Purism Pushes Back The Librem 5 Linux Smartphone Release Date

[jo-erlend]

I'm not to worried about a late release but rather missing functionality.

That's interesting. I'm completely opposite. I don't care about missing functionality, as long as the hardware works and can be used with only FOSS software. If we have the hardware, we can start adding features. If we don't have the hardware, there's no reason to get involved in any way.

[matthewtrescott]

I appreciate the honesty and candidness of their blog posts today. Frankly with all the software news about PureOS I was getting kinda concerned about what was happening with the actual hardware. As long as they continue being open about what's going on in the hardware department, I'll continue to count on buying one of these rather than another Android phone.

[sarmad]

I hope that when they definitely launch the phone in April, if they don't have the GNOME stack ready, they at least use Plasma Mobile in the meanwhile... (and not push the date further just because GNOME is not ready)

Rest assured that the hardware won't be released until the Gnome stack is ready, unless if they decide to drop the Gnome stack and switch officially to Plasma Mobile.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

This are critical bugs, indeed. I hope NXP will fix it in next hardware revision.

[GI_Jack]

Gnome on a tablet has many improvements. I recently got a cheap multitouch hybrid and put gnome on it.

The bigest, most odious flaw of gnome that is still an issue, is the on screen keyboard. No arrow keys, no ctrl, alt or Function keys, or any of the other PC keys, making using it as the only means of input difficult at least.

[Almindor]

Jolla also learned it the hard way with the tablet project. I don't care about the delay, but hope they won't drop the project altogether like Jolla did, and something will come out eventually.

Jolla got screwed over by the manufacturer. They actually built the tablets but slapped latest Android and sold for themselves. I don't think this is a similar issue.

That said, I think it's clear purism is going to be delayed by at least a year. From what it seems they have mostly front-end/app devs and not nearly enough hardware/low level talent. It's either going to ship extremely late or end up a "nice looking apps in your emulator" project.

[thecursedfly]

Jolla got screwed over by the manufacturer. They actually built the tablets but slapped latest Android and sold for themselves. I don't think this is a similar issue.

I'd like some source on this. Having backed the Jolla tablet myself, and having followed the situation as much as I could, I have never read that the manufacturer caused Jolla not to ship the tablets for randomly deciding to slap Android on them.
What I understood is that:
- there were several delays due to issues in the manufacturing process and a display quality issue
- Jolla ran out of money and couldn't pay the already manufactured tablets (only a small batch reached Jolla and went to the first backers)
- therefore the vendor had to still sell them in some way via alternative channels
- Android was the default OS for that hardware, in fact there were multiple similar tablets to that one (ex. Aigo X86), so they simply sold them with Android

Jolla was unlucky with the manufacturing delays, but also did not plan their finances well enough to account for the unexpected. So they risked too much with other people's money.
To say it's all fault of the manufacturer is false imo. Unless, sources can back that up.

[ThoreauHD]

Hardware is hard, especially when you have no control over it's production. The buy, test, fail, repeat method is all they have on the hardware side. So, it will take a while to get this right. But once they do get this right, it's going to have extremely large implications in the realm of security and vendor access. A phone that 'just works' out of the box, no cell provider needed, is a BFD.

[pal666]

5.7" is much better than 5" which i've seen on their website. still 5.99" would be even better. i'm mostly using phone for reading pdfs

[Shiba]

I hope that when they definitely launch the phone in April, if they don't have the GNOME stack ready, they at least use Plasma Mobile in the meanwhile... (and not push the date further just because GNOME is not ready)

As if Plasma were even marginally ready...

600usd for a really low end hardware. With 156 eur you can buy much more better hardware.
https://www.kimovil.com/en/where-to-buy-leeco-le-max-2

This garbage is not Free.