Purism Eyeing The i.MX8M For The Librem 5 Smartphone, Issues First Status Update

[marty1885]

I guess another problem with Librem 5 is that it might not have hardware video decoding. Since even the open source VC4 driver for the RPi don't have hardware video decoding. What are the chances for Librem 5 to get hardware video decoding.

[Vasant1234]

The I.MX8 is a quad core Cortex A53 which is pretty much an entry level phone right now. In 2019 it will be comparable to a $150/- Android phone with very limited software.
And for those open-source advocates, the LTE modem runs closed source firmware and I believe the video decoder (VPU) is closed firmware. Some one needs to better define what a true open source device is.

[MartinK]

Cool. Who can add etnaviv to Mesa's features.txt so it would show up in Mesa Matrix?



Why not. It's actually quite simple to do. Ask SailfishOS developers.

Actually, many of the original Sailfish OS developers had many years of mobile industry experience and some of the software components (such as ofono and maybe connman as well ?) have heritage from prior mobile distributions (Maemo 5/Harmattan/MeeGo). While AFAIK the Librem design and developer team seem to me both as a very clean sheat design without prior mobile experience and heritage.

BTW, the UI can be actually the easy part (and it was indeed totally new on Sailfish OS, not taken from any prior project) - the hard parts are IMHO all the telephony and mobile connectivity bits working under the scenes to connect phone calls, make SMS/MMS arrive and move bits around over the mobile connection. Given the constant stream of telephony/mobile connectivity related commits in the Mer activity log (Mer is the meta distribution which serves as a core of Sailfish OS) I think Librem could be in serious trouble if they don't have anyone of a similar telephony/mobile know how Jolla has on staff for Sailfish OS. It seems to be a constant fight to keep things running due to telephony infrastructure intricacies and complex connectivity issues users might run into at random.

Failure in this area means lost or interrupted calls, bad call quality, lost SMS messages or mobile connectivity issues and issues with switching between wifi and mobile connectivity. All potentially pretty annoying issues.

[Almindor]

Cool. Who can add etnaviv to Mesa's features.txt so it would show up in Mesa Matrix?



Why not. It's actually quite simple to do. Ask SailfishOS developers.

I wished Jolla would make good on their promise and just bloody open-source it already. All I'm asking is the UI and their internal apps/settings etc. not the drivers. That alone would be a huge boon to the community and would vindicate their huge failures.

[shmerl]

Cool. Who can add etnaviv to Mesa's features.txt so it would show up in Mesa Matrix?

Not entirely convinced that KDE or GNOME can produce a phone UI that's at all functional by modern standards

Why not. It's actually quite simple to do. Ask SailfishOS developers.

[edenist]

Glad to read that things are progressing.

The difference in specifications between the iMX6 and iMX8 are huge. Frankly, I'd rather wait a little bit longer for the device to ship if it means they can use the iMX8.
Hopefully NXP et al can get some dev hardware out pronto.

[scottishduck]

Not entirely convinced that KDE or GNOME can produce a phone UI that's at all functional by modern standards

[GI_Jack]

What I want:

comes stock with TWRP and Linaege OS, and a native, everything working fork.

Free software drivers, including a wifi driver that has monitor and injection mode.

A capable kernel that has many if not most desktop modules.

Modem that is isolated without DMA access.

Thats it. I kinda like ASOP for phone usage. Not convinced I want a GNU phone, again. Pretty sure I don't unless you containerize apps using something like flatpak

[L_A_G]

No i.MX8M devkits? Doesn't NXP have evaluation board available yet?

Just looked at NXP's website and they do have an evaluation board for the i.MX 8M, which is available for $450 or a bit more than that from NXP's own website, Avnet and Digikey, but it seems like they some weeks/months away from shipping. Avnet even has their usual really long lead times (12 weeks in this case) that I've run afoul of myself with another evaluation board made by them.

[Licaon]

Fun fact, hope Matrix devs learn from the past: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desk.../msg00047.html