Interesting, I would like to learn more. Is there any way to stop the device from transmitting all unnecessary metadata? is the absence of metadata another way to track effectively?
If you enable lock-down mode, you should be pretty safe - https://puri.sm/posts/lockdown-mode-on-the-librem-5-beyond-hardware-kill-switches/
With wifi and baseband off, nothing will leave the device. And with full lock-down mode, the acclerometer, gps, camera, microphone etc is off as well (as in, no power, really off), so nothing can be stored for transmission later.
Here’s to hoping for 4GB
One of the main points of having an “open” phone is that you can install additional software of your choice and use it on the phone. For that to be viable there has to be a certain amount left after the basic software is running.
Considering that the “high” end Raspberry Pi models have only 1GB and manage to run a usable desktop environment and considering the specs of the various phones that would have run Ubuntu Touch, 2GB is reasonable.
Aren’t set backs supper common amongst crowdfunding?
Can see your point mate, I will also like to know how far we are getting, are we on 50% or 90% done.
Also seeing new laptops and security stick, when I just hope for more man power on the phone.
Will still wait as long as the end of the year, I really want the phone.
My only concern is the librem One bundle. As I read it, that will come with the phone, but now it sounds like I have to pay for calls through matrix
No, man… seriously not. You don’t even have to pay for a Librem One account if all you want is Matrix. That one is for free. The apps are also for free.
On the staff, all I can say is that it grew quite a lot (~50%) during the last ~6 months. The team page was outdated for a long time, but recently updated.
So, it’s not only the tasks that grow
I think the original specs said "3GB *
* Specifications are subject to change"
so here’s hoping for at least 3GB.
Still hoping for 4. Cheers!
My current phone - iPhone 6s - has 2 GB of RAM. So anything more than that will be an upgrade
my bb q10 is 2gb ram as well and it never was a problem. i just wanted to avoid the constant nagging of the update notification after bb clearly said they were not investing any more development. so now it’s 50 megabytes of updates waiting to happen that i just can’t verify what they are and i probably don’t care since the phone works the same. probably just my local “big-brother” pushing proprietary crap down my throat. well keep pushing soon the recycle bin awaits …
Some people want to use librem5 as a desktop replacement, with nextcloud, syncthing, mycroft, Wi-Fi Display and so on. See several posts on this forum (even purism advertised it in the sense to replace a desktop - bundled with a screen).
All these applications use some/a lot of RAM. Not to forget the gnome desktop environment, which is heavy on resources…
Just some examples:
fresh loaded gnome (nothing else): 200MB + gsd_*(50MB)
libre-office document with a few pages: 500MB
Wi-Fi Display (if supported): 400MB
and all other apps, daemons, and so on. I don’t know how this should be possible with 2GB.
I think too little RAM and bad video driver (i.e. sluggish and laggy UX) will prevent librem5 from being successful. The first point (RAM) can be solved quite easily. I recently bought 16GB for 80$ high quality ddr4. So 2 GB more should be 10$ max for purism. For the second point (etnaviv driver) I hope they (or anybody else) will get it done.
And in the sense of future-proof: What is the sense of an exchangeable battery if the ram is much too little for future use-cases and can not be upgraded at all?
So, in sum, I hope for 4GB. Four or more. The specs still say “RAM: 3 GB minimum (subject to change)”
I think the bigger memory limitation is not cost of the ram chips but rather space on the board itself. Also I believe the memory will be soldered on to the board not a DIMM/SODIMM so I don’t think that’s a very fair nor relevant comparison.
As I am not an expert when it comes to board and chip schematics this is all my understanding of second/third hand information; that said…
With a phone form factor chip space is always at a premium, by having a smart card slot and m.2 for the baseband there is an inherent inefficiency of space used for those devices compared to having them directly on the board. This is a plus for repairability and upgradeability bit does mean less space for other chips. I believe so many phones on the market have 3GB of RAM for these exact reasons. I’m curious if the next jump will be to 4GB or 6GB or ??? though I think this will be more based on what Samsung/Hynnix/etc can produce than anything else.
Just something worth considering.
Isn’t the ram discussion a bit off topic to this thread?
Regarding how much memory, sdcard or whatever is needed from my point of view it would be important to have it exchangeable on some kind of level. There was once a thread with the idea to partner with fairphone which created phones with replaceable components.
I hope that apart from the CPU, which will be on the mainboard I guess, we could maybe exchange components later - maybe even drop the baseband (in case we don’t need it) and use the m2 for other things like a gpu or ssd - ofc depending on the form factor.
I mean this is purism and not apple sticking their components with glue so that you can’t do anything
Ontopic: Better a late phone than some hardware bugs apart from that I also believe in the Software MVP approach purism has chosen
PS: I am still using my first smartphone the Galaxy S3 which looses against the librem 5 specs in most of the specs
It’s also worth recognizing that adding new features will add more delays, which is why things are pretty much fixed already within the rough constraints given in the specs.
Even adding more memory comes with risks - and every change has to be tested.
You’re not looking at this from Purism’s perspective. They need to sell the phone to make money. They have employees to pay. Another delay is a PR nightmare.
If/when Purism releases a second phone we can expect more improvements.
Here’s a nice holistic explanation for what’s going on. Not affiliated with Purism, just a PMI certified PMP.
This project is way off the roadmap. Any time a project misses deadlines the costs go up. The problem is that Purism is a small company and most of their revenue for this project came from pre-orders last year. Sure, some orders are still trickling in, but their burn rate is much higher than their cash flow from new orders at this point.
They can’t charge us more for the phones than we’ve already paid. Most of their costs are for labor, since they haven’t bought the hardware yet - they can’t ask their employees to give that back. The pile of money they got from pre-orders only starts getting spent on the phones we ordered AFTER they’ve spent all the money it takes them to figure out how to build the phones we ordered.
The lack of communication and loose hardware specs gives Purism flexibility. As their development costs rise they can skimp on hardware to make up the difference. I wasn’t expecting a flagship phone, but it looks like we’re going to get a lower mid-tier phone from 2017 sometime later this year unless they blow another deadline. For the fanboys/paid shills/psychedelic mushroom users (I can’t really tell the difference reading your posts) who insist that 100mb of RAM and 2G is just fine - save your keystrokes - no sane person wants to pay for a year of overruns when they buy a cell phone.
Well, since I’m still using a Samsung Galaxy S5 (a 2014 flagship), it’s an improvement for me. Not that I actually need it, this 5 year old device is plenty fast enough without any Google spybloat in the OS.
The latter part there is actually the one part which is 100% future-proofed. The modem is a replaceable unit in standard M.2 form factor. There’s nothing stopping you from sticking a 5G modem in there later on if you so desire. Sure, the antennae won’t give you access to the 26 and 50 GHz (it’s in that region, I forget the exact numbers) bands, but it’ll still work on the “old” frequency bands once they get re-allocated from 2-4G purposes. Note that “mmWave” is a subset of “5G” - the existing frequencies will still be used because this new higher frequency spectrum has at the absolute best 300-500 metres of range and requires direct uninterrupted line of sight.
Hear hear, a lunatic expert on the matter.
You are missing a few points.
First, they made quite a lot more during the campaign than the minimum.
Second, is $60000 per month “trickling in”?
There’s no need for name-calling.
Remind me what PMI and PMP stand for. I know I could look it up, but I’m feeling lazy.