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.
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.
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.
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:
@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?
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. 
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.
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.
I wanted to get docking station with the VL103 from VIA Labs, Inc., searching for this particular controller for many months and therefore wanted to share what I finally got in my hands (docking station that works smoothly with the Librem 5, up to my very best expectations, even without USB4® certification).
EDIT: I bought it from AliExpress JQrain Store, with VAT (that goes directly into the German budget) included and payed.
Looks very nice on stats and price. Looking forward for the additional info.
German company does not mean designed in Germany and designed in Germany does not mean made in Germany. At this price tag it will be with 99% chance made in PRC.
But at long as there is no choice on the market and no transparency, I suppose with have to eat the lemons.
Take this as your (our) current advantage 
. And for example, StarTech.com Ltd. do not hide anything, it is as easy as to open particular product “Technical Specifications” tab/link, yet sometimes very, very tempting. Also, DIGITUS® and i-tec Technologies s.r.o. are not telling much about its products, but sometimes info provided from them about certain product just suffice.
I have another stupid question on the topic with charging and docking stations.
We have:
If I use the original Librem 5 power supply to power the docking station, the docking station might itself eat most of the power and so the L5 is not going to get the 5V 3A.
If I use another power supply for the docking station, should I look for power supplies 5V 6A? Or what will happen if the power supply delivers higher voltage to the docking station than 5V? Is the docking station able to transform it to the 5V that Librem 5 requires?
As an example:
I have a Lenovo power supply:
5V 2A
9V 2A
15V 3A
20V 3,25A
What will happen if I use it to power the docking station?
Will this result in the docking station negotiating 5V 2A to satisfy the L5 voltage leading to getting just 10W? Instead of the 30W which would be required for L5 plus the docking station?
Or will the docking station negotiate higher voltage and then transform so that it feeds L5 with 5V 3A?
If both are possible, how to understand what is the docking station going to do?
This will be negotiated with the Librem 5 as part of the USB-C PD. The dock should either deliver the right voltage or none at all.
The right incantations (q.v.) on the Librem 5 will tell you what the negotiations produced. Or you can insert a USB-C power meter between the dock and the Librem 5.
That might be an unusual amount of power (depending on the exact specs of the docking station and what is connected to it) but …
if the docking station itself needs all, or almost all, of the power that the power supply can supply then you wouldn’t do this!
The Librem 5 doesn’t need 15W but with the supplied 18W power supply and under the assumption that the dock takes 15W and under the assumption that it worked at all, that leaves just 600mA (@5V) for the Librem 5, which should be enough for light running but not much else, depending on whether the Librem 5 display is on or off.
Aside: My understanding is that this is a temporary restriction (which is not to say that it will definitely change in the future).
