
Librem 5 general development report - Nelkins
https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-17/
======
ac29
The cell modem chosen [0] is a bit disappointing. With support for only 4 LTE
bands (2/4/5/17), its going to work less-than-ideally on every US carrier.
Zero sub-GHz bands are supported, meaning lousy indoor and rural coverage.

Good LTE band support is something you might take for granted if you are used
to using flagship Android or iOS devices.

[0]
[http://simcomm2m.com/En/module/detail.aspx?id=84](http://simcomm2m.com/En/module/detail.aspx?id=84)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
This sounds to be just for the development board, right? My understanding was
that they were aiming to use a USB interface or something for the radio
connectivity so that you could get a radio that suited your needs hopefully,
and was certified and approved independent of the phone itself.

~~~
michaelmrose
This would be kind of interesting do you have any more info on this?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The original crowdfunding page specified "We aim to support 3G and 4G for the
most common international frequency bands and carriers, with an
interchangeable module. Exact specifications will follow as we are evaluating
the data+voice modems that will be used." and "Separate mobile baseband" as a
key tech spec on
[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

I know that, for instance, Verizon has certified a variety of modules to work
on it's network, and a phone (or laptop) that uses that module need not be
certified by Verizon to work on their network, for instance. Every Verizon
compatible laptop doesn't get certified, it just tends to use one of a handful
of Sierra Wireless LTE modems which are. Similarly, my understanding (and
hope) is that Purism is going to support dropping in various LTE modems so
that people can get support for the networks they need.

------
TACIXAT
I just ordered one of these last week. I'm stoked to have a phone that I
control. It will be amazing as a dev to just write an application, scp it
over, and have it draining my battery in no time.

~~~
craftyguy
It's the closest thing out there to what the N900 was.

------
louib
> We’re still working with our potential manufacturer of the development
> boards to review the schematic developed by the Librem 5 hardware engineers
> and make suggested changes.

Last update we had was that the boards would ship August 2018. I'm wondering
if they're still aiming to ship them this month.

~~~
wott
Since the beginning, they have been rather heavily underestimating delays and
potential problems for each step on the hardware side.

In this case, if we consider that it is still the 1st half of August, so a lot
of companies are closed or on reduced activity with reduced personnel; that
after the schematic is finished, the PCB has to be drawn, the PCB has to be
built (that's quick), the PCB has to be populated with chips (it can be
quick... if everything is in order, otherwise add a small delay); that the
first boards have to undergo some minimal amount of testing before the full
run is produced and shipped to customers to ensure that at least its major
parts are working kind of OK ; that there was no prototype board before this
run (IIRC) ; that if this testing does not go well, major issues will have to
be found and corrected before shipping, possibly implying ditching the
existing PCBs, correcting the schematics, rerouting the corresponding PCB
parts, and starting a new batch of boards... I bet there is very little hope
they keep their promise.

And globally, considering that their reports are always 95% about software and
5% about hardware which seems to be more and more outsourced, we can say it is
one more time the case of a bunch of software developers and software
designers underestimating the amount of work (people, time, and the cost of
iterations in hardware compared to software) and the amount of experience
needed to produce the hardware side. As it has already happened many, many
times in similar projects, with similar goals, with similar people involved.

~~~
linuxftw
Definitely share your opinion. Every picture of every piece of hardware they
have shared thus far has been off the shelf consumer boards and screens. I was
at least expecting a phone prototype main board at this point.

I expect them to ship some 'development boards' eventually, but my hopes for
an actual phone are seriously diminished.

I don't say this to put them down, I hope they succeed, but I am 100%
skeptical of any crowd funded hardware device.

------
ken
> The UI of Calls has made some strides to look like the mockups from the
> design team. Below you can see the implementation (left) next to the mockup
> (right).

Is there a reason the programmers couldn't just implement the design as given?
They added a bunch of useless borders and gradients, and removed all the
labels. This looks exactly like the Parable of the Concept Car:
[https://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/08/12/concept-
cars](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/08/12/concept-cars)

~~~
iBelieve
The outer border and shadow appears to be from the default window decorations,
which I expect they'll remove in some non-app-specific method. The top bar is
the standard window headerbar, which they'll probably remove as well, at least
for the dialer screen. The gradients are part of the default GTK theme. Not
sure about the button labels, as it's been a while since I touched GTK
development - there may not be an easy way to add labels under an image in a
button.

EDIT: designs almost always look nicer than the first pass at implementing
them, as designers can put pixels wherever they want to make things look
pretty, while developers are constrained by the technical restrictions of the
frameworks being used.

------
shmerl
I'm concerned about the combination of size and resolution:

    
    
        Display: an LCD display that is 5.7″ at 720×1440 pixels
    

The size should be smaller, while the resolution should be probably higher.

They mention, that such resolution is caused by heat dissipation issues[1]
(since they by design don't use integrated SoC). May be size is also caused by
separate chips?

Regarding the browser, it would be nice to have something based on Servo,
rather than Epiphany. Are there good mobile browsers that use Servo embedding
and can work on normal Linux?

1\. [https://developer.puri.sm/FAQ.html#what-
resolution](https://developer.puri.sm/FAQ.html#what-resolution)

~~~
fabrice_d
About a Servo based browser: I plan to get my in progress-but-really-unusable-
so-far Servo based phone UI
([https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk](https://github.com/fabricedesre/servonk))
working on the Librem 5. But honestly it's frustrating to see how little
general web compat work is happening in Servo right now, where most of the
team effort is directed to VR/AR use cases. I'm not blaming the team, but it's
hard to believe in Servo outside of niche use cases right now.

~~~
shmerl
Thanks for the link, that's very interesting and I hope it will be usable!

Why is Servo team not focused on general Web compatibility? That sounds like a
major must do before anything else. Don't Mozilla plan to replace Gecko in
Firefox with WebRender from Servo anyway, so how can they achieve it without
good Web compatibility?

~~~
simcop2387
> Don't Mozilla plan to replace Gecko in Firefox with WebRender from Servo
> anyway...?

No they don't, they're replacing pieces of firefox with pieces developed from
servo but there are no plans to ever replace it wholesale.

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum)

That's probably why they're focusing on the VR/AR stuff, to put that into
firefox once it's ready since it'll be a new set of features entirely and not
have any legacy version they need to maintain bug compatibility with too.

~~~
forapurpose
>> Don't Mozilla plan to replace Gecko in Firefox with WebRender from Servo
anyway...?

> No they don't

It's in progress and due for Firefox 64 later this year (if projections below
are current):

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap)

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-
maximum-f...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-fps-
how-webrender-gets-rid-of-jank/)

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-
era...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-era-
continues/)

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render)

~~~
opencl
WebRender is not a replacement for Gecko, it is replacement for the rendering
subsystem of Gecko. As GP said they are replacing individual subsystems of
FF/Gecko one at a time from Servo components. So the fact that Servo as a
whole has major compatibility problems has no relevance to using Servo's
rendering code in Firefox, as long as the rendering code itself works properly
(which has obviously been a major focus of Mozilla for the past year or so).

~~~
simcop2387
All this being said, I won't be shocked if the end result of all of this work
leads to Gecko being entirely replaced in a Ship of Theseus manner eventually.
It'd let them get almost all the benefit of actually wholesale replacing it
(they'll still end up with technical debt from the legacy interfaces) but
they'll be able to get the benefits from it sooner than having to wait and
essentially halt all other development to be able to bring it into place.

~~~
forapurpose
They do slash technical debt; for example, they did it with the add-on
subsystem.

------
jordigh
Purism has always seemed a bit to me like snake oil. Isn't the baseband still
totally opaque? Aren't there going to be blobs? Looks like they're going to be
using a loophole to get the RYF certification:

[https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-
hurd...](https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-hurdle/)

~~~
roblabla
I don't think we share the same definition of loophole. The co-processor is
something the RYF certification allows _exactly because_ binary blobs are
often necessary. It's voluntary. The librem isn't shady for using it, that's
what the exception is for! It allows running the blob in a jailed environment,
thus ensuring the user's privacy is respected.

------
ufo
Does anyone know if there is a way to run Android apps on GNU/Linux right now?
If so, would the librem be able to run that?

~~~
roblabla
It's possible with anbox, but it requires building the kernel with a non-
standard config to enable the Binder protocol. Other than that, it works great
though! Take a look: [https://anbox.io/](https://anbox.io/)

~~~
Brakenshire
They did actually include this as a stretch goal, bit it was something silly
like a 6 times multiple of the funding point. Would something like this be
difficult to adapt to different devices?

~~~
roblabla
Making it work is pretty easy. Got some friends who got it to work on a
GNU/Linux running on the Nintendo Switch. The trouble is to properly integrate
it into your device. You'd want android apps to access your contacts, things
like that. Those are certainly complicated to setup.

------
woolvalley
I wonder when their laptops will use 8th gen intel CPUs vs the 6th gen they
are selling now.

------
forapurpose
> some research was done on TrustZone, TPM and other related topics. There
> have also been some internal discussions about tamper-resistant boot, Heads,
> and alternate USB modes for video output. So we’re really starting to think
> hard about implementing security measures for the Librem 5.

Isn't it very late to _start_ researching and thinking about those things? My
general instinct is that security needs to be designed and built in from the
start - what about the components they've already developed, and how they
integrate with each other? - including as part of the development process and
even as part of the culture.

------
Nelkins
I've thought that getting Xamarin Forms working on this thing could be
interesting for jump-starting app development. There's already GTK support for
XF[0][1].

[0] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/xamarin-
forms/platf...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/xamarin-
forms/platform/gtk?tabs=vswin)

[1] [https://github.com/jsuarezruiz/forms-gtk-
progress#gallery](https://github.com/jsuarezruiz/forms-gtk-progress#gallery)

------
matheusmoreira
What about the laptops? What happened to their ambition to free the entire
chipset? They seem to have switched focus to phones; that's all they post
about now.

~~~
jokowueu
They are the only ones that were able to free much if it .

[https://puri.sm/posts/purism-librem-laptops-completely-
disab...](https://puri.sm/posts/purism-librem-laptops-completely-disable-
intel-management-engine/)

------
cmsimike
I saw the mention in the post about video out. I really do hope they can do
something with this, as I plan on ultimately replacing my carplay headunit
with something homegrown to able utilize the phone as much as I can.

~~~
openplatypus
I hope they do! My old Nokia N8 from 2010 had HDMI output :)

------
arendtio
> [...] E2EE of XMPP messages via OMEMO from day 1 [...]

Thats how I like it :-)

