Librem 5 August Update - More Software Progress, No Word On Q3 Shipping

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Librem 5 August Update - More Software Progress, No Word On Q3 Shipping

Purism has published their latest monthly update on the status of their Librem 5 Linux smartphone. They continue bringing up the software stack and tweaking the kernel support, but no word on their finalized hardware design nor if they still plan to ship in Q3'2019 as they continue advertising...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Librem-5-August-Update

[lectrode]

I have but one thing to say to the devs: take your time! Delay again if you need to; don't rush out an unfinished product! Your customers are willing to pay good money for those phones; another delay is a small cost to pay for a more stable/usable product.

The important thing is transparency: the sooner you can inform customers of a needed delay, the better. Good luck!

[andyprough]

PinePhone is running 2 weeks behind, but should still be shipping in Q4 on schedule. Components have been finalized and are in production. It will have USB-C video out, which is nice.

[Raka555]

I have but one thing to say to the devs: take your time! Delay again if you need to; don't rush out an unfinished product! Your customers are willing to pay good money for those phones; another delay is a small cost to pay for a more stable/usable product.

The important thing is transparency: the sooner you can inform customers of a needed delay, the better. Good luck!

I agree.
The worst thing they can do is ship a half baked thing and then end of life it as soon as they can just to start efforts on a new model...

[jo-erlend]

In my opinion, they should've been focusing on delivering mainline supported hardware with existing operating systems. Then focus on building a new OS for that hardware. Building a user community takes a long time and you really want to have as much support as you can get. There are a lot of people who care more about planned obsolescence than privacy or mainline Linux in and of itself. Make the phone, put Android on it and get it out there so you can get the volume up and production costs down. Continue working on the new privacy respecting OS while you grow the number of available devices.

Trying to do everything in-house before giving people access, is a huge risk and completely unnecessary as far as I can see.

[edenist]

In my opinion, they should've been focusing on delivering mainline supported hardware with existing operating systems. Then focus on building a new OS for that hardware. Building a user community takes a long time and you really want to have as much support as you can get. There are a lot of people who care more about planned obsolescence than privacy or mainline Linux in and of itself. Make the phone, put Android on it and get it out there so you can get the volume up and production costs down. Continue working on the new privacy respecting OS while you grow the number of available devices.

Trying to do everything in-house before giving people access, is a huge risk and completely unnecessary as far as I can see.

Seems a bit counterintuitive though. The entire market for the phone is privacy focused individuals. You can't sell a phone and say "oh, here's another android phone. We'll then send you through a privacy-focused OS when it's done...".

The sort of people who will be early adopters of this device [of which I am one] would be more than willing to wait for it to be done right from the start.

I also wouldn't trivialise the task of "delivering mainline supported hardware". That is what they are doing, but as far as I can tell, there weren't many mainline supported pieces of hardware which would be ready to go in a privacy-oriented smartphone. The underlying hardware architecture is what gives the platform it's clout to begin with. A privacy-focused OS is completely pointless if you slap it on an SoC with integrated DMA'd baseband.

[danmcgrew]

Ever heard of the Pinephone?

https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

[jpnc]

In my opinion, they should've been focusing on delivering mainline supported hardware with existing operating systems. Then focus on building a new OS for that hardware. Building a user community takes a long time and you really want to have as much support as you can get. There are a lot of people who care more about planned obsolescence than privacy or mainline Linux in and of itself. Make the phone, put Android on it and get it out there so you can get the volume up and production costs down. Continue working on the new privacy respecting OS while you grow the number of available devices.

Trying to do everything in-house before giving people access, is a huge risk and completely unnecessary as far as I can see.

What are they doing in-house and where are they prohibiting access? They shipped development kits around the beginning of the year and they offer a virtual machine test environment for those who did not invest in a development kit, all of the code they are working on is published ( https://source.puri.sm/public ), and they have had an impressive track record of getting their changes integrated upstream in various projects. I'm not sure what you mean by "mainline supported hardware", but if you are referring to other phones on the market you are able to somehow root and install an "alternative OS" on, none of those are supported without invasive binary blobs. Using one of those phones or the SOCs that they are based on would undermine the entire purpose of what Purism is trying to do, namely provide the first ever modern smartphone with a fully transparent, fully user controlled free software stack.

Sailfish, Firefox OS, and Ubuntu Touch have all tried your approach, and have had the misguided goal of wanting to compete directly in the android/iphone market before they demonstrated clear benefit. They have all integrated closed source blobs from android as a prerequisite to getting the hardware to work, nullifying the potential privacy / autonomy gains promised by the platforms. None of those projects were successful, and none were true alternatives. If you want another phone with Android on it you can find that from literally every phone vendor that is not Apple. If you think not competing for the most bleeding edge hardware components (which all surely require blobs to function) is a form of planned obsolescence, you would be sorely mistaken. The Librem 5 is built with replaceable parts, for instance the battery and the cellular modem, so there is no good reason you shouldn't be able to use the phone for many years.

[danmcgrew]

I have been waiting a long time for a smartphone which provides privacy and a good set of features; waiting so long, in fact, that waiting a little longer is not a significant investment in time now. it's just a 'rounding error'--I'll keep waiting until a suitable device arrives.
It looks like the two contenders for privacy AND which are of the RSN (Real Soon Now) variety are the Purism, and the Pinephone. I'm not smart enough to decide which of these two to spring for, should they both become available at the same time.
Would appreciate any and all advice as to which one I should choose in this case.

[jo-erlend]

Sailfish, Firefox OS, and Ubuntu Touch have all tried your approach

None of these provided a phone that could be run entirely with open source drivers. That's just false. In fact, the reason Ubuntu Touch had problems, was that they couldn't upgrade the kernel, which was required for Snaps. Can you explain why it is necessary to complete the new OS with a complete app Iecosystem before users are allowed to buy the phone? The reason Linux was able to grow its user community on PCs, was that people were able to install it on hardware. If you had to use special developer kits or run it on virtual machines, I don't think there would've been any Linux at all today.