[HN Gopher] All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped
___________________________________________________________________
All Librem 5 smartphones have shipped
Author : blendergeek
Score : 80 points
Date : 2023-09-06 15:41 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (puri.sm)
(TXT) w3m dump (puri.sm)
| selectodude wrote:
| Why do they keep getting more expensive? $1299??
| teawrecks wrote:
| That's the price of a device that isn't subsidized by your
| data, is built using sustainable means, and is not yet scaled
| up for mass market.
| nologic01 wrote:
| I would say that this is good start to build on.
|
| A modern smartphone is a tremendous device. In convergent
| mode many people would not need a laptop or desktop. With
| replaceable parts and upgradeable open source software it
| could last a decade. Further, what exactly is a sane digital
| society without embedded surveillance worth in dollars?
|
| There is no reason why such phones shouldnt have a mass
| market and more approachable prices. The status quo is a
| market failure, not a law of nature.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Probably because in the USA people aren't as willing to work
| for peanuts as people in the PRC?
| perardi wrote:
| Well, people in the PRC aren't really working for peanuts
| nowadays either. They're not making US/EU wages, but they
| ain't working for free, either. China has been doing its own
| outsourcing of cheap labor to places like Vietnam.
|
| Labor is nowhere near the only factor that makes Chinese
| sources cheaper. It's the ecosystem. There's an entire
| industry that can do every possible thing, and they're doing
| it all the time, so they're flexible and configurable and can
| quickly spin out a variant on your standard-issue smartphone
| like it's nothing.
|
| _(Well, assuming Xi's recent megalomania hasn't slowly
| started to destroy all that...)_
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Well, people in the PRC aren't really working for
| peanuts nowadays either. They're not making US/EU wages,
| but they ain't working for free, either. _
|
| Mate, forget about chinese wages being livable as an
| argument.
|
| First and foremost, US/EU workers aren't working in
| factories which have suicide nets on them, that alone
| shroud tell you everything.
|
| Secondly, workers in the US have it so good that they don't
| even want to work in semiconductor factories of TSMC (the
| better paid kind of skilled factories with weight on your
| resume), let alone consumer electronic factories where
| you're a disposable cog, least ones which need suicide nets
| to keep you from killing yourself after your 12h shift and
| living in a shipping container village.
| perardi wrote:
| Hey mate, you watched a documentary about Foxconn a
| decade ago! Good for you!
|
| Read some actual economic data.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01
| 672...
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Just because Chinese labor is now statistically getting
| more expensive doesn't mean those Chinese workers making
| your iPhone or 'Black Friday impulse buy e-waste', have
| it that much better in terms of QoL that would get them
| even within spitting distance of western QoL.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I believe the USA manufactured version is the "Liberty Phone"
| starting $2199. The regular Librem appears to be made in
| China. https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/
| tmtvl wrote:
| Ah, got the 1 and 2 backwards, sorry; thanks for the heads-
| up.
| solardev wrote:
| Guess freedom peanuts aren't free
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Because suckers continue to pay.
|
| I have not paid that for my lifetime total of smart phones.
|
| Sure, my phone is out of date and some lesser stats. But for
| half the performance (which used to be called great performance
| at one time) I pay 5% the price.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Ironically your cheap phone may have higher specs than the
| Librem 5.
| asddubs wrote:
| the librem isn't really about great performance though, it's
| about specialization/niche use cases. it also doesn't benefit
| from economies of scale nearly as much
| afavour wrote:
| Sad reflection of the realities of manufacturing, I suspect.
| They won't ever achieve the kind of scale you'd need to make it
| cheaper.
|
| IMO it is what it is. Especially when you consider the hardware
| kill switches etc this is a niche product that the right small
| audience will pay $1.2k for.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| How do volumes compare to say the Unihertz[1] phones, which
| are also niche phones, yet all list for under $400?
|
| 1: https://www.unihertz.com/collections/smartphones
| free_glamorgan wrote:
| It's probably coming for us all. The increasingly saturated
| smartphone market will not provide the sales that
| manufacturers need to maintain the current economies of
| scale. That is, unless they perfect the art of phones
| engineered for a very particular lifetime.
| fevangelou wrote:
| The PinePhone guys must be marketing geniuses then to sell a
| true open source device for 150 USD.
| free_glamorgan wrote:
| They sure are. They are selling budget, cobbled-together
| hardware that "supports FOSS", when in reality _you_ are
| the one providing that support.
| stonogo wrote:
| Two generations of pinephone disagree. I think the price is
| due to labor costs for software.
| pengaru wrote:
| I think pine64's business model is to pursue sales volume,
| but it's unclear to me if there's enough buyers of linux
| phones for that approach to be sustainable long-term. Maybe
| if they can keep refreshing their model with regular
| hardware upgrades, they can milk their base.
|
| Having a pine64 style competitor is problematic for Purism
| since it's cannibalizing their sales. It's likely
| contributing to the even higher prices needed just to keep
| the lights on. Which just creates more pressure diverting
| potential sales towards pine64.
|
| Would Purism even move more product if their prices better
| matched pine64's? Is there a queue of would-be librem5
| buyers waiting that just can't stomach the price? How many
| people are there _really_ who want a chunky phone with
| work-in-progress software, regardless of price?
|
| My prediction is after Purism implodes Pine64's prices
| start climbing.
| rjsw wrote:
| Pine64 makes several products that don't overlap with
| Purism ones.
| pengaru wrote:
| Sure, I'm just talking about the ones that do, the
| phones.
| asddubs wrote:
| pine also puts $0 into software though
| finitestateuni wrote:
| Are you trying to contradict or agree with the post you
| replied to? That's exactly what they are saying.
| asddubs wrote:
| Neither, really, just spell out what that means more
| explicitly
| Zetobal wrote:
| I am just going with a Fairphone 5 and if the need arises
| pull out the module. Cheaper, more performance, repairable
| and if you really wanted you could probably even fit
| microswitches.
| macinjosh wrote:
| With labor costs skyrocketing across the globe (for good
| reason) I sometimes wonder how long it will be until we get
| "flat-pack" electronics, i.e. where things come largely
| disassembled and you must put it together before using.
| Framework is kinda heading in this direction with laptops.
| ansible wrote:
| The final assembly, while it doesn't cost nothing, isn't
| that expensive.
|
| What does cost more is final testing, to make sure all the
| components work together. It is cheaper to do that well at
| the end of the assembly process before starting packaging,
| than to deal with a high rate of returns. The testing done
| throughout the manufacturing process is a significant cost.
| 95014_refugee wrote:
| Flat-pack furniture is not an efficiency due to the cost of
| assembly, but shipping, as furniture is mostly air. You
| will note that most flat-pack furniture designs somehow fit
| _incredibly_ efficiently into cubic prisms that themselves
| fit suspiciously conveniently into standard shipping
| containers.
|
| By contrast, consider a modern smartphone. There is very
| little volume to be won by shipping it as parts, and there
| is greatly increased risk of customer dissatisfaction due
| to customers-at-large being clumsy, untrained, unequipped
| and unaccustomed to the assembly task. Just look at how
| popular it is to complain about assembling Ikea furniture,
| compare/contrast with e.g. PC assembly, and then scale that
| up...
| wmf wrote:
| The Framework DIY model is fully assembled at the factory,
| tested, burned in, then disassembled back into kit form.
| selectodude wrote:
| It was $700 two years ago and has almost doubled. I have no
| issue with a $1300 phone (I own one) but generally tech
| things get cheaper as time passes.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _but generally tech things get cheaper as time passes._
|
| I don't think that applies at all to super small high-skill
| manufacturing runs.
| Matl wrote:
| There's the USA edition and the standard edition. AFAIK
| it's the US-manufactured one that's so expensive, they're
| also short of parts AFAIK.
| martin8412 wrote:
| USA edition is around $2k
| srgpqt wrote:
| The USA edition is/was over $2000
| Tommstein wrote:
| Not cell phones. I remember when the most expensive phone
| you could get was like $700. Then all the stories about how
| prices were about to hit a ludicrous four figures. Now
| there's a wide variety of phones that cost four figures.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Man, I miss the days when you could get a rootable phone
| that could run the latest LineageOS for like $80. (That's
| how much it was for my Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE which was
| extremely rootable.)
| chunk_waffle wrote:
| I miss the Firefox OS phones, I think mine was like $90?
|
| It had it's problems but phone calls and SMS worked
| reliably.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I miss the days when there was hardware differentiation
| at any price. There is literally _one_ brand of phone
| right now that both A) has a headphone jack and B) doesn
| 't have some kind of screen cutout for the selfie camera,
| and that's the Sony Xperia line. Despite the price (their
| entire line of current models is >$1000), I would
| probably pay it (or buy an older year model on ebay)
| except that they are not compatible with my provider (or
| at least uncertainly so, the internet has mixed things to
| say and they are 100% for sure not _officially_
| supported.
|
| I ended up going with a 3 year old phone from a different
| manufacturer that is officially supported but still had
| to give up the headphone jack.
| Tommstein wrote:
| I almost said something along those lines too, how the
| skyrocketing prices have come alongside increasingly
| homogeneous boring phones with fewer features, but
| absolutely. I was recently going through my old HTC EVO
| 3D, and I would give my left nut to get that 3-D
| technology back in a new phone, the pictures and videos
| put you back in the moment in ways 2-D can't.
| Incidentally, I also just upgraded last week from my old
| Sony Xperia 5 II to a Sony Xperia 5 III. Which hopefully
| lasts a long time, because Sony is also removing
| features; the 5 III added a second zoom lens, but the 5
| IV regressed to a single smaller one, and the just-
| announced 5 V removes the telephoto lens completely.
| LoganDark wrote:
| B is super important to me, so my phone right now is a
| OnePlus 7 Pro. It was one of the last models ever made
| that can still pass SafetyNet while rooted (due to being
| whitelisted for "basic" / non-hardware-backed
| attestation). Unfortunately now it's several versions out
| of date and will stay that way for the foreseeable
| future, on top of the fact that nobody's figured out how
| to lock the bootloader on a custom ROM, despite the fact
| that it'll get you back Widevine L1 keys (the 7 Pro
| doesn't erase them on bootloader unlock like most phones
| do).
|
| But this all stopped mattering to me when something
| accidentally activated a "feature"[0] of TWRP that erased
| my device and the maintainers have so far been completely
| hostile to the notion of adding an option to disable that
| functionality. ADHD now permanently bars me from any form
| of tweaking because the risk of TWRP suddenly erasing my
| device one day cannot be mitigated whatsoever. Even
| making backups from TWRP is off-limits because I'm afraid
| of it erasing my device instead.
|
| Now I just use my phone because OxygenOS is great, the
| hardware mute switch is great, lack of camera cutout is
| great (fuck rounded corners though), and it has some
| serious flagship specs. Not an advertisement or anything,
| but this was $300 refurbished from Back Market.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-
| Project/issues/...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty insane. Pixels with GrapheneOS are better
| value propositions and actually have superior security.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Because they need to fund the refunds from previous people who
| bought it.
| [deleted]
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| My Purism phone worked for about 48 hours. Then it bricked.
| Disgusted with myself for buying it on an impulse, though in my
| defense I was - at the time - happy with my Purism laptop. Purism
| is forever on my do-not-buy list after my phone experience.
| asddubs wrote:
| did you try to exchange it?
| izacus wrote:
| Doesn't it come with standard warranty?
| pengaru wrote:
| Have you given them an opportunity to repair/replace your new
| bricked phone?
| [deleted]
| mattl wrote:
| I'd like to know what percentage of people who bought this are
| using it as their smartphone? I heard the battery life and
| hardware quality isn't great.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| Has anyone actually tried using the "convergent os" features for
| work?
|
| Could I hook this up to a monitor and actually enjoy using it for
| web/email/slack?
|
| I don't expect a good experience for using VSCode to develop
| locally on the device, but perhaps using VSCode via github
| codespaces or gitpod
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| the convergent UI is actually great. (i own a librem 5.)
|
| my keyboard, mouse, and speakers are connected to my monitor. i
| connect the phone via a single USB-C cable. suddenly i have
| full-blown gnome, exactly as i would on a desktop PC or laptop.
| applications and the launcher return to their normal, desktop
| layout when using the desktop mode.
|
| it's "just plain old linux with gnome" as long as it's
| connected to your peripherals, only going into a custom UI when
| you go mobile. much like the steam deck, but without the clunky
| "switch to desktop/gaming mode" transition.
|
| the oomph is obviously a little underwhelming but it's enough
| for lightweight development or (non-video) web browsing.
|
| i haven't had success with calls or text messages (verizon and
| t-mobile), though. i want to like the librem but i haven't been
| able to actually use it as a phone.
| ukd1 wrote:
| Convergent tech has been something I've wanted to work well
| for ages - I remember trying a Samsung Note and Linux on DeX,
| but it never really worked well. I see from a quick Google
| it's long since dead. It's likely the only thing that would
| prompt me to even think about moving from iOS.
|
| One day?
| andrewmutz wrote:
| > the oomph is obviously a little underwhelming but it's
| enough for lightweight development or (non-video) web
| browsing.
|
| Does youtube work? Does zoom work?
| fevangelou wrote:
| I have a hard time understanding how regular people in need of
| "security/privacy" would pay 1200+ USD for this device. I'm not
| even touching on specs etc. The only ones I can think of needing
| such "security/privacy" would probably make a great sidestory in
| Breaking Bad or get their own post-mortem show on Netflix.
|
| Kudos for using Linux, but that alone (and the hardware gimmicks)
| is really not enough to justify the cost.
|
| P.S. For comparison the (somewhat) similarly spec'ed PinePhone
| costs 150-200 USD.
| wmf wrote:
| People in need of security and privacy would be far better off
| with GrapheneOS. For the Breaking Bad crowd there are
| specialized crimephones like Anom that are pre-compromised by
| law enforcement. Librem is more for people who want to run
| traditional GNOME/KDE on a phone instead of Android.
| robrtsql wrote:
| I have a Librem 5. It's currently collecting dust in my closet.
|
| I was enticed by the idea of having a user-replaceable battery
| (my last phone upgrade was 100% motivated by battery life
| problems). However, the Librem 5's battery is basically as bad as
| my Google Pixel's was after degrading for several years. The
| evening I opened it, I set it down after tinkering with it for a
| little bit and came back the next day to it at 1% battery, with a
| notification saying "Your laptop will shut down if you don't plug
| it in soon". Typically, I'm used to mobile devices using
| extremely low amounts of power when you're not using them for
| anything at all.
|
| It's also extremely slow--I figured that it wouldn't be as snappy
| as a flagship phone but I was surprised to find out that video
| playback (or, at least, YouTube in Firefox) is basically
| unusable. That's basically a non-starter for me.
|
| I'm hoping to find something fun to do with it (I don't expect to
| get refunded, nor do I think anyone else will or should pay $600
| for this thing) but haven't come up with anything yet.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| It would have been helpful to specify the time when you had
| that disappointing experience with the Librem, and then put in
| the closet. At least for PinePhone, going to 1% within a day
| was a flaw of very early software, and good hibernation
| settings were released years ago already.
|
| That said, I wouldn't recommend the current Linux phones. Years
| after I got my PinePhone, the experience still pales compared
| to my old Nokia N900. I wonder if the lack of a physical
| keyboard discourages hacking. (Yes, a keyboard was released,
| but you have to order it separately and it has been reviewed as
| clunky.) Moreover, sometimes I wonder if the tough economy of
| the last decade has put a lot of idealistic people, who might
| have hacked FOSS in days of yore, into the precariat and there
| are just fewer man-hours available for mobile-Linux progress.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| > good hibernation settings were released years ago already.
|
| As long as you don't mind not receiving notifications (unless
| originated from an IRQ from the modem, assuming it didn't
| crash itself during hibernation), and if you don't mind not
| using tethering with turned off screen.
|
| "Good" is very, very relative, especially when it comes to
| the PinePhone software.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| > if you don't mind not using tethering with turned off
| screen.
|
| Isn't there a feature to disable the hibernation timer if
| tethering is on? That seems like something that could be
| hacked in just a few lines of code. For my own use, I
| already found on someone's Github a systemd service that
| disables hibernation when the PinePhone is playing audio.
| (Of course, I agree with you on the last point.)
| jolmg wrote:
| > I wonder if the lack of a physical keyboard discourages
| hacking.
|
| You can still use whatever bluetooth keyboard you have on
| hand. I don't think that's a serious issue.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| I lot of the hacking I did on the Nokia N900, I did while
| standing in queues at shops or riding on buses. The built-
| in keyboard made that easy. Sure, I could use a Bluetooth
| keyboard with the current Linux phones, but it is not as
| convenient.
| dsco wrote:
| Could this be a software issue? Did you check if there are
| background processes draining your battery?
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| There probably are, but this comment highlights the problem
| with OSS. Many people want a phone that just works for a full
| day, without needing to tinker with settings.
|
| Maybe the default settings for Libre 5 are bad? Maybe the
| software can be improved to improve battery life?
| cesarb wrote:
| > Did you check if there are background processes draining
| your battery?
|
| These kinds of problems are often not background processes,
| but instead parts of the hardware which haven't been powered
| off or power gated correctly; even a small leak of a few mA
| could be enough to drain a battery much more quickly than the
| user would expect.
| klardotsh wrote:
| I have three PinePhones... somewhere... for mostly the same
| reason. A BraveHeart or two and then one of the "stable
| hardware" versions which fixed a couple near-showstopper bugs
| on the BHs. It didn't matter - the software simply never showed
| up, even running nightlies of various stuff never got
| telephony, the entire point of a cell phone, working stably on
| US carriers with battery life over 4-6 hours (be that screen on
| or off time, it didn't seem to matter).
|
| I generated a bunch of e-waste trying to make Fetch (Linux
| Phones) happen. Never again. I'll just deal with the ever-more-
| restrictive-and-creepy duopoly until eventually I'm able to
| stop using smartphones at all and go back to a dedicated GPS or
| two, a dedicated music player, and LTE tethering a laptop if I
| need to look up anything. It'll be inconvenient, but I don't
| see another usable path out of the creepware spiral.
| sacrosanct wrote:
| Awesome!
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| When will refunds be fulfilled? I've been waiting months on one.
| chunk_waffle wrote:
| There have been a few "dumb" phones that have looked interesting
| lately but they have major issues or are really short run, two
| that come to mind:
|
| lite phone: https://www.thelightphone.com/shop/products/light-
| phone-ii-b...
|
| The reviews of this phone that I've seen have been pretty brutal
| so I've avoided it.
|
| mudita: https://store.mudita.com/store/mudita-pure-minimalist-
| phone-...
|
| Out of stock, but looked interesting.
|
| Anyone aware of any others?
| danielnoiz wrote:
| The Light Phone not being open source killed it for me. Or at
| least having an easier option for alternative os.
| klardotsh wrote:
| Yep. Open source the OS and allow sideloaded applications for
| folks who draw the line somewhat differently for where to
| trade off "dumb" vs "smart", and the LightPhone would be a
| winner, but alas...
|
| I met someone in Bellingham with one of these things once. It
| was pretty sweet, and they'd explicitly cited their having
| culled their smartphone addiction with it as a selling point,
| so I guess it works to some degrees. I forget off the top of
| my head exactly which feature I wish it had that I wanted to
| sideload on, but whatever.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| What percentage were cancelled due to the huge delays?
| saulpw wrote:
| I cancelled mine. I was told I couldn't get a refund until they
| were all shipped. So finally I can get my $750 back!
| teawrecks wrote:
| If it was anything like the Purism refund situation featured
| on Rossman's yt channel, their wording was actually that,
| "you can request a refund once we reach your position in the
| shipping queue", and not that they would actually grant the
| refund.
| martin8412 wrote:
| Good luck unless you get a lawyer involved.
| solardev wrote:
| Is this negotiable? Can I offer half my personal data for half
| off?
|
| Oh wait, joke's on me. Google already has 100% of my info and I
| _still_ paid full price for a Pixel.
| ansible wrote:
| I bought a Pixel 6a earlier this year, and traded in my Pixel
| 3a for $150 USD off the $300 sale price. Other than the
| fingerprint reader being kind of terrible, it was worth it to
| get a new battery and OS updates for the next few years for
| $150 (plus tax and shipping).
|
| If you don't want to spend a lot on a phone, you _can_ do that.
| solardev wrote:
| It's true, and my partner got a free phone by switching to
| Fi. My switch was just ill-timed... I tried out an iPhone on
| a new carrier for the first time, and hated both so much I
| paid to get out of the contract and start a new service with
| another carrier and Android again.
|
| Now I'm much happier. Just much poorer.
| [deleted]
| nothingneko wrote:
| I'm shocked they delivered all of them at all
| ognarb wrote:
| They only managed that by not refunding tons of people and
| constantly lying.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > Purism is the first to release a truly convergent operating
| system, beating Apple, Google, and Microsoft to this goal by
| years.
|
| I guess we're discounting Samsung and their Dex engine, then?
| haolez wrote:
| I've tried Dex as a daily driver. It's unusable. It's slow,
| doesn't have customization options nor sane defaults. Alt-Tab
| is extremely non reliable. I ditched it.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I suppose they do not consider it a 'truly convergent operating
| system' since you cannot (officially) get root on it.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Can you get root on vanilla Android or iOS without jail-
| breaking, though? That seems generally true irrespective of
| the convergence factor.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Yes, so the point is that people who care a lot about such
| things may not consider vanilla Android or iOS to be 'true'
| operating systems, but rather a sandbox with limited
| functionality.
| Matl wrote:
| There were things before Dex even, but I guess they're talking
| about the OS vendors.
| 95014_refugee wrote:
| The use of "beating" implies that there was a competition, and
| indirectly that this "convergent" attribute is somehow
| worthwhile.
|
| Which isn't demonstrated, so you might want to address that...
| [deleted]
| ianbutler wrote:
| I love DEX but it's not truly ready for be used as an everyday
| OS. I wish Samsung would devote more resources into it though.
| I've always loved the idea of unified computing and the phones
| in our pockets are really some powerful machines.
| pengaru wrote:
| That's one way of saying you have a demand shortage.
| macinjosh wrote:
| I believe the context here is that they have been very delayed
| in shipping orders and customers that requested refunds were
| being put off. I think this is trying to signal that those
| troubles with production are behind them.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I also got one and was pretty disappointed, so it has been left
| sitting on a shelf. I didn't fully understand what I would be
| getting. The software is unstable, in particular sometimes the
| app store equivalent just doesn't work.
|
| I really wanted to support the ecosystem outside of the existing
| duopoly but it just feels too unpolished and limited.
|
| Tried figuring out how to setup a development environment but it
| didn't seem like it was possible on macOS or the instructions
| were too inaccessible for me to penetrate.
|
| The hardware kill switches are a neat feature but I don't
| actually have a strong use case for them, and I'm not a big
| enough enthusiast.
|
| Honestly, I'm wondering if it would be more effective to buy up
| some mainstream phone and sell modded versions of it with kill
| switches. If I had a strong desire for a phone with kill switches
| I'd probably hire someone to mod an existing phone, rather than
| build one from scratch.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| You don't need to use the app store. You can just SSH into the
| device and run the usual apt commands from the command line.
| Yes, this is obviously nothing the general public would ever
| do, but we are on a news for nerds site here.
|
| > buy up some mainstream phone and sell modded versions of it
| with kill switches
|
| Making the connections for the several different kill switches
| (cellular, wifi, microphone) on a phone whose form factor was
| not expressly designed for that, would probably result in a
| rather ugly-looking hack. Moreover, on the PinePhone at least,
| the cell modem is separate from the wifi chip, so you can kill
| one while leaving the other on, but I believe that on most
| phones they are part of the same SoC.
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(page generated 2023-09-06 20:02 UTC)