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

[stiiixy]

I don't hate the style. its not super special. But it is pretty clean.
Basically this mockup is just an artist impression to see how people would respond and i wouldn't be too bothered by it.
This finishing product is probably going to look quite different.

What might be more interesting is to take a look into the app/buttons they include, as this might give more of an idea for the functionality they have in mind.

I am wondering what that "social" button is going to do.
It looks a bit like grouping all the social activities under one app/button.

I always loved the approach that the Nokia N900 took.
What they did was take "Pidgin" application as the basis for storing phone contacts.
Then it was possible to add all kind of communication types to these contacts. ( IRC, MSN, Skype, etc )
This way you only needed on adresbook that would truly manage all your contact details.
All contact communication indifferent of protocol could be should together.
It was a very refreshing approach on mobile for me.

As Purism cannot possible include apps like facebook, skype because they are security bombs maybe something like this than that in itself might be a unique selling point that would make me interested in buying one.

Pidgin nowadays supports skype, wechat, twitter, whatsapp, facebook chat and many other plugins people care about.
Posting on social media might not be the most "safe" thing in the first place.
But if you accept that what you post is public information than such an approach would at least make a complete open source solution and make it more likely that there are no backdoors in the code on your phone while still enabling you to do what most other people do in their lives.

I still have my N900 and use it often and that contact system always comes to mind. Unfortunately, the poor ol beast which was always underspecc'd, excepting the storage (32GB in 09!), for even simple browsing.

Did pidgin manage to get FB chat back? I thought a few companies like FB removed external support so the could push their curated user-bubble crap through the regular interfaces. Might be worth looking at using again, as I hate using full blown FB.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

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

[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?

[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.

[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

[Yndoendo]

First smart phone I'm actually excited for.