Librem 5 Mass Production Phone Has Begun Shipping | Hacker News Reader

Librem 5 Mass Production Phone Has Begun Shipping

puri.sm

514 pointsnunodonato194 comments

I hope I get to update my address before they ship it. I've moved a solid 3 times since backing this.

You should probably reach out to support to be sure.

They have to contact you to ask you which modem you want, so that would be a good time to bring up an address change.

You can log in to your account here https://shop.puri.sm/my-account/ and go to the Addresses tab to edit your current shipping address. I've had to do the same, as a backer since June '19.

This does not update the shipping address for an existing order (confirmed somewhere on the Purism forums), so you will need to look out for the confirmation email and update your address at that time too.

I moved twice since I originally backed it.

Each time, I was able to update the shipping address on my account: https://shop.puri.sm/my-account/edit-address/

For good measure, I just checked and the currently set shipping address in indeed my current and latest address!

More importantly, it was confirmed on the forum that changing your address in your account will NOT update the Librem 5 shipping address.

Purism is emailing each person to get their updated address, modem preferences and give them a chance to purchase additional accessories, before they ship the phones.

So you'll need to be on the lookout for that pre-shipping email to update your address correctly.

I smell a NoSQL database keeping those addresses.

You don't generally update the shipping address for pending orders when a user changes their address. Of course, when an order is delayed by years the rules might change a little and asking the users whether the orders should be updated too will be useful.

It's precisely the "this is the way it's done" approach you mention, which means they now have to pay a human to do the work their web stack ought to do!

They can pay a human to update their web stack instead? Seems more efficient.

Precisely! So picture some, however oversimplified, code which searches a customer's orders, determines which is a phone product id, remembering they sell other stuff which we would not want to update in flight order details on, then updates the embedded customer address on the order.

I would like to hear some original thoughts on why this is so difficult that a human is doing this work instead.

Obviously maintaining a different behaviour for a class of product ids is painful and not beautiful code to look at, but it is the real world.

It's not "this is the way it's done", it's "this is how it should be done". Shipping information is much like the rest of the order information, you want a de-normalized price on the order and each line item in the database, not a normalized cost based on the price of things now. You want a denormalised record of which card was charged, not a normalized record showing what their current card is, etc.

I get little bursts of joy about 3-5 times per week when I see some low-effort misinformed comments, followed by that brain urge to set the record straight, followed immediately by discovering the fact that someone with specific domain knowledge, experience, or both has taken the time to write a thoughtful reply like this one, educating everyone who reads it.

This isn’t an isolated case: as I mentioned, I see it at least a few times per week and I imagine this happens at least a dozen times a day here in some thread or other.

Thanks for being awesome flukus. I love HN.

I loved to see this from students talking to professors while studying CS. I think it has to do with the ego boost you get from acquiring the "power" to code rising above mere mortals.

Unless you are a psychopath, you will realize later in life, that there are actually other smart people, who might know something you do not. Even though it often times feels like you are surrounded by idiots.

While I disagree with the positions put forward by lolc and flukus, that Librem 5 should have the customer address modelled analogously to some 'fast moving goods' e-commerce implementation, I appreciate their comments for being constructive and actually adding something to the discussion.

Storytime: As part of moving to another city, I put a chest freezer on an auction platform, specifying that it must be picked up from my location. While that auction ran its course, I minded offline and online services and updated my address to the new address so that letters would already arrive at my new location. Now came the day where somebody would come pick up the freezer. Which address do you think did the auction platform give them where it could be picked up?

Well the Librem 5 is not another 'widget in a warehouse'. It was always going to be a long wait to delivery, due to the enormity of the undertaking. This was not a surprise to anyone. Addresses will need to be updated after order in this case! Every implementation is different.

Consider the scenario where right from the start they accepted the shortcomings of their system for this use-case.

Hate to break it, but for a lot of real world applications it is preferable to duplicate stuff like addresses when shipping orders, generating invoices etc, everything that resembles paper.

For easier archiving and proper retrieval of history.

It's WP/WooCommerce so likely MySQL...

Ah good insight, thanks.

Yeah IIRC Woocommerce creates a new "Order" record, copying the shipping address from your account if you have one saved or using the one manually inputted at checkout. It makes sense that the account email doesn't update shipping email, generally companies will try to keep payment/purchase/shipping stuff in a "frozen" state or at least something where edits or logged, so in the case of issues, they can see what the user entered initially.

Same practice goes with credit cards, a charge confirmation (like something that would be generated after a stripe charge.succeeded webhook) stored in DB wouldn't be retroactively updated to new last-4-digits if the user switches the card saved in their account.

Been waiting to see this. Still holding off on buying one though until I see better battery numbers and a few more actual phones in customer hands. Very excited about this product, despite a lot of the bad press it had earlier on (of which some seemed justified considering the timeframe).

Anybody got their hands on one and can speak for the current state of usability?

https://forums.puri.sm/t/received-my-librem-5-evergreen/1087...

I wonder if they ship to Turkey and my sim card will work. I'd love to have one of these.

Looking forward to getting mine.

While I don't see this replacing my Android as a daily-driver anytime soon (and possibly never), I am very excited to have an unrestricted computer in my pocket :-)

Especially once the pandemic gets under control and I visit coffee shops or hang out with friends again, this will be great for some programming/study on the go :-) Maybe this will finally give me the kick to learn about GTK application development.

> GTK application development

Sigh, is this the only way to build apps for it? I hope not...

https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Apps/index.html

It's GNU/Linux, you can build apps however you want. The PureOS distro is based on Gnome so GTK is the blessed framework for app development. However, Qt works just as well, and is used a lot in KDE's Plasma Mobile. And if that doesn't suit you either, any other framework will work, with the caveat that they might not support mobile form factor natively.

Yeah, I was hoping Qt would be a first-class citizen. My previous experiences with GTK on mobile have been bad (little or no docs, unconsistent APIs, etc etc...).

I had a look at their docs and I like the focus on Python, I'll probably give it a go. If I can get a decent result with PyQt I'll probably order one of these bad boys.

PinePhone with KDE Plasma Mobile is going to be sold in the next few weeks so you might be interested in that as well!

Be aware that Qt's widget library isn't exactly well-suited for mobile usage and mobile apps usually use QtQuick with frameworks like Kirigami.

PureOS Amber unfortunately has a too old Qt to be able to say that it's a "first-class citizen" there :( It's going to change with a coming version that's based on Debian Bullseye though. Meanwhile, Qt apps run very well in Flatpak on Amber already.

>Be aware that Qt's widget library isn't exactly well-suited for mobile usage

How so? It's my understanding that QT has been the industry standard for embedded systems.

If you make your own UI, yes. But if you make a desktop-style application that's supposed to adapt its UI to small touchscreens, you're going to have a hard time with Qt Widgets. Even KDE uses Qt Quick for its adaptive apps.

Qt fines fine on a Librem 5. I personally was able to run musescore on it.

You should see how it works on the alternatives: you have to ID yourself to a multinational just to download the compiler and toolchain!

It's just a Linux computer, so you can use whatever you like : Qt, GTK, web, Flutter, LVGL, ImGui, custom OpenGL UI (like Blender & Godot), etc.

But you might prefer a library that has mobile-ready widgets. For that GTK is actually not bad, especially with LibHandy, but QT/Flutter is also be great choice. It's up to you

Mine will be my daily driver. I'm currently on a Nexus 6P that has had two battery replacements and currently requires a vice to crush the centre of the screen every time I wish to charge it (doesn't recognise charging until you do - something to do with temperature sensor on battery). Screen-on time is ~45 minutes.

I'm looking forward to getting a new device.

Why don't you think it'll be your daily driver, if I may ask?

I ended up ordering the PinePhone because of the delays with the Librem5. I still await my order but I will be shocked if I end up sticking with the Purism device. All of the delays, the internal CTO drama, the lack of modern hardware and communication confusion has really soured my experience.

Given their extensive history posting similar promotional material every time that they run out of cash, it would be wise to remain skeptical of this announcement.

For the unacquainted, they've made outrageously false claims like this more times than I can count. I don't have the time or interest to outline all the lies but here's when it "began shipping" back in 9/2019.[0][1] As to the one person in the forums who claims to have received it, and the other on reddit who claims to have a tracking number, we've seen that before as well.

[0]: http://archive.today/2019.09.06-222312/https://puri.sm/posts...

[1]: "The Librem 5 smartphone. Now Shipping" 9/25/2019 https://youtu.be/AuT2w6BkT-k http://archive.today/S7lCT

They did ship and have been shipping batches. This is the mass production run, not the early adopter dev phones you can find on eBay.

You could address the substance of my comment by providing evidence. I'm trying to be polite about it, but the astroturfing is obvious.

https://forums.puri.sm/t/received-my-librem-5-evergreen/1087...

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque... (see also other questions there)

The author of that forum post is unwilling to publish video of the device.

As someone who did an AMA for my Birch device, that is frankly an incredibly selfish attitude. I got people who thought I was some sort of employee of Purism just because I was willing to answer questions and did so nicely, and then people got upset because I didn't post things they wanted (and spread the exact sort of non-sense you are spreading now).

Publishing any sort of video takes a non-trivial amount of time, especially when one has never even attempted to try doing so before. The owner of that device isn't being paid to put that up there. I really don't blame the owner one bit for not wanting to do that, especially when I see attitudes like this. I also don't blame others for NOT wanting to do forums posts like that, when there are attitudes like this.

The author posted a picture: https://forums.puri.sm/t/received-my-librem-5-evergreen/1087...

I know you wanted to make an important point of proof, but let's face it: astroturfing is a horrible word and it should be extinguished and substituted for something that doesn't make the reader feel like they are in orbit in a space suit surrounded by giant glazed donuts.

They infamously claimed to ship the first batch which then proved to be a lie.

This is a "mass production run", but basic things like camera are not working.

>As to the one person in the forums who claims to have received it, and the other on reddit who claims to have a tracking number, we've seen that before as well.

Judging by the timeline, I presume you are specifically talking about me? I DID get a Birch device last year, and I posted about it. I also cancelled the AMA because I got demands for all sorts of things, on a holiday weekend! People got angry because I didn't reply to their demands right away and thought I was some sort of undercover employee. No, I put away my electronics when I spend time with family!

I frankly don't blame people for not wanting to post about it, after the crap that I went through and seeing atitudes like this.

> I also cancelled the AMA because I got demands for all sorts of things, on a holiday weekend! People got angry because I didn't reply to their demands right away

Absolutely nobody did that to you.

> and thought I was some sort of undercover employee.

One (1) guy did that and was downvoted, while you were massively upvoted and complimented.

> the crap that I went through and seeing atitudes like this.

You went through nothing at all, and yet all of a sudden you completely lost your shit and started flooding the sub with nonsensical one-liners crapping on every person asking a question. And it was not the first you behaved so, you had done the same kind of things a few weeks earlier. I still remember you and those episodes because it is not often that we see someone throwing a tantrum like that for no reason, let alone twice in a row. "Attitudes" was the right word indeed.

Youve proven unable to fathom that the media is asynchronous and people asking questions (in an AMA of which you picked the day and time, how dare they?) does not compel you to answer immediately, or at all. The thread can last a week or more if needed, there is no need to drop what you are doing if that's your precious week-end time.

By the way, nobody knows about your holidays, nobody knows about your family, nobody knows about your habits, nobody knows about your schedule and how you manage them. Nobody could, especially considering it is only one year later, on a different media, that you start mentioning it.

> I frankly don't blame people for not wanting to post about it

Others similar threads went OK, the current thread today is going fine. Don't blame others for derailing threads when you were the one doing it.

I've been trying to use the PinePhone as a daily driver and it simply isn't there yet: camera is slow to the point of unusable and sometimes it hard crashes when making calls.

Here's hoping that Purism has done a good job of cleaning up some of the issues in Phosh.

> camera is slow to the point of unusable

If you're not using "Megapixels" you should be. The camera is still quite slow (though I've been working on improving that) but it's pretty usable - at least for taking pictures.

I am using Megapixels, and usable is not what I would describe its performance as.

so far it's ~6x faster than the previous implementation (and you can drop resolution in the config file to get it closer to 30fps than 1fps but that has a quality trade-off)

Still results in blurry photos of my kids. ;)

> camera is slow to the point of unusable

Camera in Librem 5 doesn't work at all so there's that.

This looks really cool, it's nice to see an open-source product like this come to fruition. I think it would make an excellent phone for people who aren't heavily invested in the app / social network ecosystem, or as a work phone.

Does anyone know whether there's some expectation that at some point we'd see first-party apps for common social networks on PureOS? Like, are they going after it at all, or is it intended as a web-first play?

Anbox already works on PureOS I believe, but you're probably more likely to get PWAs of your social networks.

FWIW I use the mobile web client for twitter and facebook and it is totally fine. I prefer it that way to sandbox them (check out slim social if you are on Android).

That said I'm a rare user. A more die hard might care more.

Video reviews of Purism/Pine's phones using anbox, WhatsApp ideally^, is all that's keeping me from buying either.

^I would love not to use it, but there's just too much to miss. People, including my parents, that I otherwise don't have a decent line of communication with. (Pre-2020) ice hockey group is managed there. Etc.

Um.. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-9Wmki7DsU And this video is outdated, the UI overlap issues is supposedly fixed by now so that I am going to have to do another video on that same boring topic.

They've got a fediverse app, but I don't think they'll be making their own stuff for Facebook, Twitter, etc. It just doesn't seem to line up with their beliefs.

However, this thing is a general purpose computer, similar to a raspberry pi with a screen and such attached, so all sorts of stuff can already run on it without Purism needing to bless it.

There are probably even some clients already for some of the big social networks.

Just did a quick search and found out about Cawbird.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/09/linux-twitter-app-cawbir...

Wooooo!

I'm in this batch and I was just looking at a Pinephone story thinking I should check in on Purism.

This is quite an ambitious project and I'm expecting it to be a bit rough around the edges. But if I can actually ditch the old Samsung and be purely open-source, that's so, so worth it.

For someone on the fence, how concerned should they be about app capabilities? So general phone use for things like social media and banking are going through the web apps in a browser. Many of these like Instagram and Reddit are intentionally handicapped outside of a native app.

There's a cool GTK app called Giara that works well on mobile Linux.

I was looking into this earlier today. Apparently things like https://anbox.io/ might provide a solution. I'm not sure how well they work in the absense of things like Google Play services, but that might be a solved problem with those apps being packaged for install by OSs like Lineage.

I too would love an open source smartphone, but couldn't see myself fully jumping on board without at least some pathway to support existing apps (even if they take a few extra steps to use).

Banking applications do "security" checks on lauch to check your phone for signs of rooting. I doubt very many banking apps will run in an emulator. To be clear, I am speculating.

Yes, they might not like it, although I wonder if Anbox might have a non-rooted version that works just like non-rooted Android.

Also, banking is one of those things where in 95% of the cases you probably don't need an app because they all have web portals (although, I know some banks don't let you deposit checks remotely without an app, so that is an issue).

Anbox sounds good, I wish there was a version for Windows.

Like a previous commenter wrote, Giara is pretty nice for Reddit. Instagram ... I am only aware of Instagraph for Ubuntu Touch (https://gitlab.com/rubencarneiro/Instagraph) which could be brought over. For more apps check out: https://linmobapps.frama.io

This still won't even do MMS, and battery life is terrible. Nonetheless I truly hope it succeeds.

Not out-of-box in a user friendly way yet, but hackers gonna hack: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/issues/30#note_12542...

Lack of MMS is a shortcoming that really affects only North America. MMS is not widely used elsewhere. Really, getting Whatsapp to work through an Android emulation layer like Anbox is the higher priority for much of the world now.

I believe there are Matrix/Element - WhatsApp bridges. They require some setup and its not for everyone but for me it would be an option.

No audio/video calls though.

Neither via Anbox currently unless it is massively better on Librem 5 than on PinePhone.

https://puri.sm/posts/anbox-on-the-librem-5/

I agree about Whatsapp but I'm really curious about the reason why MMS is a thing in North America. It's been basically dead in Europe even at the launch of 3G in 2003.

What are you talking about? I live in Sweden and tons of people (including me) does not have whatsapp and uses MMS as a protocol that works with everyone. Most people here have one or two other means of messaging but it is not the same type so MMS is the safe fall-back when unsure or if it fails.

that honestly surprises me, it isn't the case in the UK or any of the EU countries I visit ; I haven't seen or used an MMS for maybe 20+ years

it would be interesting to map MMS usage worldwide, maybe it's a more important feature than I thought

EDIT: correction, I actually tried MMS once or twice with a phone circa 2007-2008, just checked (so not quite 20 years)

Can confirm, never seen MMS used for anything but my service provider sending me notifications about voicemail. Everything and everybody else uses SMS.

SMS and MMS are completely integrated here in the US, you have no visibility into wether it's an MMS or SMS you're sending/receiving - it's just "messages" in my experience.

So if you take a smartphone photo, and send it to a phone number contact in a message, boom, you just sent an MMS.

A majority of random american public wouldn't recognize the MMS acronym, despite likely using it regularly.

sending "pics by SMS" is something people wouldn't even expect to work here in the UK in my experience (and it probably doesn't work for most of them, several networks/plans don't support them or bill them separately)

visiting the US back in the day I realised just how different the "phone culture" was, for instance there was such a thing like being charged for receiving calls (in ~2008) and drastically different coverage maps, etc - I have no idea how things are now over there

Basically it's the data plan that matters. The call time allotments are so large that they don't matter anymore.

Coverage is still an issue.

Group messages are also (usually) MMS.

if you say "group messages" here in the UK, everybody will assume you are talking about whatsapp, or blackberry messenger (before)

one of the reasons why I suspect MMS went completely unnoticed here in the UK is that Blackberry was extremely popular rather early, and then Android ate it

I don't think I've ever sent a single group message over MMS

I use a dumb phone in the UK and MMS no longer works on it, not that I ever used it much (but it did work not so long ago). I agree with the sentiment of your comment that the networks probably killed it. buuut...

> I haven't seen or used an MMS for maybe 20+

That's a bit of an exaggeration:

> The first MMS-capable phones were introduced around 2002 in conjunction with the first GSM network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service

You are right on both accounts.

I remember the model of the phone I used MMS last, but couldn't remember the exact year. Just looked the model up and I see it's not as old as I thought. It was about 12-13 years ago actually around 2007~2008.

I'm pretty certain I haven't even tried MMS in any other phone since. With blackberries I used their messenger, with Android I used various apps, never MMS. I still use plain SMS occasionally.

Could be à carrier configuration issue.

To be sure there is no misunderstanding: MMS (also pictures, images, video) or SMS (only text)? I checked my Android phone and it probably sends a MMS of I attach a picture to a message in the Messages app. First time I even noticed the icons to attach multimedia content. Never received one.

I used to work in a mobile operator (not Sweden) and MMS didn't have any usage worth talking about.

I also live in Sweden, and all pictures I send to my parents or grandparents are over MMS (the rest are on Facebook messenger or telegram). It is simply the most convenient way if you only have someone's phone number. Might be a cultural thing? I'm absolutely certain my usage of MMS is very common here.

It's probably a network effect. If enough people use them eventually everybody use them. I could be the only one among my friends to even know they exist.

> MMS as a protocol that works with everyone

> MMS is the safe fall-back when unsure or if it fails.

Except when it isn't.

The mechanic who services my cars is the only person I know (since at least 15 yrs) who has this strange thing for MMS. He always tries to first contact me with MMS before calling me, and I've never received any of those, not even once.

I never really bothered, but the last time I checked (15 yrs ago), MMS required some additional setup.

So "MMS works for everyone" isn't really a thing

It's the default messaging app on every phone everywhere so there's nothing to install or convert to (from MMS, which everyone is already using) and nothing to get everyone to agree on. It's kind of crap, but it works and is ubiquitous.

I'm kind of surprised it isn't still a thing in Europe. Did cell phones just not take off until the mid 2000s when there were other options available.. so MMS didn't have the inertia it has in the US? It is pretty ingrained here, for example all take out services use MMS to give you order status and, AFAIK, they don't support other messaging systems.

SMS does exist, it's just that mms that's weird for EU users. It used to be expensive and support was horrible. My current provider doesn't even support mms anymore.

Ok, that makes sense. MMS is more the default here and is used mostly instead, not exactly sure why. But SMS would work fine for most of the use cases.

It was the cost. It drove people away from SMS to IP protocol messaging systems which also had a better UX. SMS used to cost quite a lot.

Early adoption -> early cultural incumbency.

e.g. Mexico had cellphone penetration so low until recently that it got to skip the SMS/MMS era entirely.

You would have needed a certain critical cultural mass using MMS to still be using it in 2020.

My understanding is that the US got free unlimited texting long before Europe did -- so Europeans were still paying by the text when WhatsApp/etc arrived and they jumped on that, but since they weren't/aren't paying per text Americans were/are much less motivated to switch, so social inertia keeps MMS alive. This could be totally wrong though, my evidence is just from talking to European friends.

Sounds reasonable, something similar happened in Hispanic America, SMS was really expensive, so as soon as WhatsApp showed up everyone jumped to it. Actually I’ll bet WhatsApp was the main motivation to get a smartphone during those years.

> I'm really curious about the reason why MMS is a thing in North America

Everyone on almost every phone has MMS, no matter what else they might have. It's the common language.

I'd much rather the only open source phone in the world not focus on proprietary messaging protocol, especially one which is overly hostile to third party clients.

I think Anbox is a mistake for the Librem. If you want android apps just run android. All this effort to have a totally independent OS, but really just run android apps on it.

Anbox is more meant as a "transition" than a end-goal, similarly to forwarding your email when you change addresses. It isn't meant as a permeate solution, more as a way for users to transition to FOSS tools without having to leave everything immediately. At the same time, we have had plenty of time to migrate so I see where you are coming from.

Untrue, here in France I regularly use MMS. There are 1000 different messaging apps, some are on whatsapp, some are on telegram, some are on "new thing".

But MMS works with anybody with a phone, and you don't even need a good internet connection.

For a quick picture, a contact card or a small voice message, it's great.

Does everybody use MMS, or do you regularly use MMS? Because your complaint about messaging apps sounds like the usual Linux user stuff. Most people will just use whatever app is more common (which according to this is Messenger)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7RQwoJ8z83Zi65NDMvmHKVU0Wx...

People don't use mms, they send stuff using their sms app, which decide to use an mms or not. In fact, long text messages are often turned into mms under the hood. People just don't know about it. As long as it works transparently, they don't have to.

Do people actually use SMS? Aren't they bloody expensive?

It's free in a lot of places.

Sms, mms, and phone calls are included in a lot of cheap unlimited contracts accross europe.

I'm from Belgium, I've received about 10 MMS in my life. All failed to download. MMS use is apparently extremely country (or person) specific.

> I've received about 10 MMS in my life. All failed to download.

same here in germany. nobody ever uses it

Well can you back this with data? I am french too and beside my mom nobody use MMS in my circle. We did like 10 years ago.

Data, no, it's an opinion.

But we all have mums (or other people not using a chat app), and a lot of us write text messages to them. If the text message is more than 3 sms, congrats, you use mms. If you use the feature "send contact" or make any attachment to your text message, you use mms. If you send an emoji in you text message, you may also use mms.

You don't have to be aware that you are sending an mms to send one. Most sms apps do it transparently.

The biggest sender of mms is probably iMessage from iOS, because it makes let tech saavy users ignore the difference between chat and sms (the infamous green bubbles). So users just send stuff, and sometimes, they do so using mms.

The less technical the user, the more likely they are to send mms without knowing they are.

Do you have any numbers to back up that bold claim? Smells like a sweeping generalization to me.

Who cares about MMS? Isn't that like using http in this day and age? Just use a secure app.

Tell that to my friends/family who only use MMS, and can't be convinced to switch. Some people just don't have a choice

Drat. That's the one loophole that drives all these compromises on tech people make.

What 'secure' app ?

Curious, since this is open source: is it possible to try out the software on a desktop machine first?

Sure; all the stuff in the repos is even compiled for amd64 as well. Check out the QEMU images - https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Development_Environment/Bo...

If you really want you could even install PureOS amber-phone straight onto your PC (although there's no hand-holding howto for that ;)). See https://puri.sm/posts/what-is-mobile-pureos/ for more info.

Wow, thanks! That's some great work there, and easier to run than expected.

The software is just another Debian derivative, so anything that applies to Debian, probably applies to Purism PureOS and devices that are running it.

What I'd like to know is how much non-USains will be paying in customs.

I remember backing it when it cost 700$ or something, looking up the customs for UK and gasping. It was about 150£. Don't know what it's going to be for Australia or the EU.

There was also a thread not long ago about Brazil and India having sky-high customs that nearly doubled the price of imported electronic goods.

I paid 350 zł (about $90) when I was receiving my Librem 5 Birch in Poland. Most of that was VAT and I even got that written off.

I bought a librem 13 years ago and got fucked on customs. ~500 Euros iirc. I completely forgot that import tax was a thing because I'd never had to pay it before, since I bought stuff from the EU, or that was too cheap to matter. I remember reading something about them partnering with someone in Germany to alleviate this, but I didn't find anything concrete with a quick search just noe.

How did the librem 13 pan out?

I'm really happy with it. I don't heavily use my laptop, mostly only when traveling. The only problem I've had with it is I discovered recently that the built in microphone isn't working, but I never tried to use it until about 3 or so years after I bought it, so I've no idea if it arrived like that or got broken later.

YMMV but generally speaking you pay whatever the normal VAT rate would be + some import rate (~5-10% generally) + some handling fee. Usually around 30% is a safeish estimate. It obviously depends on where you live, what import rates and VAT rates you have and so on.

Why aren't HNers more excited about their laptop? I only see the the Liberem phone related posts on the front page every few months.

Their laptops are overpriced closed mediocrity with a not so great reputation when it comes to reliability.

I'm still rocking used Intel ThinkPads, can run ME-cleaner and install coreboot myself, and rip out the internal wifi card in favor of a USB wifi dongle I can unplug for HW kill switch equivalence. They cost a few hundred bucks, support 16G RAM, and have epic keyboards+reliability.

The mntmn reform 2 [0] looks like an OPEN laptop effort far more worth supporting than anything Purism does in this space IMHO. Purism doesn't produce anything remotely resembling open hardware AFAIK.

[0] https://mntre.com/reform/

It's worth noting that the MNT Reform runs on the exact same SoC the Librem 5 does.

It's also worth noting that the Reform utilizes a necessarily large heat sink in a spacious case, for that same SoC the Librem 5 shoehorns into a handset, despite not even having WWAN electronics heat to dissipate. Expect the Librem 5 performance to be heavily throttled for thermal reasons alone.

Nah, I'm compiling plenty of stuff right on the phone (Librem 5 Dogwood) and it rarely hits the thermal throttling threshold. It has plenty of mass to dissipate that heat now (the whole metal plate behind the screen), earlier revisions had much worse thermals. This week I've played games on it for almost an hour attached to external 1080p screen and it was pretty warm in touch, but not hot at all; the CPU sensor showed 55°C and quickly cooled down when it went idle.

Of course Reform is going to perform much better at sustained high loads, that's obvious, but Librem 5's thermals really aren't bad. If anything, its thermals have the opposite problem - the lower bound of its temperature is rather high (around 30°C) as it doesn't suspend. Regarding the upper bound, I really don't think about it at all during my regular usage.

Their laptops are terrible. I've used 3 of them and they all had major quality control issues. Finally, they just gave up and offered me a full refund after 2 years of being unable to offer me a laptop that wouldn't fall apart in my hands.

Happy owner of Librem 15v3 here. Their quality was not perfect from the beginning, which negatively influenced their reputation. However AFAIK they solved practically all problems with the hardware. Also Librem 14 looks amazing!

The article seems to be missing a picture of the actual phone.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC64-PJ-yoF7aJ9pIHWEbrTQ/vid...

Thanks. I went looking for a picture though but I really think the article should include one. The importance of marketing and presentation can't be overstated for such a niche product.

At the bottom of the first post: https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p....

https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-visual-walkthrough/

Please update the blog entry and your site - it took many clicks to get to specs and price - and you have two separate write-ups on specs, and price on only one page.

is there any up-to-date comparison between Librem, Jolla/Sailfish, PinePhone, (...)?

Librem 5 is fatter and heavier, PinePhone is slimmer but with a smaller battery. You can buy, what, 3 PPs for the price of a Librem 5, with enough left over for 3 or 4 backup batteries, or one PP and dozens.

I can't tell you what the Librem 5 is really like, because they haven't shipped mine yet, but the PP is very, very nice.

>I can't tell you what the Librem 5 is really like, because they haven't shipped mine yet, but the PP is very, very nice.

I guess my question is: can you use the PinePhone (or Librem 5) as a phone? Can you reliably make and receive calls? Can you reliably send/receive SMS and MMS? Does it have error recovery if for some reason you don't get a message? Does the battery last for a reasonable day (>= 16 hours)? What networks are compatible, and do they work with MVNOs and not just the big boys?

I've used SailfishOS in the past and enjoyed it—and would've continued using it, but my phone died and I bought a KaiOS burner and never updated. I've toyed with the idea of picking up a PinePhone because it's more within my budget; but I want my phone to, you know, be a phone—not (just) a miniature computer that fits in my pocket. I have a fairly high pain tolerance (Sailfish wasn't exactly polished the way I wanted), but if I can't make or receive calls or SMS/MMS, that's a serious problem whether I can run Blender on it or not.

Re: the Pinephone:

1) You can (mostly) reliably make and receive calls

2) SMS but no MMS. IIRC, if someone sends you an MMS it will jam up the SMS app (not sure if it is/was a modem firmware or app issue or if it's been resolved yet or not)

3) Error recovery... hahahaha. Umm, no. I still see a fair number of messages re: people needing to tweak the modem due to text messaging issues.

4) Battery life is far better than it was but not as good as it needs to be. If you use the phone moderately, it should make it through the day. Heavy usage can kill it in a couple of hours.

5) Other than possibly Verizon, I think it's been confirmed working on all the major carriers and MVNOs. I only single out Verizon because IIRC they have/had a policy of needing to whitelist devices so I'm not sure if there's an issue there or not.

If you liked SailfishOS, there is some activity re: getting it running on the Pinephone: https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=126

Basically you're asking if it's 'daily driver' ready. My opinion is not currently, but opinions vary on this point. That said, if you're a heavy Linux user with an interest in mobile you might want to pick one up... it really is a fantastic little portable Linux device.

> Basically you're asking if it's 'daily driver' ready. My opinion is not currently, but opinions vary on this point. That said, if you're a heavy Linux user with an interest in mobile you might want to pick one up... it really is a fantastic little portable Linux device.

Thanks! That's really helpful. I'm really optimistic about the device since Pine64 does other (hopefully brisk) business, too. I'm not necessarily opposed to modifying scripts and working through issues (Sailfish wasn't really working all that well on my Moto G Falcon, to be honest), but my family will get annoyed if I can't participate in group messaging.

> Can you reliably make and receive calls?

> What networks are compatible, and do they work with MVNOs and not just the big boys?

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

> Does the battery last for a reasonable day (>= 16 hours)?

Not really, but it's getting there: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-4500mah-battery-upgrade/.

> Can you reliably send/receive SMS and MMS?

SMS work fine. Concerning MMS: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

looking at the PinePhone today, I've seen a few reviews and the subreddit

the impression I'm getting is that it's pretty buggy right now, although I'm okay with some hiccups. I wonder what's the best way to go around it, best practices etc, how to go about troubleshooting as well...

despite these problems, I'm tempted

EDIT: I do think though that having a totally open platform without a reference OS image is too ambitious. Even with flagship hardware, companies prepare images with hundreds of little workarounds and stability-related choices. This makes mobile hardware look a lot more polished and solid than it really is... those components are being shipped with a tonne of bugs generally as the cycles are so short and unforgiving, anything that can be patched up at the OEM level, pretty much is

Here is a post comparing the specs of Librem 5 and PinePhone: https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p... (with a link to a comparison of 12 phones).

Most notably, Librem 5 does not have a GPU designed in 2008, DDR4 Ram and likely has a faster eMMC, which is not too fast on the PinePhone either. However, the main issue with the PinePhone imho is that it does not have a larger battery that would help avoiding all the daily problems with deep sleep.

I am going to compare the two phones once I receive my October 2017 Librem 5 preorder on my blog (https://linmob.net) and my video channels.

thanks, that's interesting

I wonder about Librem 5's stability, because at that price point it would be painful to have a device not fit to even be a main driver...

hope both projects prosper

Community wiki with frequently asked questions about Librem 5: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

I've been following Purism for a month or so, and I love the idea of the Librem 5, but is the phone really going to be worth $2,000?

Only the US-produced version is $2000, and that's an accurate price considering the difficulty of manufacturing an entire phone platform domestically.

The regular version is $799.

You aren't buying a phone when you buy the librem 5. You are funding the development of open source phones so there will eventually be a v2 and v3 which are better value for money when the hard work was done in v1.

You're also funding the allegedly inefficient supply chain. Too bad I can't find the post about it right now, it was from an ex-purism guy.

Edit: It's the top one of the two linked by pengaru (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25143382 / https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan-T...).

> Purism seemingly never tried to get better deal and the South San Francisco partner abused this so that is why Purism Librems are double the price they should be.

> You are funding the development of open source phones

You're funding a FOSS operating system and a phone with some security features. We already have dozens of open source mobile OS's, the hardware design is still proprietary. What's really needed is an open source baseband firmware and no one is funding that sadly.

Despite the baseband/cpu isolation I fear it still has a host of vulnerabilities up its sleeve. One AT command away from certain doom (yes that's sarcastic hyperbole with a sliver of truth)

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Worth is relative. It won't be packed full of 2000$ worth of Android or Apple flagship hardware. But it will cost around 2000$ to deliver this specific product in the manner it's being delivered.

How is the pine phone $200 with only slightly lower specs?

The PinePhone isn't assembled in a US factory, for starters ($2000 refers only to the special "Librem 5 USA" edition with tightened supply chain).

Sure, but 10x is a lot.

Of course. USA assembly is pretty expensive though, it's a low volume product (so the cost of setting up additional factory won't get distributed across many devices) and I'm not aware of any competition there, so the final price is hardly surprising IMO.

The regular version costs "just" 4 times the PinePhone price, but with Librem 5 you get not only more powerful hardware with more expensive components, but also warranty, continued software development and tech support.

The made-in-USA version is $2,000, but the made-in-China version is $800, so it's only $2,000 if you want your phone to be made in the USA.

Ah missed that, thanks

What's great is they list the country of origin for each component on the product page of the USA version. Love the transparency. Some of the parts are not from the USA.

I'm thinking about taking a sabbatical next year, 15 countries in 7 months. How well does Librem travel?

Ok, you can buy models for different regions and swap them, but the antenna cables are only rated for 10 duty cycles so you can't do it a bunch of times. Purism has said that the modem switch is more designed for if you move or if it breaks, not so you can travel between the US and Europe often or whatever. You can probably purchase extension cables or something rated for more cycled though, but that might be expensive/specialised.

Why does this cost 10x the cost of the PinePhone? The specs are a little better, but not by that much.

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

They are developing all the software for the PinePhone and have to recoup somehow. Also it is supposedly a lot better built.

Can I try PureOS, as it runs on the phone, in a simulator? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Last I tried, it was a bit tricky to set up but there are instructions for setting up an emulator here: https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Development_Environment/Bo...

How come the product page doesn't list the dimensions of them phone?

The dimensions have changed between the preliminary batches. The final ones are here: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

I backed this originally when it was supposed to ship in January 2019. The project had a lot to tackle, developing unique hardware and software with a tiny budget compared to Google/Apple.

I am so glad the guys at Purism reached this point and did not give in to the folks who said the project would fail.

Phosh, their GNOME-derived shell, is now also used by many distros on the PinePhone, which is exactly the spirit of free software I wanted to see for the smartphone when I originally backed this.

I have waited on this phone since I pre-ordered it in 2017. Worth the wait and I'm happy to have contributed financially to all the hard work that has been put into making a much better linux experience on mobile devices in general, not only the Librem 5.

Same here.

Something I have been noting when working with this community is Purism employees actively helping the Pinephone community developers with software support/coding and vice versa. It has been awesome to see such cooperation between the two communities (and I think there is a huge intersection between the two).

It is something I think that is truly awesome to see, and like you said, it has been in the spirit of free software. I am hoping that with more folks with a Librem (and Pinephone), that the software will mature even quicker.

Totally agree.

Nipick : Posh is not related to GNOME shell in any way. It is a from-scratch implementation of a mobile window manager in C on top of Wlroots (while Gnome is JavaScript on top of Mutter)

Phosh doesn't share a common codebase with gnome-shell, but it does build on and integrate with most of the same GNOME technologies and libraries.

Also, phoc is the compositor and window manager; phosh is the shell-equivalent.

> Phosh, their GNOME-derived shell, is now also used by many distros on the PinePhone, which is exactly the spirit of free software I wanted to see for the smartphone when I originally backed this.

It is hard to overstate the importance of this, no matter how you feel about Purism's hardware or the company...

Whether somebody personally prefers the Librem 5, or the Pinephone, or is holding out for some future higher-spec Linux smartphone - chances are that the work Purism did with phosh, phoc etc will benefit the entire community greatly.

In my opinion the biggest mistake Purism made is to try to build their OS from the ground up, when acceptable and proven alternatives existed already. This has repercussions even now, when users are justifiably annoyed at a mass produced phone with a non functional camera app.

The Sailfish OS and Mer communities have had a working plumbing and porcelain stack for years (granted Sailfish's UI is not fully opened source) but Purism insisted on bootstrapping their own instead of building on those. I feel like they could have forced Jolla's hand to open source the last bits of their proprietary UI and everybody would have been happier.

Here is why they chose this path: https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-ph....

Yes, I can understand the principial reasons of why they made the choice. But it's still a bad one form a pragmatic point of view.

It's the camera kernel driver that's not complete yet, not the app. There are several apps that should already work once the driver is there.

Regarding the whole stack, I recommended reading https://puri.sm/posts/what-is-mobile-pureos/

> It's the camera kernel driver that's not complete yet, not the app.

I was sure I saw in a different discussion that it's the other way around. Maybe you have a link ?

You can see some bits from the ongoing progress at https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux-next/-/issues/44

Once it works it will be just a regular V4L2 device on the system, there are plenty of GNU/Linux apps that can consume it and there are now even mobile-focused ones like https://git.sr.ht/~martijnbraam/megapixels/ and https://gitlab.gnome.org/jwestman/camera

Possibly stupid question, but I'm really concerned, considering buying Librem 5 myself: what do we really know about Purism, and how do we know they are not NSA honeypot?

There's cause for concern re: the company/leadership/quality, but nothing remotely related to the NSA.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan-T...

http://techrights.org/2019/10/31/purism-false-promises/

From the first:

"There was never a single answer that made sense and only one answer actually ever "it will be $300 per device and some company said they would do it even if we hit only 5000 devices". You need to realize this was before we even knew what materials we will use, how the phone will look and so on. So vapor all the way."

This sounds exactly like the dev had no idea how manufacturing or investor relations goes. You need some numbers to tell investors, and you need the investment to design the phone, so you estimate. Using a price target of $300 seems reasonable.

From the second, I read it a long time ago and just skimmed it now, I read it as they hit major setbacks (perhaps because instead of rebadging existing stock they're suddenly building something new) and didn't want their money to dry up by scaring off the folks paying for the hardware.

The "raise money to build a new device with no manufacturing experience ends up taking forever, costing a lot more, and making people unhappy" story is an old one now. Kickstarter is full of these.

I don't see any evidence that there's anything going on more than inexperience here.

You don't have to trust them, everything is open and auditable.

The only black boxes like the modem are physically separated from the chip and sandboxed over USB.

If you don't trust them, format it and install your favorite distro + Posh (which is also open source ) that you downloaded yourself

There are also x-ray pictures and schematics available, so you compare you phone with that: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

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