Purism's Librem 5 Is Nearing $100k In Funding, But A Long Journey Remains

[Guest]

starshipeleven Well, 3D capability is very important for rendering the UI. Without it you're fucked, especially on weak hardware. Yes, CPU rendering and phone CPU performance has improved a lot, it's still nothing compared to using an actual GPU which carries hardware optimized for the task.

A GPU and touchscreen that work properly are the minimum requirements for any sort of working phone, because that's what the user interacts with and sees. Then comes the sound, phone functionality, WiFi, Bluetooth etc.

[DrYak]

I'd rather someone selected an existing phone, something easy to install an alternate OS on that is readily available (oneplus / pixel / idk).

From the point of vew of Purism, the problem of that approach is that with 99.9% of the hardware out there you can't run pure opensource software, you'll usually be stuck with a hard-to-upgrade kernel fork by the manufacturer with binary-only drivers for several components.
Other GNU/Linux stacks (such as Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch, etc.) rely on Jolla's libhybris to get the GNU/Linux to run above these binary-only drivers.

Any LineageOS device?
If you think they can do without the blobs for hardware support you're delusional.

Well, actually - they *can* manage that.
It's just that they'll be severly limited in their choice of SoC.
Basically the antique Freescale i.MX6 is about the only choice they have.

(That, and perhaps the few Tegra variant that have received official opensource support due to some german aviation company paying nvidia to support nouveau).

$600 for specs that would even today be low end.

(Note that in this kind of project, price is more or less set by devs' paycheck)

regarding the spec :
that's because this out-dated 32bits ARM chip is about the only one that would give purism the opportunity to only use opensource.

intel has dropped out of the smart phone game.

there are indeed a few qualcom socs supported by freedreno, but these socs tend to have the cell modem core serving as the phone's northbridge (big security/privacy "no-no" for purism).

the only hope is that i.MX8 gets in the future an as good opensource support as i.MX6 has now.

(or whatever comes from the nvidia-nouveau paid collaboration mentionned above).

I'd love to support it. But after buying an OpenMoko/FreeRunner and the Jolla phone - let's not talk about the tablet... - I'd rather wait and see where this is heading. I honestly wish them luck!

Funily, I've bought OpenMoko's FreeRunner back then (though not GoldenDelicious' GTA04 upgrade) and had quite a fun time hacking around it. Even used it as a fall-back secondary phone from time to time.
And I'm using a Jolla 1 as my daily phone - works very nicely.

[starshipeleven]

starshipeleven Well, 3D capability is very important for rendering the UI.

Well, if you have GNOME or KDE or Cinnamon or other relatively heavy DE that needs OpenGL/ES, yes.

For actual interfaces used in mobile devices (and lighter DEs like MATE, XFCE, LXDE/Qt) you care about 2D acceleration, in the case of Android you can do fine with CPU rendring only, and afaik the default is still CPU rendering unless you force GPU rendering through Developer options.

[Nille_kungen]

Well, if you have GNOME or KDE or Cinnamon or other relatively heavy DE that needs OpenGL/ES, yes.

For actual interfaces used in mobile devices (and lighter DEs like MATE, XFCE, LXDE/Qt) you care about 2D acceleration, in the case of Android you can do fine with CPU rendring only, and afaik the default is still CPU rendering unless you force GPU rendering through Developer options.

Nokia had some Symbian devices without a classic GPU but they did support OpenVG IIRC
Nokia 500 had "2D Graphics HW Accelerator with OpenVG 1.1 support".

http://web.archive.org/web/20111124145429/http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devices/Device_specifications/500/

[coder111]

1. Because the chip and code that control the radio are developed by corps and closed up. So there would be plenty of reverse-engineering effort involved. And it's a moving target- if it would take say 5 years to develop baseband for some SOC, new SOC would be out in ~1 year, and probably incompatible.

2. Because you need FCC (or equivalent org in other countires) certification to be able to use the phone- in order to verify that it won't pollute the radio spectrum. AFAIK that includes the firmware these days, so any phone with hacked baseband firmware would not be legal to use. Non-licensed broadcasting carries high fines and prison sentences in most places.

I don't understand, why is baseband so hard?

[coder111]

Finally someone who knows what they're talking about.

Yup, Purism will struggle with this project if they want good open-source hardware support. And then if they plan to develop their own UI and app platform on top of it. I'd start with hybris if I was them, and then push for more open-hardware later.

How about the Chinese? Would it be possible to get an agreement with any of them to get mainline kernel support? Do they also use the baseband-in-northbridge design that makes them unsuitable for privacy oriented devices? Would it be possible to get a Chinese SoC without radio, and use an external radio, like Purism plans with i.MX?

Also, bad situation for open drivers for GPUs. Allwinner- they are using Mali or PowerVR GPUs. HiSilicon- mostly Mali (or Vivante in old models). MediaTek- Mali & PowerVR. Rockchip- I haven't heard about them making new chips for last couple of years, are they still around? I haven't seen much progress on Lima driver lately... Also, if Purism decide to use later i.MX chips, they'll need to advance the state of Vivante driver as well.

I'm on Jolla1 as well, but it's showing its age. Battery gets drained in a couple of hours of heavy use, especialyl if I run any Android apps... My plan is to get OP3T later this year, and then see if I ran run Mer on it, or else Lineage. Hmm, is it possible to dual-boot? And is it me, or is the pace of development at Jolla slower than it used to be when Jolla1 first came out? I'm glad they have 64 bit support mostly sorted out, as you said in your previous comment.

... Basically the antique Freescale i.MX6 is about the only choice they have.
... And I'm using a Jolla 1 as my daily phone - works very nicely.

[Nille_kungen]

And is it me, or is the pace of development at Jolla slower than it used to be when Jolla1 first came out? I'm glad they have 64 bit support mostly sorted out, as you said in your previous comment.

It's slower since they have less developers.
My Jolla JP-1301 is on it's last breath since the digitizer of the touch screen failed so it doesn't register gestures as it should.

[starshipeleven]

GhostOfFunkS should do the right thing here and give up on the failed KDE trolling campaign and channel all his time to something useful. Like coding.

fixed.

[DrYak]

To everyone else, sorry for the out-of-subject.

I'm on Jolla1 as well, but it's showing its age. Battery gets drained in a couple of hours of heavy use, especialyl if I run any Android apps...

Replacement akkus specially for Jolla 1 (correctly recognized by the phone).

Also regarding android :
- Facebook and Messenger now have "Lite" versions. These use a lot less data in the background (and therefore use a lot less the battery due to activity).
- Skype also exist in Lite version but its page in the Google Play Store is geo-locked to Asia. You need to download and install it manually from some place like Apk Mirror.

Try to block as much apps as possible from running in the background from their settings in the "App" panel of "Settings".

Also a huge powerbank can help for more extreme situations (like if you want to share your connection during several hours)

And is it me, or is the pace of development at Jolla slower than it used to be when Jolla1 first came out? I'm glad they have 64 bit support mostly sorted out, as you said in your previous comment.

From people closer to the devs than me, I got the information that their current plans for 64 bits are 64 bits kernel, but nearly entirely 32 bit user land.
So apparently they haven't pushed the things as far as I've hoped (the main problem being 3rd party applications that only come in arm32 binary RPMs).

Regarding the pace of development : well that boils down to financing , I suppose.
They've been through a lot of hurdles in the not so distant past, and only recently have began striking deals. They'll need a few more manufacturers using Sailfish OS as an official platform so they could keep a large dev group afloat.

[Guest]

starshipeleven You are mistaken about Android and GPU rendering. Since Android 3.0, OpenGL ES is used to render almost all UI. Apps had to opt in with an Android manifest flag. Since Android 4.0 it was turned on by default everywhere. The only reason any mobile device renders UI smoothly is due to 3D hardware acceleration. They would work like crap with software rendering.