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All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

puri.sm

101–110 of 132 posts

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#101
post #87

I have a hard time understanding how regular people in need of "security/privacy" would pay 1200+ USD for this device. I'm not even touching on specs etc. The only ones I can think of needing such "security/privacy" would probably make a great sidestory in Breaking Bad or get their own post-mortem show on Netflix. Kudos for using Linux, but that alone (and the hardware gimmicks) is really not enough to justify the co…

People in need of security and privacy would be far better off with GrapheneOS. For the Breaking Bad crowd there are specialized crimephones like Anom that are pre-compromised by law enforcement. Librem is more for people who want to run traditional GNOME/KDE on a phone instead of Android.

Why GrapheneOS and not, say, a stock Iphone?

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been helpful to specify the time when you had that disappointing experience with the Librem, and then put in the closet. At least for PinePhone, going to 1% within a day was a flaw of very early software, and good hibernation settings were released years ago already. That said, I wouldn’t recommend the current Linux phones. Years after I got my PinePhone, the experience still pales compared to my old No…

> good hibernation settings were released years ago already. As long as you don't mind not receiving notifications (unless originated from an IRQ from the modem, assuming it didn't crash itself during hibernation), and if you don't mind not using tethering with turned off screen. "Good" is very, very relative, especially when it comes to the PinePhone software.

Wifi chip can wake the phone up just fine via a WoL packet, or by pattern matching for any packet content.

Also nobody forbids apps from just waking the phone periodically to perform any actions, incl. making a notification.

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#103

I have a Librem 5. It's currently collecting dust in my closet. I was enticed by the idea of having a user-replaceable battery (my last phone upgrade was 100% motivated by battery life problems). However, the Librem 5's battery is basically as bad as my Google Pixel's was after degrading for several years. The evening I opened it, I set it down after tinkering with it for a little bit and came back the next day to it…

I have three PinePhones... somewhere... for mostly the same reason. A BraveHeart or two and then one of the "stable hardware" versions which fixed a couple near-showstopper bugs on the BHs. It didn't matter - the software simply never showed up, even running nightlies of various stuff never got telephony, the entire point of a cell phone, working stably on US carriers with battery life over 4-6 hours (be that screen…

Yeah, proprietary modem firmware written by amateurs who do stuff like system("echo %s > /dev/ttyGS0", msg_var) to write to devices is not rock stable. Who would have thought.

Nightlies are unstable by definition, btw. It's some autogenerated build nobody normally tests.

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#105

Why do they keep getting more expensive? $1299??

That's the price of a device that isn't subsidized by your data, is built using sustainable means, and is not yet scaled up for mass market.

No.. This is the price of buying a phone from a company that doesn't know anything about hardware design, and nothing about software needed. They're a scam.

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#106

I have a Librem 5. It's currently collecting dust in my closet. I was enticed by the idea of having a user-replaceable battery (my last phone upgrade was 100% motivated by battery life problems). However, the Librem 5's battery is basically as bad as my Google Pixel's was after degrading for several years. The evening I opened it, I set it down after tinkering with it for a little bit and came back the next day to it…

>I'm hoping to find something fun to do with it (I don't expect to get refunded, nor do I think anyone else will or should pay $600 for this thing) but haven't come up with anything yet.

You could recoup some of the cost on the second hand market, from a cursory glance, for $400 you could find a buyer fast.

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#107
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have three PinePhones... somewhere... for mostly the same reason. A BraveHeart or two and then one of the "stable hardware" versions which fixed a couple near-showstopper bugs on the BHs. It didn't matter - the software simply never showed up, even running nightlies of various stuff never got telephony, the entire point of a cell phone, working stably on US carriers with battery life over 4-6 hours (be that screen…

Yeah, proprietary modem firmware written by amateurs who do stuff like system("echo %s > /dev/ttyGS0", msg_var) to write to devices is not rock stable. Who would have thought. Nightlies are unstable by definition, btw. It's some autogenerated build nobody normally tests.

My point was more "I wasn't even waiting for some perfect v1 release to finally try things on, I was willing to try new features as they came to trunk, and yet still, basic functionalities never became even approximately useful, even for someone who's run llvm-musl Gentoo with out-of-tree kernel patches on ARM laptops before and clearly isn't afraid of Weird Gear and Weird Software Stacks"

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#108
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in need of security and privacy would be far better off with GrapheneOS. For the Breaking Bad crowd there are specialized crimephones like Anom that are pre-compromised by law enforcement. Librem is more for people who want to run traditional GNOME/KDE on a phone instead of Android.

Why GrapheneOS and not, say, a stock Iphone?

They said privacy.

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the convergent UI is actually great. (i own a librem 5.) my keyboard, mouse, and speakers are connected to my monitor. i connect the phone via a single USB-C cable. suddenly i have full-blown gnome, exactly as i would on a desktop PC or laptop. applications and the launcher return to their normal, desktop layout when using the desktop mode. it's "just plain old linux with gnome" as long as it's connected to your peri…

> the oomph is obviously a little underwhelming but it's enough for lightweight development or (non-video) web browsing. Does youtube work? Does zoom work?

What wasn't clear about the phrase "non-video"?

Re: All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped

#110

I have a hard time understanding how regular people in need of "security/privacy" would pay 1200+ USD for this device. I'm not even touching on specs etc. The only ones I can think of needing such "security/privacy" would probably make a great sidestory in Breaking Bad or get their own post-mortem show on Netflix. Kudos for using Linux, but that alone (and the hardware gimmicks) is really not enough to justify the co…

> Kudos for using Linux, but that alone (and the hardware gimmicks) is really not enough to justify the cost.

Much of that cost went into Linux driver/app/phosh development. It made libhandy happen, which become libadwaita. Future Linux-based mobile OSes will be able to stand on the shoulders of all that.

So it’s really more of a donation, plus I got a Linux phone on top of that.

Besides, if I’m lucky and the hardware and battery last long enough, I’ll be using the Librem 5 as a daily driver for a decade, which would help amortize the cost even more. During those years, I won’t have to worry much about software obsolescence. All the drivers have been mainlined into Linux so I’ll always get to use the latest kernel version – even if something happened to Purism.

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