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Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

puri.sm

61–70 of 275 posts

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#61

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 a…

I'd go even a step further: Since they open-sourced all their work, maybe other vendors can pick up / fork where they left off and we may actually have more than one Linux phone in the future!

Two years ago that seemed like wishful thinking to me, but I am very excited about how far Purism got in an even shorter timespan.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#62
post #61

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 a…

I'd go even a step further: Since they open-sourced all their work, maybe other vendors can pick up / fork where they left off and we may actually have more than one Linux phone in the future! Two years ago that seemed like wishful thinking to me, but I am very excited about how far Purism got in an even shorter timespan.

> fork

It'll probably be a closed source fork. Defeating the whole purpose of Librem.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#63
post #56
post #40

why no ac wifi? even my 6year old s4 has one

Because this isn't a top-of-the-line phone. It's an experiment by Purism bringing Linux and the smartphone world closer together.

I mean sure? But on the other hand it still costs 650$ so if they'd charge me double for the privacy, it should be comparable to at least 300$ which is not

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#64
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perfectly acceptable; my mistake. Thanks!

@RandomBacon, what mistake? It's clear you were saying, a spy app can record all the audio, gps location etc in a file, and then when the phone regains cell signal, the spy app can send out the recorded audio, gps location etc.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#65
The only real obstacle for me is that a large fraction of what I do with my phone is listen to Spotify. It's not clear to me whether or how well it will be supported. (More research: looks like I would have to install Ubuntu Touch and a third party app?)

That said, I'm tempted to go for it anyway.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#66

So for me, this is roughly what I want in a phone. But the thing is, I bought a phone over two years ago, with better specs for $100 less. That same phone today is priced at $200-$300. The way I see it the real value add for this phone is the software, and this whole mainline Linux, FOSS, run whatever you want approach is very attractive to me. But is it worth $700? Is it worth $700 when my current phone is in great…

Pinephone is supposed to be cheaper once it's released.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#67
Would be nice if it had a hardware kill switch for other sensors (especially MEMS-based) such as accelerometer:

Edit: It does. Nice.

https://crypto.stanford.edu/gyrophone/files/gyromic.pdf

https://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/articles/mems-acce...

https://dl.packetstormsecurity.net/papers/general/traynor-cc...

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#68
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.

I think you are talking about the Necunos device. The pinephone is ... a phone. See https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ where they list the modem being a "Quectel EG-25G with worldwide bands".

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#69
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.

Then why does it say this:

    we also settled on the number, and the implementation of, privacy switches on the phone – there will be 4 switches in total: for the i) BT/Wifi module, ii) the modem, iii) cameras (front/back) and iv) lastly for the microphone.
and right on the pinephone page it says it has this chip:

https://www.quectel.com/product/eg25g.htm

    Key Benefits

    ● LTE Cat 4 module optimized for M2M and IoT applications
    ● Worldwide LTE, UMTS/HSPA+ and GSM/GPRS/EDGE coverage
    ● Multi-constellation GNSS receiver available for applications requiring fast and accurate fixes in any environment
    ● Feature refinements: supports DFOTA*, eCall and DTMF*
    ● MIMO technology meets demands for data rate and link reliability in modem wireless communication systems
Sounds like a cell radio to me.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#70
post #30

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 looked at the page, it is interesting, but I have never heard anything about this. They page didn't also say anything about who they were/what they do?

Do you have anywhere with more information about this/the folks behind it?

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