A Humble Librem 5 Daily User Review

Yes, to clarify, I do mean that the LED blinks red indicating overheating

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I haven’t really tried out the GPS or maps. I have only used it here in my hometown with locations I’ve already been to. The weather app will sometimes think I’m a few towns over, but a restart usually fixes it.

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I can’t begin to test GPS. The pre installed map app is sluggish to the point of being completely unusable.

How is it with a higher wattage charger? Does it overheat faster too? Or does the battery get a decent amount of charge before that happens?

I have not experienced any overheating issues in regards to that charger, but I do keep it next to the AC vent. My only overheating issues have come from it staying in my pocket while outside in the sun. I have to turn it off it gets so hot.

Nice post! I’ll try and come back with a more detailed reply later when I’ve got more time, but for now just one thing: Charging!
I’ve actually had a real quality of life improvement after switching to higher wattage chargers - I’ve been having way less problems with both an Anker 30W GaN charger and a Baseus 65W GaN charger.

Regarding heat and battery endurance: Remember to switch off WiFi/BT when you’re not requiring it. That Redpine chip can run hot.

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Thanks for the advice! I’ve been debating whether to spend the money on a higher wattage charger or not. I think now I will order one and try it out.

Do you have a link to the forum discussing this dock, or the specific dock that you purchased? I bought an Anker 655 8-in-1 hub. Because it consumed 15 W, I asked anker support for charger advice, and they suggested their Anker 713 45W charger. I’ve had mixed results, however. Sometimes I don’t get a charge to the phone through the dock I have, even with the powerful charging brick.

Any suggestions on getting LibreOffice to work on byzantium? The basic install in their repo does not seem compatible with the phone, and merely freezes when I use it.

This post is where I found info on various docking stations. Upon further testing with a higher wattage charger it doesn’t seem to charge while docked.

As for LibreOffice I installed it through Flatpak and it is working just fine for me on Byzantium.

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Have you read the small text on the charging brick?
I tried with a Lenovo 65W charging brick and guess what. At 5V it delivers only 10W making it worse than a 15W smartphone charger.
The phone dock question is really interesting. With a Lenovo notebook docking station I got no display connected. With another no name docking station I got display, but there are interruptions in the picture from time to time.

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They do have three power supplies (I’m about to test two of them) but the suggested one is not on my list. In addition, small green arrow (on much smaller IPS display) explains a lot (but not everything, note that battery icon is on 81%). Anyway, please enjoy content of those two pictures:

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@Hristo, perhaps you are about to buy this USB Type-C Gen2 dock AENZR AZ2406 and test it with your monitor (I’m about to use it with my Librem 5 with some other device, through this reliable Linux HDMI output port as well, but need to settle down some more, do this when more time available)? Please feel free to be able to rely on it (get it work with your monitor) and therefore here is what to expect from AENZR AZ2406 device:

EDIT: VL103R+PS186+VL822+RTL8153

I have not decided yet on which to buy and I would always prefer to try to avoid made in PRC if this would be possible.

Than just wait until old stock (mostly non-compliant hubs) within the country where you live in is sold away. But what is about to be imported (as needed/compliant), I do not know that.

I don’t understand why do you recommend the AENZR if in your tests it delivers only about 1,5A at 5V to Librem 5?
Shouldn’t we look for docking stations that deliver 5V 3A?

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Btw. I spotted this docking station as a potential choice as it seem to be suitable as it covers the USB4 standard.
But I have not ordered it yet as I am short on cash now:

It seems that it is hopeless to look for a good docking station made outside of PRC. :frowning:

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IMO, some of docking stations presented on this Forum do not deliver more than 5V/0.9A (as we are talking about Librem 5 only here, about 5 volt to be precise, not about PD2.0 in general, not even about PD3.0 with or without PPS, neither about PD3.1 range). It is about pass-through voltage and amperage that Librem 5 is getting from the dedicated USB-C male cable/connector, host related one on any used docking station. AENZR AZ2406 by itself consumes very little power and the shown value of 4.71V/1.37 charging Librem 5 comes from the compliant SoftBank PD2.0 5.00V power supply, therefore way under 5V (and I do not use those that provide 5.20V at all, not even for indirect charging of the Librem 5 as some PD power supplies do provide within nominated 5V specification). Do you want me to post picture with the 20V/3A (60W) PD2.0 power supply entering AENZR AZ2406 (although I do not have Librem 5 with completely empty battery at this moment, need to check, perhaps)? Just because I do not have much time to show everything.

USB4® sound much better than USB3.0 and it is for certain direction that we need to look forward. With my hope, at least, that you’ve noted that AENZR AZ2406 uses “VL103 - DP Alt-mode & PD 3.0 Controller with Auto Standby”. Let me know if you find another one with this controler mentioned on this Forum, please? VL102 is mentioned here:

Satechi Startech is premium … I’ll take a look at this here linked product, but please do not buy it on Amazon.

I’ll know more about this one soon: https://www.dicota.com/de/usb-c-portable-docking-4-in-1-with-hdmi.html (Gegründet in Deutschland 1992). Please wait for my signal until next few days.

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Why not?

And regarding the used controller, it is not particularly transparent most of the time. One would need to search for full specification of every particular product with no guarantees to find the info.
And I don’t know which controllers are better. So if I find a device having a controller different than the VL103, how would I know if it is better or worse than VL103?

One could go crazy with this topic.

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