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Comment by eptcyka | Hacker News Reader

My current question is - will there be silicon cases and tempered glass screen protectors available? I've pre-ordered, and I don't expect the sturdiest build quality, so I'd want to have some tools to protect agianst it. I'm not meaning any offense towards Purism and their craftsmanship, it's just that the first iterations of projects like these have more important things to optimize for than hamfist-compatibility.

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For glass, it's different, but if it's glass, you can always cut from a bigger glass.

For cases, 3D print one, for comfortably less than 200€ you can get a Open-Source Hardware Certified Ender 3, and that's with DHL shipping already.

You can't cut tempered glass, you can cut then temper though thats not really a diy option.

Laminated glass is an option.

Didn't knew, thanks.

> For cases, 3D print one,

I know someone who 3D-printed a phone case with a consumer printer he got for Christmas, and it fell apart within a few days.

As a hobbyist that built my own printer I assure you he could've printed it at a better quality then that. Prints can vary wildly in quality, and the price of the machine is largely irreverent (1000$ printers can easily match a 10,000 $ in quality in many cases). He may not've had the most optimal settings for the print.

That said I don't think 3D printing phone cases is worth doing for any reason other then the cool factor. I'd expect 3rd parties to start selling cases for it fairly quickly, there just might not be a huge range of colors/options/prices

> I know someone who 3D-printed a phone case with a consumer printer he got for Christmas, and it fell apart within a few days.

Then that's his fault, because millions of people made durable flexible material things with their consumer 3D printers.

A bad workman always blames his tools...

Phone cases printed from regular plastic aren't that great in my experience, you really need to use plastic with some flex (like TPU). The Ender 3 can print flexible filaments to some degree, but it's not very good at it without some significant modifications to constrain the filament path.

My biggest worry would be that they don't seem to have chosen a modem for the phone.

Unless you're worrying that they will be shipping without a modem... what's the problem?

I hope they are able to create a free RIL for whatever modem they choose (in time).

That's actually not a big deal, as there are already multiple to choose from. FSO, oFono, ModemManager, and even more if you count ones from Openmoko times. Most of them should work with a module like PLS8 with minimal or no modifications.

It's just that I have seen projects delay making an important decision by rationalizing that there is not enough information and that the decision can be made later.

Then it turns out that the vital piece which fits the requirements does not exist at all (or does not exist for small time customer), or is incompatible with the architecture which has a lot of resources invested in.

Not saying that this will be what happens and most likely Librem team are already well aware of this risk, but it is certainly a possibility.

Yes, just on power evelope alone so many unknowns that could influence other parts of a ‘done’ design.

I wish them well but I’m sceptical. Still, it would be great to be surprised.

Based on playing with my little adafruit cell chip I have, I can talk to it pretty simply by sending it standard modem commands. I don't know how this exactly lines up with a more modern phone but it's pretty cool. You could theoretically talk to it with something like this too

https://geoffg.net/terminal.html

The problem is not knowing if it will work in my region and on my network. It's a rather big caveat for something with open preorders.

they can't find an open modem? that would not surprise me....

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