Purism Starts Shipping The First Librem 5 Smartphones

[Guest]

I wouldn't call their phones faulty, just incomplete and beta quality. It is the hardware equivalent of shipping open source software before it's polished and debugged. Early adopters will take the brunt of the cost finding problems, but the openness and transparency (warts and all) is intended to payback in the long run.

Wither Purism can reap the payback or someone else does if they fail remains to be seen. We all saw the data point on how Canonical's Ubuntu phone went over, live and learn.

Well the problem with Ubuntu phone is that it relied on closed source drivers, and given iOS and Android had saturated the market. Librem 5 focuses on a niche, and satisfies the requirements for that niche. They've made serious efforts in that regard.

[mzs.112000]

Well the problem with Ubuntu phone is that it relied on closed source drivers, and given iOS and Android had saturated the market. Librem 5 focuses on a niche, and satisfies the requirements for that niche. They've made serious efforts in that regard.

I would like to point out that Ubuntu phone could have worked out much better, it's largely the failed efforts to get Unity 8 fully working on both desktop and mobile that sunk the project by sucking up too much resources. Had they focused on getting it 100% feature-complete before working on the mobile port, it would have gone far better, and Ubuntu might still be using Unity to this day, on both mobile and desktop.

[Guest]

I would like to point out that Ubuntu phone could have worked out much better, it's largely the failed efforts to get Unity 8 fully working on both desktop and mobile that sunk the project by sucking up too much resources. Had they focused on getting it 100% feature-complete before working on the mobile port, it would have gone far better, and Ubuntu might still be using Unity to this day, on both mobile and desktop.

Yes, and the main problem was closed source GPU drivers. Unity relied on Mir, Xorg support which third party closed source drivers don't have. Getting them to work on such features requires a good bit of clout. Unfortunately Intel pulled out of smartphone CPUs so that wasn't an option.

However, Intel was definitely an option for the Ubuntu tablets, and they should've gone with Intel/AMD CPU and iGPU. Same for that KDE tablet. Intel already had a high quality fully functioning driver, and AMD had a decently functioning driver, both of which supported Xorg, Wayland and could be changed to support Mir. Instead of having to struggle and fight with closed source drivers, they would've been able to focus on Unity, basic apps and other important areas. Instead, they chose the strange popular obsession with ARM devices, which resulted in a lot of problems.

[eltomito]

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!

[ldesnogu]

Instead, they chose the strange popular obsession with ARM devices, which resulted in a lot of problems.

Yes the whole industry has gone mad. You should tell them they are choosing the wrong products, you know so much better.

[danmcgrew]

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!

Type "ubuntu edge" into your web browser.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.