The Current Hardware Specifications For Purism's Librem 5 Phone

[andre30correia]

Canonical fails, jolla fails, firefox mobile fails, this one with this prices (120 euros phones with the same)and nothing to show it will fail too

[Mez']

I'm still not sure Android needs more than 2GB either. Has anyone actually checked the RAM usage of their apps?

Yes. My middle range Q4 2017 Android phone with 4 GB RAM can use up to 2.5 GB and still a RAM Cleanup actually makes it noticeably smoother. Hence, I personnally wouldn't go under 4GB.

[Vistaus]

I'm still not sure Android needs more than 2GB either. Has anyone actually checked the RAM usage of their apps?

I don't know how this will run, but my previous tablet (Bq Aquarius M10 with Android flashed over the original Ubuntu) easily ran out of memory with it's meager 2 GB RAM and I didn't even do much on it, just a web browser, Twitter and TV app open and that was already too much. So yeah, Android *does* need more than 2 GB of RAM. Unless your plan is to use Android Go, in which case 2 GB should be plenty.

[blackiwid]

Canonical fails, jolla fails, firefox mobile fails, this one with this prices (120 euros phones with the same)and nothing to show it will fail too

Why would they fail? they pay for it with the pre-orders and they have a record that they are not as amateurish as Jolla was and they can make a calculation that works out, like for the laptops.

And you can't just look at hardware, one big reason many people buy apple over android is just stupid update support. Especially this 120 dollar phones get maybe 1 year support, after 3 years you can flush it down the toilet because it became unusable and extremely unsafe.

Look at the fair-phone 1 as example a phone that was designed to have a long live it never got a upgrade to Android 5.0.

So you always pay more money for support even in the normal android sphere. I wonder if Mediatek not soon starts to put the software on a rom because products based on it are by design not up-gradable.

So if you can use that phone because nothing else than more updates 2 extra years the price is halved per year (assuming 4 instead of 2 years). So you can't just compare hardware vs hardware if you ignore upgradability.

[Polon]

Answer to the myth that Android uses more memory than IOS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCFpgknkqRE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9prht-PcWY

[sarmad]

Chrome user spotted.

In all seriousness, I don't see how it would fill so much RAM. It's a phone, not a laptop.

If they deliver on their promise of convergence, then it's a laptop.

[grok]

I don't know how this will run, but my previous tablet (Bq Aquarius M10 with Android flashed over the original Ubuntu) easily ran out of memory with it's meager 2 GB RAM and I didn't even do much on it, just a web browser, Twitter and TV app open and that was already too much. So yeah, Android *does* need more than 2 GB of RAM. Unless your plan is to use Android Go, in which case 2 GB should be plenty.

The worst I've seen is a phone with some ~200MB RAM, a tiny Samsung with Android 2.x physically very nice (but fonts and icons looked dated). Google Play Services was using about two thirds to three quarters of the RAM and killing the basic usability. You can kill it but it might come back, or will come back e.g. at boot.

[WorBlux]

Oh I see privacy only is for people with enough money.

I hope at that price they also checked the modem firmware doesn't contain any backdoor. That is if they have access to the modem firmware source code, which is unlikely. And even if they have, it likely is under NDA which means *they* would have to check the whole stack by themselves.

Reading their blog they consider the modem as a black box so I guess they don't know what's inside. So much for privacy and security.

And what about what will be on their store? Do they ask devs to provide source? Who will look at the source? Who will guarantee privacy?

The modem isn't allowed access to main memory and has a hardware kill switch. As for data it's not seeing anything the ISP wouldn't. Yes there are feasible attacks against the modem but if attackers are at that level, every phone could be screwed.

And the store sounds like it is OSS, with payment for the packaging and curation.

[pal666]

Did you know the latest $529 iPad 2018 128GB cellular+wifi has 2 GB of RAM?

do they still kill apps on alt-tab?

[pal666]

And you can't just look at hardware, one big reason many people buy apple over android is just stupid update support.

android does support updates. some vendors aren't good at it, but it's not a reason to avoid android. just choose responsible vendor

Especially this 120 dollar phones get maybe 1 year support, after 3 years you can flush it down the toilet because it became unusable and extremely unsafe.

on the other hand 120 for 3 years is better than 600 for 15 years