I'm pretty excited about the Librem 5, if it comes out even halfway decent it'll be my next phone. I'm basically banking on my current phone lasting just up until their release day.<p>When they initially launched their campaign I was a little pessimistic about the whole thing. But since then I've realized a couple of things:<p>- I really dislike the current trend in phone hardware, and Librem will fix most of those problems (kill switches, replaceable battery, etc...)<p>- Most of the focus on the latest and greatest phone hardware is wasted on me, especially if I can control the entire software stack. Using Linux a lot has since taught me that high performance is often only necessary because large tech stacks with mandatory upgrades degrade heavily over time. And I don't really do heavy graphical work with my phone, so I just need good enough performance.<p>- Most of the focus on app compatibility is wasted on me. Android has a ton of apps, and theoretically I could learn Java and develop more of them... but, I don't like Java, and I don't like Android's development experience, and most of the apps I download are trying to hack support between my phone and my desktop anyway. Ironically, I would probably be able to get better integration and more useful software for a phone running Linux.<p>When their campaign was first announced I know a lot of people (myself kind of included) were thinking "well, it's never going to compete with Android." And at some point, something flipped in my brain and I realized, "I don't care."<p>It doesn't need market penetration, it just needs to be more useful for me. If they can build an experience of even just decent quality, then that'll be an improvement over my current Android situation.<p>I've grown more to realize that I really value controlling my own software stack, and that the more I control my own software stack, the less I care about stuff like 3rd-party compatibility, because... well, it feeds into itself. I don't want to run much of that 3rd-party stuff anyway because I can't control it.
I, for one, don't understand the push for Gnome here. I am a backer of librem, and I really don't get it.<p>KDE Plasma Mobile is something that actually cares about mobile, is developed by an actual community and still needs a lot of work. Developing another Mobile Shell, on Gnome (that don't seem to care about anything else than Linux desktop) feels like NIH and a waste of time and resources...<p>Doing a Mobile Shell (+toolkits +all basic applications) that works reliably is a lot of work and doing it twice is a bit sad.
I tried to fight off the urge to get excited about this phone but I can't anymore (been disappointed many times by linux-based phone plans). Librem, you now officially have a place in my hopes and dreams. I'm really excited.<p>> <i>As the implementation of the Librem 5 goes on, we are quite aware that time is limited given our January 2019 target, and we are therefore focusing on robustness and efficiency for the first version of the mobile UI shell (“phosh”), which we wish to push upstream to become the GNOME mobile shell.</i><p>Terrific! I love Gnome shell and use it every day, and I'd love to have it on my phone. Those mocks looks great!
I am a bit sceptical. What kind of quantities are they shipping? I can’t imagine it will be hundreds of thousands. Even at quantities like 50.000 it seems to me it would be very difficult to source a custom designed screen/touch at a reasonable price. At 50.000 it would probably even be difficult to find someone even considering delivering the order
I'm interested in what work they're doing on UI, rather than hardware design. Devices like these often lack polish, so I'm curious what solutions they've come up with.
I love the contacts integration. I wish there was also some way to send SMSes directly from your computer to your device without sending to a 3rd party (outside of your service provider and receiver).
Does anyone have more info about the Librem 5's baseband? I know they say it will be separate from the app CPU and have hardware kill switches for all of the components/sensors, but I'd love to hear more about the firmware running on it.