
Librem 5 Smartphone: Massive Progress, Exact CPU Selected, Shipping Adjustment - fghtr
https://puri.sm/posts/massive-progress-exact-cpu-selected-minor-shipping-adjustment/
======
smacktoward
Communications pro tip: if you've got bad news to report, just lead with the
bad news, don't try to soften it by wrapping it in a bunch of unrelated
positive-sounding stuff. All that does is leave the reader with a feeling of
whiplash and a vague suspicion that you were hoping they'd miss the bad news
inside all the fluffy packaging. It's better to just report the bad news up
front so the reader can get past it and then you can both move on.

(How this advice applies to this post will be left as an exercise for the
reader.)

~~~
faitswulff
What bad news are you talking about? The overheating that was solved by NXP
releasing a new software stack for their chosen CPU?

~~~
smacktoward
That the ship date on the Librem 5 has been delayed (sorry, "adjusted") to Q3.

~~~
Casseres
They wrote "the previous Q2 estimate is now confirmed for Q3 product
shipping."

I haven't gone back to see what they said/estimated in the past, but going
from an estimate to a ship date that's only off by 1 quarter seems acceptable
to me.

~~~
r3bl
It was moved from January 2019 (in the original kickstarter), to April, to Q2,
and now finally to Q3.

That's a quite significant delay, but I personally don't mind as long as the
final product arrives by the end of the year.

~~~
wiz21c
I answer here because I'm sure it's ommon amongst HN reader. If you think this
:

>> I personally don't mind as long as the final product arrives by the end of
the year.

Then it's useless to complaint that :

>> That's a quite significant delay, but

If freedom is at stake, then a few months later is of no importance.

~~~
rat9988
>>If freedom is at stake, then a few months later is of no importance.

It didn't get delayed because of freedom though.

------
u863321
Q3 is in my opinion too optimistic. Based on the status of hardware (TBD)
there is probably no chance to start shipping parts in Q3. The design should
be locked today. Will they be able to source the tools, get reliable suppliers
to source enough components in 3-4 months timline ? The rest of the time till
Q3 should be used to ramp-up the production and sort out quality/production
issues. Probably will be out of stock for at least till Q3/Q4 2020.

Good luck !

~~~
fabrice_d
Q3 ends in August, not in 3 months. I agree it's still optimistic but that
looks doable.

~~~
u863321
February 2019 --> no design freeze, 3 to 4 months to source components and
make tooling (very optimistic). May/July 2019 --> start of production.
June/August 2019 --> debug, SOP, build stock, start shipping

Optimistic.

I hope they are very determined, I like the product/idea but they started a
very hard task.

I would rather take the most sold Android flagship device, reverse engineer
the hardware and build a linux/bsd distro on top. Would not match their
requirement (modem privacy etc.), but would take the really hard job of
designing an up-to-date phone hardware.

Early adopters will pay a lot to get performance, good camera, battery life,
screen quality. I will use it as a toy instead of a daily tool if too many
compromises are made in the name of privacy.

------
jancsika
It appears to be at least a 150ms lag from the motion of the finger to the
scroll animation in the demo video.

Can someone who has a devkit do a detailed breakdown of the CPU usage during
that 150ms? What processes are involved, who is waiting on whom, and how could
it be improved?

~~~
xutopia
That is absolutely brutal lag! It would feel like using a 10 year old phone
with today's bloatware!

~~~
newnewpdro
It's a devkit running in-development software, for all we know there's
thousands of lines of logging being written somewhere while interacting with
the display.

What's important to take away is that the devkit is stable enough to demo, the
touchscreen, display, and backlight control are all working.

~~~
solarkraft
One one hand: Of course.

On the other hand: How good will it ever be? I'm really concerned about the
UX.

~~~
newnewpdro
Doesn't the ability to trivially iterate on the entire software stack running
the device allay those concerns?

If a good chunk of the GNOME/free software community ends up with a librem5 in
their pockets I think userspace progress should be pretty well covered.

~~~
jancsika
That you can potentially read the code for the entire software stack doesn't
mean you can trivially iterate on it.

For example, suppose the latency culprit were Firefox's CPU-based repainting.
(I don't think it is as I can scroll just fine on my Chromebook with FF.)
Changing Firefox to fill the scrolled area using the old Iphone checkerboard-
style as someone mentioned above is non-trivial. There's nothing Gnome devs
can do to make that happen, short of stopping work on Gnome, becoming FF devs,
and submitting a large patch to FF.

On the other hand, having access to the entire software stack _plus_ specs
(and firmware?) for the entire phone definitely gives them a higher
probability of cutting into that touch latency.

------
meruru
I will buy this because it's the only device aligned with the principles of
Free Software. I hope many here will do the same.

~~~
hawski
For those like me not willing to throw $600 there may be an option in the
Pinephone [0] for $150. I expect that the Librem 5 will probably be better
overall, but I also expect that for at least the first year both will be
around beta level at best. With this in mind I'm more willing to give the
cheaper option a chance, because it will not be my daily driver for some time.

Whatever will come from the next revision of both projects will probably be
very interesting.

Either way they will share software and improvements in whole stack. So it's a
win-win!

Also I'll probably buy the Pinebook Pro on the day it's available.

[0]
[https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7093&pid=43850#p...](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7093&pid=43850#pid43850)

~~~
newnewpdro
What's the binary blob / firmware / accelerated gpu driver support story on
the pine64 devices?

~~~
hawski
They say "mainline Linux". Lima the open source driver for Mali GPUs is
mentioned. I don't know if it's already in Mesa. I would say WIP, but seems
doable.

------
jstanley
I love Purism, and have preordered a Librem 5, and this all sounds great, but
I wish there was an update on the current state of the final hardware design.

It just seems like there's an awful lot of work left to do to get from a
working devkit to a finished device shipped to users.

------
geophertz
For me the librem 5 is to android what GNU Hurd is to linux. Why don't they do
something more similar to what linux-libre is to linux to replace android
rather than recreating the wheel.

AFAIK, android is open source, so why don't they just build on top of it while
removing all non-free code/binary blobs from it.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Android is a bad operating system, for one. Second, it isn't, by any measure,
a free one. Google has an iron grip over Android, OEMs are forbidden to
produce phones that fork it, and most apps for Android won't run without
Google's proprietary components.

Trying to build on Android is constantly following and fighting Google's
changes. Purism is building on Linux, which is truly free from top to bottom.

~~~
MYEUHD
> OEMs are forbidden to produce phones that fork it

Actually, OEMs are allowed to produce phones that fork it but they're
forbidden from including gapps ( the google apps suit e.g play store, maps)

>most apps for Android won't run without Google's proprietary components

This isn't the case if you only use free software e.g. most of the apps on the
fdroid main repo

~~~
ocdtrekkie
This isn't true. OEMs have been forbidden from publishing "incompatible forks"
of Android. Incompatible being: Not having Google's apps, which are required
to pass the CTS. This is one of the reasons the EU levied it's record-breaking
fine against Google for anticompetitive behavior. (It's likely EU MADA
contracts have been revised to remove this requirement, but I wouldn't be
surprised if they still enforce it elsewhere.)

F-Droid has a very tiny portion of apps, similar to as many as Purism itself
will likely handle using it's own Linux-based system with an app store. Most
common apps people expect require Google services on Android, as Google has
let the open APIs languish and pushed everyone to use, for instance, Google
Location Services, which is proprietary. Apps like Uber or Lyft, for instance,
require Google. Hilariously, a lot of Microsoft's apps, such as Skype, require
Google, despite being a competitor.

As long as Android's app library is primarily built on Google proprietary
code, there's no point in bothering to maintain compatibility with a slow and
sluggish, locked down Java-based OS.

~~~
tmalsburg2
> This isn't true. OEMs have been forbidden from publishing "incompatible
> forks" of Android. Incompatible being: Not having Google's apps, which are
> required to pass the CTS.

I'm writing this message on a Fairphone 2 running an incompatible fork of
Android that has all Google services removed. This fork is provided by the
manufacturer of the phone.

~~~
Vinnl
That's not an incompatible fork; that's just AOSP with a few apps
preinstalled. Likewise vendors like Samsung are able to add their own
interfaces on top of Android, but that wouldn't do for Purism.

~~~
tmalsburg2
What's the definition of an incompatible fork then?

~~~
Vinnl
I'm not completely sure, but I think it's when you have to actually modify
Android code, rather than changing some default settings - i.e. a fork of
Android, rather than a distro.

------
neonhat
Oh my God... That user interface is trash. It's so laggy!

~~~
whalesalad
This will be the downfall of this device. The kind of work required to provide
a UI experience that even remotely resembles that of modern smartphones is a
monumental task. It's one of the reasons desktop linux lags so far behind: the
folks who have the time, interest and ability to do this work are not
interested in using the platform.

~~~
mruts
I agree that the device _looks_ like trash. But what's wrong with desktop
linux? We have compositors, hardware acceleration from nvidia and AMD, and WMs
that are just as good, if not better, than windows. What more could you want?

~~~
na85
>What more could you want?

Consistent UI, consistent configuration schemes, working suspend-resume,
reliable WiFi, reliable auto mount of USB storage, and easy file sharing over
LAN for starters.

None of these things was I able to achieve on my ThinkPad even 3 years ago
when I last gave Linux a try.

~~~
mruts
I mean, I’ve been using ThinkPads for years and have always ran Linux on them,
and personally haven’t had any problems with them. ACPI, touchpad, screen,
audio buttons, all worked out of the box or were just a few package installs
away.I don’t like auto-mounting of drives, but I know it’s pretty easy to
setup with hotplug. WiFi drivers are _very_ good at this point, supporting
pretty much any WiFi cards in any laptops. File sharing over LAN can easily
done with Samba or SSHFS.

Linux has pretty good drivers at this point, and in my experience, often
better and more complete than Windows.

Not saying you’re lying or incompetent or anything, but I do think you had a
very atypical. Maybe you’re not familiar with Linux? Not trying to put you
down, but maybe I find that Linux works Because I’ve been using it for over 15
years at this point.

~~~
na85
I'm sure I could have got most of those things working by fiddling with fuse
or xorg.conf or some other silliness but I don't count that as "working".

The number of times I've had network manager simply refuse to connect after
opening the laptop lid makes me think we're just living in parallel universes.

~~~
mruts
I don’t use a network manager, and I don’t run a DE, I just have a simple
window manager and the command line. Btw, I use Arch Linux which is of much
higher quality than Ubuntu or whatever.

------
mixedCase
Video looks like the interface is choppy. Debug build or something else?

~~~
mntmn
This is strange. While MNT Reform still uses the i.MX6QP which is much older,
I haven't seen such bad UI performance on it. I've seen consistently better
perf from Qt apps or SDL/GL stuff than Gnome on this platform, so I hope this
won't become a problem.

Edit: What I wanted to say is that much better UI perf is _definitely_
possible on this chip.

~~~
newnewpdro
Isn't the promise of gtk4 GPU-acceleration? Since that's still a WIP I presume
the stack from the video is gtk3, so it's all being CPU-rendered except
hopefully the compositing in phosh at least.

------
butz
I wish "compact" version of Librem 5 Smartphone existed: 4.5" screen, slower
CPU, half or even quarter of storage. 200$ or lower price would attract more
users and developers.

~~~
blihp
The BOM isn't likely the driving factor in the price, but rather the small
number (relatively speaking) of units they'll sell. They have to amortize the
cost of all the design and engineering over however many units they end up
selling which is probably going to dominate the costs. Not just the labor for
the finished product but every blind alley they've gone down, every failed
prototype board etc. Then they have to mark the whole thing up (i.e. profit
margin) to make it all worthwhile and allow them to do version 2. Version 2 or
3 is probably when they can start thinking about driving down costs.

~~~
Vinnl
For some interesting insight in this, Fairphone has published the cost
breakdown of their phone [1]. It's quite a bit more expensive than similar
phones, but only about €5 of that is justified by the "fair" part of the phone
- most of it is just source materials being more expensive due to their small
scale.

[1] [https://www.fairphone.com/en/2015/09/09/cost-breakdown-of-
th...](https://www.fairphone.com/en/2015/09/09/cost-breakdown-of-the-
fairphone-2/)

~~~
blihp
Thanks for posting this and it is quite informative re: BOM pricing. I suspect
that Librem is having to do quite a bit more work on the software side than
the Fairphone as their development costs appear pretty minuscule. Even so,
based on this breakdown it's probably not as big a piece of the final price as
I had guesstimated.

------
ngngngng
I'm really excited about this. I'm not wealthy enough to preorder but I would
love to have this as my next phone.

I wish Librem would let us vote on the features of the phone we wanted. I
think they'd have more of a chance of success if they worked towards things
that were most important to users instead of their assumptions.

For example, i've been saying it for years, but I would buy a phone with
nothing but an e-ink touch screen in an instant. The only thing it wouldn't be
suited for is movies, and phones aren't really suited for that anyways.

~~~
hombre_fatal
An e-ink display isn't a very good example of a feature they're overlooking
without a democratic process.

I use an e-reader every day and I'd say half my friends and family don't even
understand why you'd want to read on one -- they just read on their
phones/tablets.

~~~
ngngngng
This is very true. I have family members that just read on their phones while
sitting on the beach, and when I explain to them why my kindle is better
suited for the task they don't seem to understand why. "I just invert the
colors and it makes it just like that." They say.

------
1023bytes
Q3 2019 still seems way too optimistic to me.

~~~
Legogris
Even if they really know what they are doing, that sounds like a great way to
create a lot of painful technical debt that will affect both end-UX and app
devs. One one hand, maybe this is also a great way to get _something_ in the
hands of users, learn, and get it right in the next generation. But it's hard
to go back on API design.

~~~
gregknicholson
The software will (I believe) be a rolling release, so they only really have
to get the hardware right before shipping.

What API design is there, beyond "Linux apps, probably GNOME with libhandy"?

~~~
chupasaurus
> The software will (I believe) be a rolling release, so they only really have
> to get the hardware right before shipping.

PureOS is based on Debian testing so it is a RR. Aside of hardware there is a
problem with baseband firmware because there is no way to change it after
phones are built without attaching to the chip itself.

> What API design is there, beyond "Linux apps, probably GNOME with libhandy"?

None. Every internal part is supported in mainline kernel, the only thing not
there is the library for calls, UI has 3 options as of yet.

~~~
seba_dos1
The baseband they're using is PLS8, which offers firmware updates via its USB
interface.

"Library for calls" is there - three options actually. ModemManager, oFono and
freesmartphone.org. I've personally contributed PHS8 support to the latter a
few years ago when preparing for a different PLS8-based project ;)

------
jo-wol
No RAM spec provided, also is it possible to connect an external display?

~~~
moftz
It's one of the core features and they have monitor and keyboard kits for
preorder already.

[https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5-24-inch-
kit/](https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5-24-inch-kit/)

------
loudmax
Does anyone here have one of their laptops? How does the hardware compare to
similarly priced products from mainstream vendors?

~~~
bubblethink
It's quite expensive for the specs, but it's a niche product. You're looking
at a 1.5x-2x markup for hardware prices. What you get is mainly a new laptop
that can run coreboot. Other than chromebooks, there aren't any other devices
that do that right now.

------
curt15
What are their plans for application development? Will developers be expected
to write their apps in C/GObject?

~~~
gregknicholson
Essentially, it's GNOME. The shell is phosh instead of the GNOME Shell, but
you can see from the video that the look and feel is intended to match GNOME
Shell.

The default apps will be GNOME apps. You should be able to run other Linux
apps just as easily, assuming they fit the touchscreen and CPU architecture.

~~~
entropicdrifter
Even if they don't fit the touchscreen you can run the thing as a desktop
machine with a monitor. At that point it's just an ARM linux box.

~~~
rurounijones
> At that point it's just an ARM linux box.

Fondly remembers Nokia N900

------
thinkmassive
Is there any list of apps expected to be available for PureOS soon after
launch?

The closest I found was a few logos in the HTML5 Apps section of the product
page[1]. Those look good, but I'm wondering what we can expect in terms of
GPS/navigation and also ride-sharing services like Lyft.

[1] [https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)

~~~
chupasaurus
It runs FSF's guidelines-compatible Debian fork so it could run any Linux app
with arm64 support + there is a project called Anbox which runs Android apps
in containers. It has some GPS support via qemu virtual device but I don't
know if it supports the real trackers.

------
k_sze
I'm a fan of Purism for what they do, even though I don't own any of their
products yet.

But how do they even justify this sentence, given that CPU design and
fabrication are full of compromises?

"The i.MX8M Quad is the most powerful CPU that has both a good operating
temperature and a good battery life."

~~~
pjc50
That statement acknowledges the compromises within itself? There's also the
unstated "freedom", "availability" and "documentation" constraints.

------
solarkraft
I think the worst of the delay in the browser really comes from actually
scrolling the content instead of rasterizing beforehand, like most smartphones
tend to do. The rest of the UI seems decently smooth.

It also seems to be running GNOME, which even manages to lag on my upper mid
range laptop.

------
spinningslate
Wonder if they considered Sailfish? [0] And if they rejected, why?

Agree with other posters that building both hardware and UX from scratch is
incredibly ambitious. Jolla tried to do the same and it almost killed them.
They're still alive, now focused on Sailfish licensing (including, it would
seem, the new Psion-like Gemini pda[1]). But they've exited the hardware
business.

Both Purism + Jolla seem aligned on values: pro-privacy and open source. From
an outsider's point of view, they'd seem like a good match.

Either way I wish Purism the best of luck. If they do deliver a phone that
both respects privacy and is properly usable as a daily driver I won't
hesitate.

[As a side note, looks like the Gemini is shipping now. Great result for them]

[0]: [https://jolla.com/](https://jolla.com/)

[1]: [https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/gemini-
pda](https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/gemini-pda)

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> Both Purism + Jolla seem aligned on values: pro-privacy

Even if Jolla says they are pro-privacy, they are nowhere near as pro-privacy
as Purism. Jolla happily licenses their OS to makers of bog-standard mobile
phone hardware that use binary blobs and where the CPU and cellular modem
share memory. Purism, on the other hand, aimed from the start at having the
cellular modem separate from the rest of the system, and at offering hardware
kill switches for the microphone and connectivity.

Also, a good amount of Jolla’s OS is closed-source.

------
voltagex_
"5.5" \- 5.7" HD display" \- they've removed the resolution again. I wish
they'd just call it a 720p display.

------
dman
Hope they dont fall into the trap of pleasing everyone. People who are
complaining about polish / fit / finish are likely to not switch to the first
few iterations of this device anyway. I just hope that they actually ship
(unlike Jolla), and dont end up delaying too much, while keeping the device
mostly free(as in freedom).

------
driverdan
People preorder something like this with missing specs? I like the philosophy
of it but I'm not handing over $600+ without knowing all the hardware info.
I'm not interested if all the specs don't exceed those of my Pixel 2, which
will be at least two years old when the Librem 5 is released.

~~~
dbcurtis
Yes, I did. And I fully expected the schedule to slip. And I fully expect it
to slip again. (Hardware is hard, been there, collected the scars.) And I
fully expect the software to be glitchy. And I fully expect the user
experience to underwhelm.

So why preorder? Because I want to support the mission of a security-first,
user-freedom-first, phone. I want to support the idea of a Linux phone. Unless
those of us that want something like this, and can afford to front $600 to
help the first iteration happen, do so, there will never be a second
iteration.

------
jasonvorhe
> Front Camera TBD > Back Camera TBD

This isn't good.

------
jumbopapa
When you compare this to what Samsung just announced yesterday it's so hard to
justify this device. I want to use it, but I don't think I could deal with the
sluggishness of the UI (if that is actually an issue at launch), what will
presumably be a poor build quality, and all of the other bugs that will likely
exist.

I need my phone to just work. I love the Linux desktop, but I just don't see
how they can get a new mobile platform able to compete with iOS or Android.

~~~
r3bl
> I need my phone to just work. I love the Linux desktop, but I just don't see
> how they can get a new mobile platform able to compete with iOS or Android.

Who says they need to compete with them at all? This isn't a big company
relying on VC money that it needs to pay off, this is a small team that raised
money from backers.

They need to provide a viable alternative for those of us that give enough of
a fuck about privacy and... that's it. As long as they have a demand to keep
up the supply, the product is successful. Their target group is willing to
make _some_ sacrifices for sure.

Not every company aims to be a trillion-dollar company and absolutely dominate
its sector, and that's not a bad thing.

~~~
jumbopapa
If they can do it, then it's great! I'm just skeptical that we will see a
second iteration of this device. I hope they do succeed! I want to be able to
use a device like this someday, but it's not ready for me yet. I hope you
enjoy it!

~~~
acct1771
It hasn't shipped yet, so that's good.

It's not ready for anyone, yet.

