Hacker News Reader

Comment by michelledepeil | Hacker News Reader

yes, daily driving for 2 years now.

* it's good. works well, apps reflow nicely, can run a lot of stuff simultaneously without memory issues. There is a nasty kernel bug relating to suspend and the wwan modem, but that's not pureos specific.

* depending on the app, ranging from snappy to so-so. Especially flatpaks tend to stutter...

* I don't use those services but it should be possible via gnome-accounts. I do sync a caldav and carddav and that works flawlessly.

written from librewolf on my librem5

View on HN

Thanks!

I may run a test this summer to see how it goes.

Battery life?

Not great. With suspend enabled and if I don't use it much, about 8 hours to 0%. If I leave it on (i.e. disable suspend), about 3 hours.

I'm honestly almost always near a charger, which I also realize is just a cope.

This is not normal for this phone. I think you should ask for help on the forums or by email. Examples:

https://forums.puri.sm/t/modem-draining-the-battery-very-fas...

https://forums.puri.sm/t/current-l5-idle-battery-life/14772

You're probably right, and battery life varies a bit day-to-day. I haven't done a formal test to double check my statements above, more just a feeling.

I've had the phone for a while and the battery has gone through many cycles. It has definitely lost some capacity.

When you say suspend, what does that look like in terms of receiving a phone call or SMS?

It's still experimental. It works for some users [0], but not for others [1,2].

[0] https://forums.puri.sm/t/status-of-suspend-for-librem-5/1391...

[1] https://forums.puri.sm/t/status-of-suspend-for-librem-5/1391...

[2] https://forums.puri.sm/t/status-of-suspend-for-librem-5/1391...

Recent progress: https://social.librem.one/@dos/110180625035442292.

Those forum posts are from more than a year ago, a lot has improved since.

The modem asserts a wake pin when you receive an SMS or phone call, causing the SoC to wake up. Services that rely on data (IM, e-mail etc.) don't wake the phone up (they will rely on periodic wakeups in the future, but there's no infrastructure for it yet).

An update that makes communication with the modem after resuming from system suspend reliable has been deployed today (previously it would often fully reenumerate and cause various troubles in the process, now it's instant).

OMG I got this update and modem resume has been flawless since!!!

Thanks for your hard work to get this fixed!

About 12 hours without suspend. Its still experimental, but very close: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

When did the battery life suddenly get 3-4 times better?

It's explained in my above link.

It’s not obvious what terms like Evergreen mean?

Evergreen is the latest hardware revision: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

There's not much difference in battery usage between hardware batches, the improvements were mostly in software. The battery capacity has changed though - the earliest batches that some early backers opted to receive had a 2000mAh battery, while later ones had 3600mAh one. The mass produced version ended up with 4500mAh.

The early batches shipped with early software, and that was actually the biggest contributor to bad battery life and (now long solved) overheating issues.

Okay so some people don’t even have the latest hardware revision so they’re stuck with a phone that will never support suspending and will have terrible battery life forever?

No? Where did you even get this idea from?

Early backers who explicitly opted in to receive early batches from before mass production have smaller capacity batteries, and that's about it.

Can those users buy a new battery that’s a higher capacity?

No, the new batteries don't fit. Those specific people knew what they opted in for though. Everyone who didn't received the final version.

So there are people out there with a phone with a 1-2 hour battery life? Ouch.

2 hours of active use, or about 10 hours in suspend.

Not sure what's so "ouch" about it. People also bought devkits which didn't come with any battery at all. Only some people were presented with the opportunity to receive a phone from the earliest revisions and only some of those people chose to - presumably those who cared more about getting a platform to hack on as early as possible than things like battery life.

It’s an unacceptable amount of time for a phone. Devkit is one thing, but if you’re buying a phone you should expect more than few hours of usage.

You're completely out of touch. If you're explicitly choosing to receive an early pre-mass production batch with unfinished battery, you already know what you expect.

Have any non-early phones shipped yet? Where are the all-day battery versions of these phones?

It sounds like they’re still not ready.

They've been shipping for two years now.

And yet people in this thread are talking about garbage battery life, phones not showing up, etc?

So maybe read what they're writing more carefully, you've already got all the answers here.

The mass produced phones that started shipping mid-2021 have 4500mAh battery and, with current software, reach about 20h in suspend with modem on and connected. Due to component shortages and other delays it's still shipping through backorders, although the queue is near its end right now.

Not everyone is saying that though. People are saying the battery life is atrocious and this phone is now $1300?

It didn't jump up suddenly; there were many software improvements in regard to battery life deployed through the years which together sum up to a pretty significant change.

I get about 3-4 hours of active usage (like Web browsing), about 8-12 hours of idle time and about 20-22 hours of suspended time. More with modem off, but then it's not exactly a phone:)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com