Purism Shows Off The Librem 5 Linux Smartphone In Action

[profoundWHALE]

BlackBerry's BB10 had apps on Qt IIRC and they performed really well when compared to a similarly spec'd Android phone at the time.

[Danielsan]

I am actually pretty excited even if I didn't buy the phone. If Purism will able to catch the general media support this will surely help with the selling and for a further development, with at least a second cheaper and viable alternative along the Librem5.

[Vistaus]

True, it is not running GS, however, much of the stack powering the phone and its apps is based on GNOME. It's a huge reason why the product has been delayed. Instead of using something proven (UBPorts or Plasma Mobile), they decided to reinvent the wheel. As you would expect, it's been a very laborious process.

Ubuntu normally has a bad case of NIH but they did the right thing to go with Qt for their mobile experiment. Purism should have done that at the very least instead of farting around with the hot mess that is Gtk.

UBPorts isn't 100% mature yet, but I will agree that it's proven at least. However, Plasma Mobile is NOT proven at all. It's not even stable yet and basic apps are still receiving basic features as we speak, aside from the fact that development on Plasma Mobile is very slow to begin with (sure, Purism could've sped up development, but that wouldn't have changed their timeline much).

[Wijis]

Damn, I wish Sailfish was still an option. They seem to have stagnated completely. Their UI was actually very good and very responsive, pull-down menus were amazing and so were the gestures. I lived for ~6 years with Jolla as my daily phone. So much potential...

Not sure how I feel about Librem. Honestly, I wish them success, but I'm not holding much hope at the moment. And I'm not in a position where I can blow 600 GBP to use it myself when a Xiaomi Mi 9 SE costs 300 GBP and can run LineageOS.

You can use Sailfish. I run it on my Planet Computers Gemini. It's remarkably stable. My only gripe is lack of apps and that they are not as supportive of developers as LineageOS.

[Wijis]

In 10 years Android never managed to entice me to switch from iOS even as a backup smartphone but I could see myself getting one of these. Then I also have an excuse to tinker with something.


Lol, they didn't give up because of the technical qualities of Qt (which a far better than Gtk's) but because entering the mobile OS market is nearly impossible since Apple and Google divided it up among themselves.

This is correct. Purism was smart in not trying to go for a mass market product (unlike Ubuntu). They were foolish to use GTK, a toolkit filled with kludges, maintained by a handful of people, that lacks numerous features, and whose mobile optimisations were almost none at the time they started.

Anyone can download and flash UBPorts, Sailfish, or Plasma Mobile and see that they are much more advanced than the rudimentary stuff you see in the Librem stack.

Had they made their own interface based on PM or Sailfish, they'd have wasted far less money and the Librem would have cost far less. The hardware is really not much better than the PinePhone, certainly not several hundred dollars better. That extra money was wasted on an unneeded and buggy API. Hell, they could even have used KaiOS which currently is on millions of devices.

[coder111]

Damn, I wish Sailfish was still an option. They seem to have stagnated completely. Their UI was actually very good and very responsive, pull-down menus were amazing and so were the gestures. I lived for ~6 years with Jolla as my daily phone. So much potential...

Not sure how I feel about Librem. Honestly, I wish them success, but I'm not holding much hope at the moment. And I'm not in a position where I can blow 600 GBP to use it myself when a Xiaomi Mi 9 SE costs 300 GBP and can run LineageOS.

[Toggleton]

True, it is not running GS, however, much of the stack powering the phone and its apps is based on GNOME. It's a huge reason why the product has been delayed. Instead of using something proven (UBPorts or Plasma Mobile), they decided to reinvent the wheel. As you would expect, it's been a very laborious process.

Ubuntu normally has a bad case of NIH but they did the right thing to go with Qt for their mobile experiment. Purism should have done that at the very least instead of farting around with the hot mess that is Gtk.

The delay was caused by a Hardware bug that caused that CPU to get really hot.

And from my Perspective to make existing Gnome/GTK applications mobile ready with libhandy is a clever move. You get a lot Phone Core applications with as little work as Possible. Because they Upstream all the work if possible, everyone can benefit from the Handling on smaller window sizes.

And the nice it should be possible to port UBPorts(AFAIK once they done the port for the Pinephone) or Plasma Mobile(not sure how far the effort is there) and with more People using "Linux Mobile" there should be more People who can pay and work on the Development of that ecosystem.

[cynical]

Why so negative guys? This seems like a major achievement to me. The phone is alive and apparently shipping.

Yes the UI probably isn’t the smoothest, but it’s a start. It’s exciting to see a free software phone since Canonical disappointingly ceased their efforts. I wish Purism the best here, and look forward to hearing some reviews from Phoronix readers who ordered one.

[futuretim]

Also, fwiw, I don't know if it's a bug or otherwise but something is screwed up with the "Likes" on posts. I've got dozens of emails about users liking one of two posts on this thread and yet they have a total of like 3 likes? WTF. Anyway, I don't particularly care as long as it's a malfunction and not something.... else.

[NateHubbard]

Instead of using something proven (UBPorts or Plasma Mobile), they decided to reinvent the wheel.

Purism should have done that at the very least instead of farting around with the hot mess that is Gtk.

Having used UBPorts on a Nexus 5, I'm glad they didn't go the route you recommend.
This phone will at least bring something different to the table than the Pine Phone, which will probably be more to your liking.