Purism Shows Off Latest GNOME Mobile Shell Mockups For The Librem 5

[doublez13]

Most important to me is that they upstream everything. In a perfect world, it shouldn't be the most painful thing to get a different distro running on there.

[Yndoendo]

First smart phone I'm actually excited for.

[onicsis]

First smart phone I'm actually excited for.

For those who missed, in the last Q&A hardware details very well explained, about the upcoming Librem 5 smartphone and the UBports - Purism partnership to bring Ubuntu Touch to the device.
Todd Weaver, CEO of Purism | Ubuntu Touch Q&A 27

[Vistaus]

That sounds way less confident than previously when they stated that all their work is upstreamable to Gnome. I guess the news that their mobile shell is not based on Gnome code at all but a fork of a 3rd party Wayland compositor reached inner Gnome circles. Let's see if their work becomes just another Hildon.

I think they mean that the work is upstreamable, but that the GNOME devs haven't yet told them if they will incorporate their work. Just like when you work on kernel stuff and you don't yet know if Linus is going to accept it.

[dkasak]

Are you seriously trying to approach something called "Gnome" from a UX design standpoint?

You are gonna have a bad time...

Got some examples of your work to compare to?

[Guest]

This doesn't look too shabby, ignoring the horribly outdated skeuomorphic icons.

[Awesomeness]

I think they mean that the work is upstreamable, but that the GNOME devs haven't yet told them if they will incorporate their work. Just like when you work on kernel stuff and you don't yet know if Linus is going to accept it.

If that "kernel stuff work" is to fork the FreeBSD kernel and then try to send it to Linus as "Linux Mobile Kernel", your comparison would be correct (keep in mind that the Librem shell is not based on Gnome at all). Hint: It's unlikely Linus would accept that.

[GI_Jack]

This seems pretty cool, as you'll be able to choose from all the existing Free software phone interfaces, just like you can choose Free software desktops on linux.

Few questions:
1. Is it going to be able to run Debian. Big one. What would the install for debian + gnome phone look like. Debian has excellent package support. This might see more use as a pocket PC than actual phone.
2. Will they have an android port, such as Lineage. Android is my go-to for actual daily driver phone usage. a solid FOSS android build would be awesome.
3. Gnome's On Screen Keyboard sucks ass. Is there any decent replacements?

[grok]

This doesn't look too shabby, ignoring the horribly outdated skeuomorphic icons.

I love it. Of course, skeuomorphic icons of this kind appeared when we could get hi color, hi res icons so maybe do you mean they're crap from early 2000s? But for those of us who never had a $3000 Macintosh circa 2002, nor an iPhone in the first couple years, that's great.

We can do with flat featureless icons maybe but on other platforms they're mostly commercial logos. Such that, a certain look of the "play" button is the youtube commercial logo. Needless to say this isn't what's wanted here.
What if we have a "play" button for the music player and a "play" button for the video player? Doesn't seem great.
What about a generic grid icon? So, that's for a calendar, or a spreadsheet, or just a bunch of icons in a folder.
Magnifying lens? That's search maybe. But is it local search, web search or internet search? Wait, it's a zooming feature. Which may either redraw your whole GUI bigger/smaller or actually be a floating accessibility feature.

[grok]

Going with a 18:9 screen is a good idea. This is where even cheap phones are going. I think it's good as there's less chance that the keyboard covers the input field you're trying to fill. Nothing more nothing less

They say it allows for a bigger battery. Great but my opinion is, try not to make it too heavy. Bigger thickness is good for having less "effective weight" i.e. a super thin but heavy phone is more tiring than the same weight with more thickness probably. But I'd like not too much absolute weight.
For better battery life I think it would also work better if you went with a 720p 18:9 screen rather than 1080p 18:9. 1440x720 is one million pixels, 2160x1080 is 2.3 million pixels. I'm concerned about the window manager, Wayland etc. wasting more milliwatts, while the screen itself consumes more power. I don't know about the GPU itself and the RAM bandwith.

Pipedream : the screen would be so easy to replace and source, that if you want to use a 720p screen instead of 1080p or the other way around, just replace it (like a few nerds did with 4:3 Thinkpad laptops)
Variable refresh rate : a way to save power. Maybe you'd do that for a major revision or new model. I have no idea if Gnome etc. can support it. Gnome Wayland is stuck at 60Hz on 144Hz desktop monitors so they have things to fix or rework.
Another unreasonable request : a "Mini" or "Compact" model. 5.0" 18:9 format might be very good for that. Obviously Librem should just do their own-size-fits-all first model. But with the "thick", easy to grab philosophy a compact model might be very good.