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Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

puri.sm

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Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#11

Post by RandomBacon »

logicprog wrote: post #9

I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker with it and stuff. But I have this sinking feeling that the Librem 5 is just vaporware, or worse, that it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. On the former, the thin…

It doesn't look like vaporware to me. The videos and updates seem legit.

> it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps.

Have you even looked into the project?

It's running Gnome, on Linux, all the regular apps are there.

Check out the videos in this link, it's not half-baked:

https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3...

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#12

Post by RandomBacon »

learnfromstory wrote: post #7

Just shockingly ugly. If you're going to do a pixels-under-glass UI, you really have to start with a toolkit that isn't awful, or you end up with the openmoko which looked exactly like these demos but 12 years ago. You end up with, in short, a phone where the user adjusts the volume using alsamixer in an xterm because the UI wasn't really thought through.

> Just shockingly ugly.

Are you sure about that? It looks amazing:

https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3...

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#13

Post by joey_bob »

If someone were to develop an iphone-quality design with the same objectives as the librem 5, I'd pay $3000 for it. How much would the market shrink if that was the price of what would become the librem 5? It's rather niche to begin with, but there isn't any real competition the meets the same objectives, and I assert that the customer base has the money to afford it.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#14

Post by alexkavon »

logicprog wrote: post #9

I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker with it and stuff. But I have this sinking feeling that the Librem 5 is just vaporware, or worse, that it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. On the former, the thin…

> On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem.

I don't understand what the problem is exactly. There already exist phones that have the latest apps. I don't think Librem is trying to be a market leader, just build a device that's more open, so to say. The demographic isn't Google or Apple users, it's those who wish more control. They're not going to fix the app gap problem because it's not a real problem, it's a meaningless metric for phone advertisements. These videos are to demonstrate that they are working on filling the mobile usability gaps as well as building a phone that can run Linux software, not just mobile UI software.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#15

Post by meruru »

This is incredibly exciting.

For those that haven't seen it, here's a bullet list of the Librem 5 differentiators:

  + Does not use Android or iOS. The Librem 5 comes with the mobile version of our FSF-endorsed operating system PureOS by default, and is expected to be able to run most GNU+Linux distributions.  
  + CPU separate from baseband, isolating the blackbox that the modem may represent and allowing us to seek hardware certification of the main board by the Free Software Foundation.  
  + Hardware Kill Switches for camera, microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and baseband.  
  + End-to-end encrypted decentralized communications via Matrix over the Internet.  
  + We also intend the Librem 5 to integrate with the Librem Key security token in the future.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#17

Post by danShumway »

logicprog wrote: post #9

I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker with it and stuff. But I have this sinking feeling that the Librem 5 is just vaporware, or worse, that it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. On the former, the thin…

It's Linux -- if it's missing something, I can just build it. And I don't have to write my code in something horrible like Java, or boot up an emulator to test things, or submit my code to an app store, or figure out how to root it so I can remove all the bundled spyware. If I write a command line utility, I don't need to have a separate codebase between my computer and my phone. It's what I have always wanted my smartphone to be -- just a computer that I completely control, with access to a phone network.

It might be terrible. I'm kind of on the fence about it. The hardware needs to be reliable, the drivers need to be reliable, it needs to be compatible with common carriers. There a few other things. But the software on this device just needs to be passable. I don't need it to be particularly good.

When thinking about the Librem phone, mentally move it out of the iPhone category and into the Raspberry Pi category. Even if it comes out and gets terrible reviews and the software is all half-baked, even if it can't replace my normal phone for most things, I still might be tempted to buy one even just as a secondary device.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#18

Post by liamcardenas »

I’m sure people will disagree with this but I think they should focus on getting an easy way for people to target their devices with React Native, NativeScript, PWAs and every other cross-platform framework.

That way they can much more easily acquire software. Seriously making an app from scratch is no small task, and often time isn’t worth it for such a small market.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#19

Post by Apocryphon »

TylerE wrote: post #10
logicprog wrote: post #9

I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker with it and stuff. But I have this sinking feeling that the Librem 5 is just vaporware, or worse, that it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. On the former, the thin…

I'm getting a lot of Ouya vibes from this project. Good UI/UX is hard, and "open platform" might get some kickstarter monies, but it isn't really something 99.9% of people care about.

At the very least, they won't be trying to chase the fickle gamer market. It seems like Librem 5 is trying to cater to hackers, who would be the most tolerant of deficiencies in the UX.

Re: Runs on the Librem 5 Smartphone – Week 2

#20

Post by mac01021 »

joey_bob wrote: post #13

If someone were to develop an iphone-quality design with the same objectives as the librem 5, I'd pay $3000 for it. How much would the market shrink if that was the price of what would become the librem 5? It's rather niche to begin with, but there isn't any real competition the meets the same objectives, and I assert that the customer base has the money to afford it.

I'm considering ordering a librem 5, but I would go without any phone at all rather than spend thousands on one.
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