First I've heard of that; interesting. From what I can tell, that's something software can potentially mitigate and smooth out on some displays?

100% duty cycle PWM is the same as DC, so you can mitigate it by setting the hardware brightness to maximum and scaling image brightness down in software to compensate. This isn't a good solution because it sacrifices color bit depth, causing banding.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#54

Post by ISL »

RandomBacon wrote: post #47
cal5k wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I absolutely detest the fact that my carrier can remotely activate my phone's baseband processor to conduct surveillance. Without a hardware kill switch there's basically no way to prevent this other than, perhaps, using a faraday bag.

And if they really wanted to, your phone could record the audio, GPS, etc and then transmit once it's out of the faraday bag.

To be pedantic, a sufficient Faraday cage will block GPS (but not audio, acceleration, etc...)

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#55

Post by kgwxd »

Endy wrote: post #36

I'm sorry, this device profile doesn't really sell me on why I need to upgrade from my Android TracFone; it doesn't even give me confidence that it will work with the networks I need it to. This is part of the problem I've found over the years with consumer Unix-derivatives - too many "figure it out yourself" answers, not enough "just works, or we'll show you how to figure out whether it works or not first". That's t…

Any mention of "just works" is going to be a lie. It's good to be honest about what you're selling, yet sellers rarely are. Just the fact they're being honest is a major selling point for me.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#57

Post by sgeisler »

As someone who backed them in 2017 I'm so happy to finally see the specs. It's amazing to follow their progress, I love what they are doing with Gnome/Phosh, that gives me hope that there will be many native apps for the most important tasks and not just some web-app mess.

For the people complaining about the price/specs ratio: this phone is no standard off-the-shelve system, it had to be designed with user privacy and openness in mind while having a ridiculously small market. I'm amazed they did it so cheaply.

Personally I hope that they will be able to sell enough to continue development. Maybe this will lead to a second generation with multiple models for different market segments. I'd love a librem phone with a good old blackberry keyboard in the <1500$ price range with a little more RAM/CPU power and screws holding the back plate.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#58

Post by craftyguy »

Tepix wrote: post #2

Low budget alternative: The Pinephone by Pine64, also with 4 ARM Cortex-A53 cores. https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

The pinephone only has a wifi radio and lacks any cell radios, thus it is incapable of connecting to cellular networks. It's basically an 'internet tablet' and not a phone (at least in the 'traditional' sense) like the name suggests.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#59

Post by RandomBacon »

ISL wrote: post #54
RandomBacon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they really wanted to, your phone could record the audio, GPS, etc and then transmit once it's out of the faraday bag.

To be pedantic, a sufficient Faraday cage will block GPS (but not audio, acceleration, etc...)

Perfectly acceptable; my mistake. Thanks!

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#60

Post by craftyguy »

eptcyka wrote: post #30
kapnobatairza wrote: post #9

I've been looking for a "FOSS" phone that is based purely on AOSP. I don't want a custom ROM, Play Store, cloud, or to have to create any accounts or sign into anything. I just want a simple Android phone with decent specs that I can install APKs on. Does this exist at all? Or do I have to buy/pay for a "full" Android phone and reflash it?

You could buy a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it. https://grapheneos.org/#device-support

> I don't want a custom ROM
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