Hello everyone. I am typing this on my recently received Librem 5 while docked to a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Bluetooth headphones!
I have been giving the Librem 5 a test run as a daily driver for the last few days, and will attempt a simple review for those who have been waiting years (like I was). I will start by saying that I am not a developer or programmer, just an open source enthusiast. I am also a fairly patient person compared to others I know, so take that into consideration if it seems like I gloss over any weaknesses.
tl;dr
-Physical frame, killswitches and screen feel nice
-It eats up battery super fast and overheats when charging; workaround is put an ice pack under it
-Convergence is awesome! There are apps for basic functionality, especially Flatpaks
-It is a bit slower when doing too many basic functions, so don’t expect to do insane multitasking
Build Quality
The overall physical feel of the phone is rather pleasant I would say. It is certainly thicker than most phones are today, but I wouldn’t say that’s inherently a bad thing. I feel like I can keep a firm grip on the Librem 5 without a case whereas most modern phones feel like they can slip at any minute. The ability to repair and replace parts is also cool, but I haven’t cracked it open yet. It doesn’t feel clunky by any means, and in fact I would say it gives it a more solid feel. I did pop out the sim card tray to load, well, the sim card as well as an SD card to hold my 34 GB of music. The tray is easy to get out when empty, but I do have to use the sim tray tool to help pull it out when it has cards loaded. It’s not super difficult, but something to be aware of.
The hardware kill switches are easy to find and switch when needed. They feel sturdy and don’t flip on their own when in a pocket. I had read in previous posts on the forums that the microphone was garbage on phone calls, but when I tested it out with my wife (and a couple of real world calls from other people I wasn’t expecting) it sounded clear. When testing out the calls I had the kill switch for the microphone and camera turned off. I switched it on after the call connected and it instantly picked up on the mic and allowed me to speak. It’s also nice to be able to just flick a switch to turn off Wifi and Bluetooth when I head out to work, as I won’t need them, and hopefully save some battery.
Saving the battery has been the biggest struggle. This thing drains battery fast, and I can see the percentage drop by the minute with even light use. Like I said before, I am not a programmer or developer. My job has me driving around a lot so having some mobile capability is a must. I manage to get through the day by pretty much plugging it in to “charge” whenever I can (at my desk when I’m in the office or using a car charger when I am driving). I use the quotes because unless it is a high capacity charger, it will either barely keep the battery level where it is, or maybe gain a percentage or two after 30 minutes or so. That has been enough to get me through the work day and then charge it up when I get home.
If you do manage to have a high capacity charger, like the one included in the box, it will overheat after charging about 10% when charging at a level lower than 60% (this is an estimate, not a firm number as I have not tested to that level of detail). That means I would charge it to gain 10%, it would overheat, I pull the charger, wait for it to cool, and by the time I plug it in again I lost the 10% I just gained. The way that I have gotten around that has been to literally charge it on top of a sealed ice pack to cool it enough to keep charging constantly.
The other thing about temperature is it will warm up a bit when in a pocket. It’s not burning or anything, and it has never felt too hot to touch; but it does feel warmer when I bring it out of my pocket to use.
Those drawbacks can all be fixed with future software updates, though. From what I have seen in the forums it is a high priority of the phone developers and I am looking forward to those updates.
Software
When I was lurking in the forums waiting for the phone I wasn’t sure if I was going to like PureOS. I used GNOME a lot back in my early Linux days, but more recently have come to enjoy using a distro based on KDE Plasma. But when I got my phone I figured I would give PureOS an honest try before deciding to try out Plasma Mobile. I have to say I am pleasantly surprised, and it is awesome to see the shell switch to the larger screen and take full advantage of it. The official app store has extremely limited selection of apps tailored for mobile, but if you venture into Flatpaks you can get all the basics that have been ported to the mobile chip architecture.
Convergence has been really awesome, especially for someone like me who only realistically used a computer for light applications such as Firefox, LibreOffice Writer, Discord, Signal, and a music player. To put it more concretely, my laptop has 16 GB of RAM but I rarely use more than 4 GB. Having one device that I can use as a phone but then also as a computer for my light tasks has been a great experience. The only issue is, again, the charging and temperature. I am powering the Baseus Phone Dock (which I found through lurking the forums) with the charger the phone came with, which delivers 15 W. It does not seem to be enough to power the dock, the peripherals, and charge the phone. But the dock does keep the battery from draining quickly, and I can use it for several hours so long as the phone was decently charged when first docked. The temperature does creep up when used during docking, so I think even if I had a higher capacity charger it wouldn’t really charge much anyways.
With only 3 GB of RAM, if I try to run everything like I would on my laptop I would probably bump closer to that limit. There are times where it will start to slow down, either from reaching the RAM limit, the temperature throttling the processor, or possibly both. Those instances have been rare, and I am enjoying my experience overall with PureOS on mobile. I change the display scaling to 150% to regain some real estate for the phone’s screen, and I think it has a better look than the default 200%.
Is it worth the wait?
For my use case, I would say definitely yes. Like I said, I use a computer primarily for light tasks and the Librem 5 can handle those really well (processor and RAM wise). I look forward to the software improvements like suspend and better temperature management when charging so I don’t have to keep one eye open for the nearest outlet. This device is impressive for being designed essentially from scratch.
If there are any questions on things I might have missed feel free to reply and I will try and get to them when I can.
