Purism Starts Shipping The First Librem 5 Smartphones

[danmcgrew]

Originally posted by eltomito View Post
"Is there anybody who got one of these on this forum? Could you post some detailed pics or a video, please? I'm dying to see this legendary beast!

Nobody received one yet. They are just dropping off of the production line as of yesterday.
Purism published additional pictures today. See
https://social.librem.one/@purism/102740815257018934
https://social.librem.one/@purism/102849525724901197
https://social.librem.one/@purism/102854758636419924
https://social.librem.one/@purism/102854780934789095
(of course also available on https://twitter.com/Puri_sm ...)
On the community forum, some people have already regretted not opting for the first (Aspen) batch, as it clearly does not look shabby to them

It's fairly obvious that eltomito (#14) was asking about the Ubuntu phone, as (1) the three comments previous to his was about the Ubuntu phone, and, (2) he refers to the object of his question as "legendary". Purism's new phone is not "legendary", quite yet.

[Caliga]

Is there anybody who got one of these on this forum? Could you post some detailed pics or a video, please? I'm dying to see this legendary beast!

Nobody received one yet. They are just dropping off of the production line as of yesterday.
Purism published additional pictures today. See
https://social.librem.one/@purism/102740815257018934
https://social.librem.one/@purism/102849525724901197
https://social.librem.one/@purism/102854758636419924
https://social.librem.one/@purism/102854780934789095
(of course also available on https://twitter.com/Puri_sm ...)
On the community forum, some people have already regretted not opting for the first (Aspen) batch, as it clearly does not look shabby to them

What I'm curious about is how they solved the modem firmware thing as they are almost always closed source.

Both, Modem and WiFi/BT cards, are only connected via a bus. This means, in contrast to basically all other phones, they are slaves and have no access to RAM (or anything).
The GPS in the modem is disabled (there's a separate GNSS), so a malicious modem cannot even send an exact position (yes, tower can still track you of course).
Plus, you can use offline navigation even when the modem is off by the killswitch.

The hard part here was mainly to get components (modem/wifi/bluetooth) that are
* available on M.2 cards
* can operate without loading runtime firmware (blobs)
Both are only possible because Purism cooperated with the vendors. You simply cannot buy that stuff off the shelf.
The no-runtime-firmware/no-proprietary-driver thing is not just a security thing. Most importantly, the whole phone will 100% work with basically any distro (likely in 10 years still), as all drivers are free and mainlined. See Purism & Linux 5.3

I think this is basically the gold-standard for the coming years. Quite possibly, we'll never see a fully open baseband modem, as it touches so many patents, licenses and regulations that it's not even funny...

For a full overview of featues, have a look at the Librem 5 Promise Delivery Chart.

They are using a SOC board with just the ethernet removed...

I think you're talking about the dev-kit.
The phone has a custom-made PCB (schematics will be freed in the future). The main reason why it is thick is that it has two daughter-cards (modem, wifi/BT).
See the pictures in the links above. As it was an explicit design-goal to have these components outside of the CPU so they can be replaced and turned off, it's unlikely to get thinner any time soon.

[jaskij]

slalomsk8er (not quoting cause mobile) so basically something like Hi-Link where USB modems show up as CDC-ETH and you do everything via the built-in portal?

[danmcgrew]

I didn't buy a Librem5 because too much expensive... I congrats them however they did some missteps, I hope they learned the lessons and I hope them the better for the second generation. Other thing is this phone is well clear from the beginning that would be a thick phone... They are using a SOC board with just the ethernet removed... Unless the soc vendor decides to re-engineer the soc in a small factor suitable for phone this and all the future linux phone based on this general purpose soc will be always thick...

I congratulate them also.
Their openness and honesty are extremely refreshing, as is their desire to show the world that they can deliver a product, no matter how 'beta' it might be--along with declaring the product to be 'beta', and letting us 'look over their shoulder'. This indicates that they're going to work just as hard getting it out of the beta class.

In light of the competition which is on the horizon, perhaps they have in mind--along with polishing the product--driving some of the cost out of the product. Perhaps.

At any rate, we all need to cut them some slack; with all the pressure they're under to deliver a high-quality product, they don't need negativity--and particularly not from people who don't intend to buy the product anyway.

[slalomsk8er]

(failed) product, in this case the Neo Freerunner.

Why failed - I had one it was nearly usable

I want my Nokia N900 back - best phone ever - refresh inkl. keyboard but this time with capacitive touchscreen please.
You could run openoffice and even use it as a full linux desktop if connected to a external screen, mouse and keyboard - no Samsung DeX or other convergence shenanigans needed.

[Danielsan]

I didn't buy a Librem5 because too much expensive... I congrats them however they did some missteps, I hope they learned the lessons and I hope them the better for the second generation. Other thing is this phone is well clear from the beginning that would be a thick phone... They are using a SOC board with just the ethernet removed... Unless the soc vendor decides to re-engineer the soc in a small factor suitable for phone this and all the future linux phone based on this general purpose soc will be always thick...

[Vistaus]

We all saw the data point on how Canonical's Ubuntu phone went over, live and learn.

But Purism is trying to be more as the hardware is also open source (unlike Ubuntu phones), so a better comparison would be to a similar (failed) product, in this case the Neo Freerunner.

[slalomsk8er]

To people who are saying that they should delay: AFAIK (no link at hand) Librem stated that you can contact them to be moved to a later batch so they are aware of this and not forcing unpolished products on anyone.

Even better, you will be contacted to confirm your address and get asked if the batch you are in is OK with you.

What I'm curious about is how they solved the modem firmware thing as they are almost always closed source.

They did not but put a "network" between the modem and the rest of the phone - it is as trusted as the modem from your cable provider

[L_A_G]

If people are so desperate to get their phones they'll put up with them being put together about as well as the first DeLoreans and Rover SD1s to come off the production line to get them a few months earlier than everyone else I guess you can't blame Purism for obliging them. However I really wouldn't go for one if I was planning on using it as a "daily driver" device.

Oh and if people aren't familiar with this; the first DeLoreans were so badly assembled they had to be taken apart and re-assembled properly when they arrived in the U.S and the early Rover SD1s were so badly built that if you left one out in the rain you could actually find puddles on the inside of the car afterwards. There'a a reason why after the 1980s "Made in Britain" was generally considered a marque of shoddy workmanship.

[jaskij]

To people who are saying that they should delay: AFAIK (no link at hand) Librem stated that you can contact them to be moved to a later batch so they are aware of this and not forcing unpolished products on anyone.

Why ARM? In general RISC cores are more power efficient from what I read. There are no RISC-V smartphones SoC even now on the market. That leaves Cortex-A.

IMO Librem chose the best processors they could for those phones. NXP (a Phillips offspring which bought Freescale a few years ago) is one of the few ARM SoCs manufacturers on the market who are fully open with their documentation and are cheaper then Texas Instruments. There is a new player here - ST Microelectronics, but they released their CPUs only a few months ago. Looking at the newsletters I get NXP is also the most hacker/hobbyist friendly company of the three.

What I'm curious about is how they solved the modem firmware thing as they are almost always closed source.