Another delay in the delivery of the Librem 5

Hardware Librem 5
102

Slight hyperbole: “Dear Purism, I sure love the concept of your detox center. But I could convince more of my friends to book rooms if you could add some meth dispensers, for convenience.”
Are you aware that Purism tries to set you free from the stuff you’re trying to convince us is “important for usability”?

WA is not “everyone’s favorite messenger”. It is the messenger “everybody has to have” in order to be part and not miss anything that’s going on. It is petty much “the tyrant messenger”.

Sooner or later, we’ll have proprietary Android apps on the Librem. But as that is a disservice to the mission of Purism, you can’t expect them to make that a priority. If you insist, you’re not the target audience.

You seem to assume that your privacy greatly improves by ditching Android, but keeping sandboxed WA. I think that’s wrong. First, I think FB is worse than Google, but second, sandboxing gains you almost nothing, except that they can’t read your files, unless you add an exception to pick photos, at which point your sandbox is merely a theoretical construct.
Yes, you could limit access to the phonebook, and I’d thank you for that, as then FB does not know that you know me and my phone number and when you last called me.
But most people would not disable that or, if it was by default, curse the **** thing for not automatically finding new friends, and frustratedly go back to Android.

But even with proper sandboxing, they would still profile you. Where you are, when you’re online, whom you talk to, what links you follow, and connect that info to all other websites you visited that have FB :+1: buttons embedded, by fingerprinting, no matter how well you think you block everything, including cookies.
And of course, they read all your messages. Potentially even the encrypted ones.
“But Facebook would never do that!”
Sure. They would also never store your password in plain, ask your email account pw and fetch all your mail contacts or sell all your info to third parties. Oh, wait …

WA has been hacked. What’s the point?
A lot like in 3, 30, 300? As in severely? As in recently? As in “it took them years to fix it”?
The amount of discovered vulnerabilities is much less significant than how it was handled, and if there’s a trend indicating the numbers go down.

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103

To drag this a bit back to topic … I would rather get the phone with the minimal feasible delay and with reduced functionality. Then the community can decide what “apps” just have to be developed in order to fill out the functionality.

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104

Hear, hear!

There are two types of companies in this world:

  1. Those that know they’ve been hacked
  2. Those that don’t

It’s possible this company’s continued breaches are demonstrative of a deeper lack of security hygiene and vision. It’s also possible they face the same threats the planet faces and are learning lessons with each compromise. I was on a call with the Citrix CISO last week about their recent hack – I couldn’t thank them enough for being so forthright in their communication and incident response execution, and we are continuing to use their products (after some due diligence in our boundary controls; trust but verify, of course).

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105

i think that this is one of those words that can be confussing for most and we need to clarify what it is we mean in-context. maybe a different thread in security and privacy…

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which is weird because you get away from sugar and become hooked on insuline :sunny:

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wow… have never used this WA nor had a spacebook account or tweeted. sounds like powerful stuff though and doesnt sound lilke many can kick the habit. i think ill stick to regular drugs. the whole bringing whatzapp to librem 5 seems a bit silly like to try and go solar and off grid but brin shore power for emergencies. i think its wise to have something for everything, if you require a bedazzled phone with 10k followers inside. you dont have to surrender it to have a Librem 5. Keep your personal biz and interactions with mom on a more secure device and post nude photos with your address on the other. besides. other options are abundant, wire has no ads and your carrier cant retrieve those conversations and provide them to authorities when youre accused of stealing pet names from the akc database. idk but now im curious. think ill boot up windows and see what the hype is. can we run tinder on the librem 5?

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108

I honestly don’t care about the delay, the main thing that concern me is the lack of support for the LTE band B28 (700MHz) in the modem. What is not clear to me, is if it will be possible to swap the modem user side with another one, but if not (or at least not without involving heavy tinkering with the software/hardware), I have to ask for a refund, because unfortunately it will be not suitable as my main phone in that case.

109

On the hardware side, it should be as simple as swapping the SIM card. AFAIK, you have to take the modem out to insert the SIM there.
On the software side, I would assume that all 4 modems officially supported (including those on the dev boards) and those sufficiently compatible should work.
The harder part might be to actually find other modules with specs that are acceptable for you.

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110

Do you think this modem could be compatible? https://www.sierrawireless.com/products-and-solutions/embedded-solutions/products/wp7609/

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111

@nicole.faerber (and i need to add 20 characters)

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112

Except that it does not come on a M.2 card, maybe. The devil is in the details. Data will most likely work but voice can be an issue because of all the different digital audio interfaces and firmware support by the modem.

We are currently also evaluating another modem with more supported regions.

Cheers
nicole

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113

I realize that this must be a real hassle for Purism to support, but I really want to commend you for trying to design a phone that isn’t based on planned obsolescence:

  1. Cellular modem runs on M.2 slot so it can be changed for different regions and upgrades.
  2. Removable battery.
  3. CPU has 10 years of support from the manufacturer
  4. 100% free software so the community can maintain it without manufacturer’s support.
  5. MicroSD card slot, so more memory can be added.

Since 80% of the GHG emissions from a phone come from its initial fabrication, making a phone that lasts longer significantly lowers the environmental impact. Kudos for making the right design decisions.

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114

Thanks Nicole. I will keep waiting for (hopefully good) news regarding the modem.

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115

One of the reasons I joined :slight_smile: We have enough electronic waste as it is.

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116

Definitely. That’s why I’m psyched we’ll be able to easily repair the phone instead of just chucking the whole thing every couple years like certain other companies want us to. I’d love to have this one device that, in addition to replacing my need to buy a separate PC and it’s associated consumption with the convergence/desktop mode feature, will be something I can keep functional and use for virtually as long as I care to.

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117

I’m completely happy with this; I just presume 2020 at the earliest.

We’re a tiny tiny number of phone purchasers having a tremendous development capability devoted to our desire, I expect because the company so doing expects they’ll benefit more from that development work down the line.

We’re getting vastly more than we’re paying for.

My personal hope is that they’ll reward us by keeping this as simple as practicable, by supplying a product whose core functions work reliably, and by having the back-bone to take the time to achieve those objectives even in the face of criticism.

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118

That’s a good way to avoid disappointment. :wink:
At LinuxFestNorthWest, Bryan Lunduke took bets that it’ll ship this year, so you might be up to a pleasant surprise :sunglasses:

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119

Kyle Rankin was interviewed by Fast Company for an article. In the article, it is mentioned that the Librem 5 is launching “this fall”.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90349731/the-hardware-trend-google-amazon-and-apple-are-throwing-their-weight-behind.

These major electronics makers are catching up to the niche hardware company Purism. Founded in 2014, Purism sells two Linux laptops that have two different switches: one that disables the device’s webcam and microphone and one that cuts power to the Wi-Fi. This fall, Purism will launch a smartphone that adds a switch to take the modem offline completely along with the other two in the company’s laptops, finally bringing hardware kill switches to mobile devices.

I will be perfectly happy if the phone ships in the fall :slight_smile:

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120

Let me be pessimistic :slight_smile:
Fall ends on December 20.

Well, we could probably wait until Christmas :christmas_tree:

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As I’ve said before, this is a very difficult thing. It’s kind of like waiting for food at a restaurant. You don’t really want them to hurry up cooking it. And just like in a restaurant, I’d prefer to wait a little longer, and be sure I’m going to get good food.

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