New GNOME Mockups Of The Librem 5 User Interface Work

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New GNOME Mockups Of The Librem 5 User Interface Work

While Purism is engaging with several different open-source communities for supporting different operating systems and interfaces with their in-development Librem 5 smartphone, by default they are planning to use assets from GNOME for their default user experience to jive with their GNOME-based Pure OS desktop Linux distribution. Here are some new mock-ups on the GNOME side for this privacy-minded Linux smartphone...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=New-GNOME-Designs-Librem-5

[gabber]

The GNOME design philosophy

[..]
Avoid Preferences [..]

This explains a lot.

[skeevy420]

Dammit. Insert some "why does it have to look like Android" complaint here.

Luckily it's all open so you just know that someone out there will make a Plasma rom for it.

Unfortunately we'll then have people bragging about running Arch with Awesome on their phone....I don't want them to succeed now.

[johanb]

Looks really nice!

Great to see the "section bar" (or whatever it's called) at the bottom so it's easier to use one-handed on a large touchscreen, a shame that the back button is on the top left though which makes it unable to be used one-handed anyway. Better than on iOS at least with both at the top.

[Jaxad0127]

Dammit. Insert some "why does it have to look like Android" complaint here.

Luckily it's all open so you just know that someone out there will make a Plasma rom for it.

Unfortunately we'll then have people bragging about running Arch with Awesome on their phone....I don't want them to succeed now.

Plasma Mobile is planned as a UI option. Hopefully available at launch.

[killyou]

I was very interested at first but then I saw the price, $649. Yeah .... no thanks. This phone is going to be less functional than any chinese crap. While I'm okay with paying premium for "libre" part but I won't shell $650 premium for crippled functionality and hardware. You can get a feature rich phone for $150, asking $500 on top of it is a bit much especially since application support will be very limited.

[Baguy]

I was very interested at first but then I saw the price, $649. Yeah .... no thanks. This phone is going to be less functional than any chinese crap. While I'm okay with paying premium for "libre" part but I won't shell $650 premium for crippled functionality and hardware. You can get a feature rich phone for $150, asking $500 on top of it is a bit much especially since application support will be very limited.

The point of it is that it's the first one to include hardware and software designed with Linux in mind (and privacy... hardware kill switches). Your paying for freedom and privacy, which may or may not be your cup of tea.

[Danniello]

I was very interested at first but then I saw the price, $649. Yeah .... no thanks. This phone is going to be less functional than any chinese crap. While I'm okay with paying premium for "libre" part but I won't shell $650 premium for crippled functionality and hardware. You can get a feature rich phone for $150, asking $500 on top of it is a bit much especially since application support will be very limited.

With such attitude I'm surprised that you even consider using Linux.

Of course that chinese phones are cheap - all of them are Android products with closed hardware without open-source drivers, etc. Many times - there are also added many "free" applications, so you will have not only Google standard "telemetry", but also couple other third-party "telemetry" systems. Chinese phones - probably no updates to next Android at all. In fact even very expensive Google Pixel phones are supported only 3 years...

Librem is much more expensive with average hardware, because:
* Very little market so production cost are much bigger
* There are almost no mobile hardware parts with open-source drivers. They need use what it is...

It will be probably first mobile open hardware - buy once with update system how long you want. I think that community will be very active for it and "compatible" distributions based on Debian/Ubuntu or Fedora will be delivered and updated for many years, even if original PureOS will stop doing it.

If Librem 5 will be success - there will be successors in next years with much modern hardware (assuming that open-source drivers will be available)...

[Vistaus]

Dammit. Insert some "why does it have to look like Android" complaint here.

Because Android is going away (it's being replaced by Fuchsia in a few to a couple of years) so we need something that looks like Android when Android is no more.

[Vistaus]

The point of it is that it's the first one to include hardware and software designed with Linux in mind (and privacy... hardware kill switches). Your paying for freedom and privacy, which may or may not be your cup of tea.

It's not the first with hardware and software designed with Linux in mind, but the first with privacy in mind, with the hardware kill switches and all.