Purism Shows Off First Shots Of The Librem 5 Smartphone's PCB

[Raka555]

Calling it now, the end product will be a failure. Either it won't materialize at all, or it will be bulky and terrible and ship late.
Real unfortunate, as they've done a lot for the community with all the upstream work they've done.

I ordered one.

Late is not a problem at all to me. (Their dates where unrealistic to begin with)
I would be happy if I get a polished product at the end of 2020...

Bulky is not an issue as long as it is reasonable.

What I don't want is a half-baked, rushed thing at the end of 2019

[DrYak]

Fairphone 3 stands a much better chance.

FP3 and Librem 5 (and PinePhone, for that matters) aren't targeting the same goals.

The point of Librem 5 is to make a 100% pure open-source phone that you can trust down to the firmware. That makes it mandatory for them to pick an unusual chipset that might be underpowered but has been 100% reverse-engineered and open sourced. That also makes mandatory this bulky design with M2 slots, so the radio functionality can be isolated.

Meanwhile the FP3 still uses a "the cell modem is the northbridge of the SoC" chipset from Qualcomm. Because their main target is to build a environmentally friendly and socially fair phone, so they'll focus on small compact easily replaceable modules, and on fairtrade sourced raw material and manufacturing.

The people who are mostly interested by one of the other don't have the same interests. For them the phone aren't exchangeable one for another.

[Veto]

I think that, if Purism can afford it, their credibility would be best served by doing exactly what Fred Brooks did when he took over the already one-year-behind-schedule OS360 program at IBM: cancelled everything--meaning mainly empty promises--and started over

Why do you think that?? You should really qualify a statement like that with some reasoning.

It is not like cancelling and starting over is always the best way to getting things accomplished...

[sverris]

If the phone is going to be that thick (15 mm) with the specs offered, then it is destined to fail as a cell phone. The amount of delays and teasing reminds me of Star Citizen, though it is of course not nearly as bad as that obvious cash grab. Fairphone 3 stands a much better chance.

15 mm > won't bend. And it is much nicer to hold a somewhat thicker device. And the m2.slot makes sense to me. So...

[Kamikaze]

Calling it now, the end product will be a failure. Either it won't materialize at all, or it will be bulky and terrible and ship late.
Real unfortunate, as they've done a lot for the community with all the upstream work they've done.

[danmcgrew]

For the sake of discussion, let's say they do take your advice. What then? What choices should they make differently? [Sincerely interested btw ;-) ]

As far as I can tell, the problems people have with the phone aren't due to bad decisions, they simply don't have many cards to choose from in the first place to meet their goals.

Well, that's a good question, but the operative phrase occurred at the very beginning of my post/comment--"I think--"
I, like most, am merely an interested outside observer. I don't pretend to know the first thing concerning the design and manufacture of a smartphone; hence I can not, nor will I pretend to be able to give Purism advice on what they should have done, should not have done, or should now do. Further, I don't have a problem with the phone except for those dictated by personal priorities: that it does not appear as if it will be available, to me, in a reasonable length of time and at a reasonable--to me--cost.

[edenist]

I think that, if Purism can afford it, their credibility would be best served by doing exactly what Fred Brooks did when he took over the already one-year-behind-schedule OS360 program at IBM: cancelled everything--meaning mainly empty promises--and started over (Fred Brooks--author of The Mythical Man-Month--is famous for saying, among other things, "How does a software project get a year behind schedule? One day at a time.").

For the sake of discussion, let's say they do take your advice. What then? What choices should they make differently? [Sincerely interested btw ;-) ]

As far as I can tell, the problems people have with the phone aren't due to bad decisions, they simply don't have many cards to choose from in the first place to meet their goals.

[marty1885]

By the way, that PCB is unusually big for a phone in my opinion (yeah, I know it's because it's an early version but still wanted to point out).

The phone is designed with 2 M2 connectors (for user replaceable Wifi/BT and modem), they have to be large.

[danmcgrew]

I think that, if Purism can afford it, their credibility would be best served by doing exactly what Fred Brooks did when he took over the already one-year-behind-schedule OS360 program at IBM: cancelled everything--meaning mainly empty promises--and started over (Fred Brooks--author of The Mythical Man-Month--is famous for saying, among other things, "How does a software project get to be one year behind schedule? One day at a time.").
I'm buying a Pinephone when it arrives in the first quarter of 2020 not for any ideological reasons, but because of the capabilities it might have, and because---at $160--it will cost less than some people's monthly phone bill...and, some--perhaps a lot; perhaps not--of Pine's claims for the device just may be accurate.

https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

https://forums.ubports.com/topic/2403/pinephone

https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Project_Don't_be_evil

[zhaich]

If the phone is going to be that thick (15 mm) with the specs offered, then it is destined to fail as a cell phone. The amount of delays and teasing reminds me of Star Citizen, though it is of course not nearly as bad as that obvious cash grab. Fairphone 3 stands a much better chance.