Purism Pushes Back The Librem 5 Linux Smartphone Release Date

[johanb]

i'm mostly using phone for reading pdfs

Are you serious?
Hell, I can barely read PDFs even on my 7" Kindle Paperwhite.
Seems like the wrong tool for the job.

[Almindor]

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.

You might be very well right. I can't remember where I read this. Could've been just a comment somewhere, but it etched itself in my memory like that. Funny how that works.

I do find it odd that Jolla wouldn't be able to get a loan for the tablets and just back down like this knowing they still had to pay back the rest to the backers AND get a PR hit in the end. Seems easier to just get a loan at that point, but maybe they couldn't find a backer.

Anyhow, I've derailed the thread enough. My main point was about the lack of backend/low level devs on purism, but I don't have anything to back that up either, just a feeling from their blog posts. It always seems like they're mostly selling the UI with "oh and we can't really do much on real h/w yet".

[johanb]

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

If we don't take the primary features of the product into account and only care about high-end hardware, I'd instead recommend a high-end steel hammer which you can easily get for under $100!

[L_A_G]

Silicon bugs eh? Talk about being saved by the bell considering i.Mx8 support in the mainline kernel is still out at least one version past 4.20/5.0 and will probably take well into next year to materialize. Even if they drop the idea of using a mainline kernel at launch the current open source bring-up is still pretty rough.

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.

The core of the Jolla tablet's problems was that a funding round they needed to pay off suppliers failed so they couldn't pay suppliers, one of which then took a good chunk of their components as payment and made Android tablets out of them without even removing the Jolla branding. When they finally secured the funding they needed to pay off the suppliers and get tablets to customers a key component (the main SoC IIRC) had gone out of production and further production would have required significant re-engineering of the device, which Jolla couldn't afford as they had partially re-engineered it once already due to the screen going out of production prior to the funding round falling trough.

[starshipeleven]

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.

That's because you don't know the implications.

Lack of features at launch means lower sales, lower sales means less chances to actually make a profit, which means the project dies and none makes the hardware anymore.

We don't need an OpenMoko all over again, they need to be able to produce and ship hardware.

[starshipeleven]

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

With 156 euro I can buy also a decent pair of shoes. What is the point of your comparison?

[shmerl]

The core of the Jolla tablet's problems was that a funding round they needed to pay off suppliers failed so they couldn't pay suppliers, one of which then took a good chunk of their components as payment and made Android tablets out of them without even removing the Jolla branding. When they finally secured the funding they needed to pay off the suppliers and get tablets to customers a key component (the main SoC IIRC) had gone out of production and further production would have required significant re-engineering of the device, which Jolla couldn't afford as they had partially re-engineered it once already due to the screen going out of production prior to the funding round falling trough.

Which just demonstrates, that producing hardware can be expensive and hard, and risk of failure for small companies which don't have millions in cash to back the effort is quite high.

[IreMinMon]

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

Not sure if trolling or serious.
Personally, the size is the reason I'm not buying this phone. I really want one but I hate everything above 4.5"

[IreMinMon]

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

Are there still people who care about hardware performance in a phone?
I use Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 (2013) with dual core CPU, because it's reasonably sized (4") and it doesn't get in my way (glass doesn't break in the first week). Hell, if it had 16GB storage, LTE support and wasn't stuck on Android 4.0 I doubt I'd even consider making the switch in the next 2-3 years.

[pemartins]

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

Unfortunately this is the hard truth.

Some said that it's not comparable because the devices do not have the same features, and they are right... the Librem will not be capable of doing a tenth of what an Android device can do, which makes the price range even more absurd. The Librem without at least being able to run (sandboxed) Android apps will be only competing in the 25 usd dumb phone market, it does not have apps and apps are what people need and want. Windows mobile and Firefox OS phone anyone?
About its alleged security feature, well... Blackphone. And even that one failed, having way more functions and features (and advertising) than the Librem.
It's the smartphone market. So it's a market in which, to try to succeed, the least you need to have is a good smartphone at a competitive price. Is it really possible that someone does not understand this?!

Btw, why would it be impossible to run whatever software the Librem will run on on that 156 usd device? There's not any law stopping it as far as I know, it would only be a matter of someone managing to achieve it. For sure it wouldn't be the first Android device booting Linux.

Some things about this LIbrem phone are just off, again I state that it looks like this was conceived to fail right from the beginning. So that FOSS can again be advertised as a failure.
It makes me upset because I was suppose to be a client, and still will be if this or a similar project turns out logic and adapted to the market's and consumer's needs. And not a charity case as it looks now, in which I'm supposed to give away 600 usd for something way overpriced I have no use for just because it says it is FOSS.