Purism Librem 5. Another crowd funding fail?

[Ed.Kloonk]

Imagine my shock.


https://jaylittle.com/post/view/2019/10/the-sad-saga-of-purism-and-the-librem-5-part-1

[Ed.Kloonk]

The canary in the coal mine is that the people who have seen a few prototypes have gone very quiet. NDAs anyone?

Early backers have not received anything and the announced shipping window has come and gone.

[Ed.Kloonk]

No mention of the reported over heating cpu.

[dr.diesel]

Too bad, I'd love to have a somewhat modern Linux based phone device, or even a 7" tablet.  (Hacking/Rooting older tablets/phones isn't quite what I'm looking for)

Pinephone might be a bit too under powered for me.

[thinkfat]

After my experience with the Pinebook, I'll be sure to stay away from anything with a pine cone logo for a while.

[Ed.Kloonk]

After my experience with the Pinebook, I'll be sure to stay away from anything with a pine cone logo for a while.

Why? What happened?

[thinkfat]

After my experience with the Pinebook, I'll be sure to stay away from anything with a pine cone logo for a while.

Why? What happened?

I didn't expect much from a $99 laptop, but in fact, it is utter crap. From the flimsy case to the pinched wifi antenna cable and the broken keyboard. It is not even worth the time to request a refund. Or to repair it. It's going to the parts bin. Maybe the screen can be salvaged.

[dr.diesel]

The Pinebook Pro looks to be much better, might make a great shop/garage PC for streaming music and light browsing.

[Ed.Kloonk]

After my experience with the Pinebook, I'll be sure to stay away from anything with a pine cone logo for a while.

Why? What happened?

I didn't expect much from a $99 laptop, but in fact, it is utter crap. From the flimsy case to the pinched wifi antenna cable and the broken keyboard. It is not even worth the time to request a refund. Or to repair it. It's going to the parts bin. Maybe the screen can be salvaged.

Plug it in and use it as a cat heat decoy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/8geoxs/when_you_have_to_give_your_cat_a_decoy_laptop_oc/

[thinkfat]

Excellent! Now, all I need is a cat...

[Red Squirrel]

That's really too bad, I was really hoping for this phone to work out.  I'm glad I waited it out and didn't back it though. I wanted to see how it does first.  We really need a truly open phone that is actually built around privacy, just seems like a really hard thing to do I guess. 

Really I think the best bet is someone needs to come up with an equivalent of Linux, but make it run on existing phones.   Kinda like how you can run Linux on a PC instead of Windows.   Not an android respin but a totally new OS that is not tied to Google or any corporation, that you can use without an account or any kind of dependence on an outside company. 

[Ed.Kloonk]

That's really too bad, I was really hoping for this phone to work out.  I'm glad I waited it out and didn't back it though. I wanted to see how it does first.  We really need a truly open phone that is actually built around privacy, just seems like a really hard thing to do I guess. 

 

Ex employees are saying that the project was too reliant on new backers to propel delivery on the previous batch with it's cost over runs during early development.

It's not surprising that the peeps who would want these devices would be sceptical.

99 out of 100 people who wish they had this device in their hot little hands are also tainted with the resentment of being shafted too much by tech company shit-fuckery.

[thinkfat]

When they announced they will be using an NXP i.MX8, a chip that wasn't even released at the time, from a vendor with no existing portfolio in the mobile market, because of their 'open' policy, I knew this was going to fail.

[Red Squirrel]

That's really too bad, I was really hoping for this phone to work out.  I'm glad I waited it out and didn't back it though. I wanted to see how it does first.  We really need a truly open phone that is actually built around privacy, just seems like a really hard thing to do I guess. 

 

Ex employees are saying that the project was too reliant on new backers to propel delivery on the previous batch with it's cost over runs during early development.

It's not surprising that the peeps who would want these devices would be sceptical.

99 out of 100 people who wish they had this device in their hot little hands are also tainted with the resentment of being shafted too much by tech company shit-fuckery.

Yeah seems like a egg and chicken situation.  Making a phone is really expensive so you do kinda need the backers, but backers will be a bit skeptical at something like this working out.  I know I was, because I considered backing it then decided I should wait to see how it works out first.

There's also the skepticism and question of "is it REALLY more private?  Or are they just saying this?".   I would hate to buy this thing and it asks me to create an account the minute I turn it on.

[dr.diesel]

The simple ability to do 'apt update' or 'dnf update' on a cell phone or tablet would be most welcome! 

[Red Squirrel]

And be able to run regular Linux programs like SSH or rsync. Would be cool to be able to setup a cron job to backup your contacts to a local server for example.

But really I would just be happy with a phone that is not so tied to cloud services and is not built around spying on everything I do.   

[Marco]

When they announced they will be using an NXP i.MX8, a chip that wasn't even released at the time, from a vendor with no existing portfolio in the mobile market, because of their 'open' policy, I knew this was going to fail.

It's not about it being open, it's about compartmentalization. The firmware for cellular modems is closed either way, but with a mobile phone SoC it has direct access to main memory.

Wasn't the base i.MX8 originally supposed to be FD-SOI? (With the i.MX8M being bulk.) I distinctly remember that ... now only the much later announced i.MX8X still mentions FD-SOI. They might have bought a bit too much into NXP's optimism and got stuck with a half-assed redesign NXP needed to deal with the ridiculous FD-SOI delays.

[magic]

So I went to the archives for the very first version of the crowdfunding page and here is what I found:

    Q: Are all hardware components running completely free software, with the source code available?

    A: From testing the CPU, GPU, Bootloader and all software will run free software, we are evaluating the WiFi and Bluetooth chips and firmware, this is an area we have to evaluate, finalize, and test. The mobile baseband will most likely use ROM loaded firmware, but a free software kernel driver. We intend to invest time and money toward freeing any non-free firmware.

It also says:

    Q: Will you be seeking FSF RYF endorsement?

    A: We will constantly keep FSF up-to-date on the hardware and software, our current understanding is any non-free kernel firmware needed for RF chips will not meet the RYF qualifications today, so we will continue to evaluate the WiFi and Bluetooth cards in the hopes to advance toward RYF. The end goal for us is to gain RYF for all Purism products.

In addition one of stretch goals on the campaign was this:

    $6m = Reverse engineering faster WiFi/BT firmware

There are a couple ways to interpret that. The way I interpreted it back then and today was that reaching that stretch goal would enable them to reverse engineer the WiFi/BT firmware faster than they would be able to otherwise. Alternatively one could interpret it as meaning that they would reverse engineer the existing firmware to produce versions that ran faster... but man that is a hell of a stretch.

In any event, I hope this clears up how some of us early backers were under the impression that the resulting phone would at least possibly be blob free.

How can people possibly be so naive?

And of course "reverse engineering faster WiFi/BT firmware" has two ways to interpret it:
(reverse engineering) (faster (WiFi/BT firmware))
(reverse engineering) ((faster WiFi/BT) firmware)

[edy]

That's really too bad, I was really hoping for this phone to work out.  I'm glad I waited it out and didn't back it though. I wanted to see how it does first.  We really need a truly open phone that is actually built around privacy, just seems like a really hard thing to do I guess. 

Really I think the best bet is someone needs to come up with an equivalent of Linux, but make it run on existing phones.   Kinda like how you can run Linux on a PC instead of Windows.   Not an android respin but a totally new OS that is not tied to Google or any corporation, that you can use without an account or any kind of dependence on an outside company.

Yes, it was called BlackBerry OS10 which was a QNX microkernel operating system that ran all sorts of apps including an Android runtime if you wanted Android apps to work. I was one of the early adopters when the Playbook came out (which was running earlier version of QNX) on which I developed apps and then later ported and made new apps when it came out for the phone (Z10, etc). It was a slick OS that had huge potential!!!!

The bottom line though as to why these OS’s are not going to make it is app stores. Even though BlackBerry had a fairly well populated store, developers for major apps (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) did not see enough of a market share to bother maintaining and upgrading another ecosystem. Sure the code was almost the same and many of us even used the Android versions for a while and side-loaded then through Amazon AppStore (technically it was available legitimately on BB) and Google App Store (installed through a hack) and even APK’s downloaded from 3rd parties.

But still, who is going to buy a phone like that??!!? I still love and use my BlackBerry OS10 devices and not the Android-based BlackBerry’s. Sadly few people have ever experienced OS10 and don’t realize how many modern gesture inputs were borrowed from it. No home button, no Android buttons, it was all gesture controlled like Playbook.

That is the reason why a Linux phone also will not make it. As much as I would love to see an Ubuntu phone or something along those lines, it is not economically viable at this point. Only hard core experimenters will use it and imagine relying on a critical device like your phone getting out through what I’m sure the early Linux world went through (growing pains). If BlackBerry can’t make QNX work (I wish they would release the phone OS as open source) then what luck does anyone else have?

Do yourself a favor and pick up a BlackBerry Z10 for cheap on eBay while you still can and experiment with it! They are the best deal you can come by... under $50 and it is underrated as to how much you can still do with them! Pop in any SIM, sdcard, connect to WiFi, Bluetooth, miracast, browse and superb email capability, predictive text, tons of amazing apps all free, side load APK’s, etc. Even use it as a remote BT mouse/KB for laptop when presenting, ftp file server, torrent downloader, etc. The cheapest fun and most value of usefulness for the buck you can buy!!! I have 2 Developer-only Red Z10’s and 1 Dev Alpha C prototype and 3 Playbooks.

Also look for the Z30 and Passport... also great deals on these QNX devices.

https://docs.blackberry.com/en/smartphones/blackberry-10-devices

[Red Squirrel]

I had a Playbook and if I recall that too had to be cloud tied.  You could not get past having to setup a Blackberry account.

[thinkfat]

When they announced they will be using an NXP i.MX8, a chip that wasn't even released at the time, from a vendor with no existing portfolio in the mobile market, because of their 'open' policy, I knew this was going to fail.

It's not about it being open, it's about compartmentalization. The firmware for cellular modems is closed either way, but with a mobile phone SoC it has direct access to main memory.

Using a separate SoC as application processor, away from the baseband - yes, makes sense though it's a considerable design burden (cost and complexity). Selecting a vendor who has no experience with mobile applications because of policy - that's a bad idea, especially if the arena is new to both parties.

[Ed.Kloonk]

[I wanted a rude username]

Backers have started receiving their phones. Ars Technica summarises it well: "you are not placing an early order for an existing retail product—you're getting in on the ground stages of producing a product."

Overall: no, it's not a scam, but it still needs significant work to become useful. For instance, battery life is on the order of one hour.

Here's a particularly frank review from a Swiss backer.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Here's a particularly frank review from a Swiss backer.

The last paragraph sums it all up

I hope I didn't discourage anybody from ordering a Librem 5. If you want a phone that preserves your dignity, this is pretty much the only option at the moment. And I am sure it will improve.

I'd say a phone that shits the bed for simply entering your wifi info might just be the most private data device ever.

Shipping a device to early backers that doesn't even connect to the internet has to be the world's biggest piss-take.

Why do these backers keep apologising for this flying turd?

[I wanted a rude username]

The expectations are different. It's hard to grasp unless you put yourself in the backers' shoes.

Some people are desperate for devices that respect their privacy, and are willing to make accommodations. I understand them and wish them the best. The phone isn't ready for people like us, but with their support, one day it or its successors may be.