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Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

puri.sm

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Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#91

Post by TylerE »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #34
mpnordland wrote: post #25

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…

If you want good software you simply have to pay more. These are small teams with no prior experience trying to do something huge, it makes sense to expect to pay even 5 times more if the direction of the project is good. Hopefully future versions will be cheaper as they learn and gain experience.

You're making the rather giant assumption that the software is good - where good means something besides "open".

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#92

Post by novaRom »

I like they use main processing unit from a Dutch company; is its ROM open source or/and can be accessed?

All ARM-based Sytem-on-Chips do have a proprietary ROM, which is used mainly for boot-up and multicore management. But there's no access to check if it may do something else.

>> The mobile baseband will most likely use ROM loaded firmware

this is another vulnerability

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#93

Post by stinos »

canadaduane wrote: post #8

I love that there are 3 hardware kill switches, and that turning all 3 off "additionally disable[s] IMU+compass & GNSS, ambient light and proximity sensors." There are so many ways in which clever hackers have teased out information from thin streams of always-on sensor data. It would also be kind of cool if they added physical LED lights reflecting hardware activity, normally covered by some physical blinder that yo…

I wonder if these are pure hardware switches, like in distinct on/off positions where the off position is wired directly to the sensor's power or similar, or more like buttons with software behind them which then does whatever action (and hence can be changed)?

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#94

Post by pizzazzaro »

Tepix wrote: post #83
flattone wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im an in debt, highschool dropout, unemployed, and ill biy this on credit just to take a stand. i cant wait to set my google phone on fire. will be like finally ridding myself of a disease. get it together man. priorities. the value of an old phone stands up to forcing cash in meaningful directions? forget my wallet/welfare/bills, badd things have to stop at any cost.

What's wrong with installing Lineage OS on your google phone? If you stick to F-Droid you're pretty good in terms of open source. There are still a few binary blobs that you can't avoid of course. Those may contain some backdoors or bugs that will make you vulnerable, however you will no longer send your data to Google etc. all the time. Which is a huge difference.

Lineage dropped support for a LOT of phones in the last 6 months.

When you show up, looking to do the legwork for a specific model, the community directs you to the donate button instead...

If Librem can keep their repos current? Im down to switch from a Lineage-deprecated phone.

Besides, a phone running a kernel that isn't 3 years old and terribly out of date? Vulnerable to Spectre, Rowhammer, and a host of other script-kiddie-hackable holes? So what if its "mine" for $200 less when it isnt mine and patched?

Apple did one thing well with iPhone that Android didnt - they kept themselves as a single point of accountability for how the phone runs, how it updates, how security patches get distributed.

A FLOSS phone needs to mimick that success.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#96

Post by leeoniya »

5.7" is huge. and 720px on a screen that size is going to look seriously underwhelming :(

my 2015 sony z5 compact is 4.6" and has a 720px display.

hopefully they can get the size down in gen 2 to something i can comfortably EDC/use.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#97

Post by shrimp_emoji »

mrob wrote: post #18
JoshTriplett wrote: post #12

> 5.7″ IPS TFT screen @ 720×1440 Sad that this didn't end up using a low-power OLED screen. I can live with 720p resolution, but I'm surprised that for the cost an OLED screen wasn't possible. I was hoping that such a screen on an open device would help drive the adoption of dark themes in applications for power-saving reasons. Still looking forward to trying the device, though.

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.

I've never noticed that.

What I have noticed is OLED's true blacks. It looks great when reading at night[0] -- it's just the letters floating in darkness. With a backlit LCD, it's a moderately-bright gray rectangle with letters in it.

0: https://i.imgur.com/EpyXoAR.png (FBReader with Monofonto font; book is one in The Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons)

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#98

Post by abrambleninja »

prolepunk wrote: post #5

Hmmm, almost exactly half the specs of OnePlus 3, way more expensive than OnePlus 3 when it came out 3 years ago. How this is better than installing lineage Os on oneplus 3? -- https://download.lineageos.org/oneplus3 I understand anyone who wants privacy need to pay extra, but is it really justifiable to pay this much for that?

When I pre-ordered the phone, I also saw it as donating to (or at least contributing to the development of) open-source software in a way -- Purism is a for-profit company, but they've been doing a lot of software work on this phone and they've been pushing the changes upstream, too. I highly recommend looking through their blog (https://puri.sm/posts/), especially the Librem 5 [month] Software Update posts for the work they're doing.
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