Fair point. I can’t because purism isn’t transparent about that so I can’t know that. A little bit better hardware specs than pinephone is the reason for my prediction.
edit: They are open source and everything but they do not give pricing information for what their cost is for different catagories of making the product to know if we are getting a fair price or not. Also, what profit margins do they aim for. Apple’s one is ridiculous but at least they are honest with that.
Which parts?
Wow. Didn’t know that. That is a terrible price.
Edit: Um? https://boundarydevices.com/product/nitrogen8m/
‘As low as $135 with volume discounts. Contact Sales For Volume Pricing’
So you want to make a volume purchase of L5s? I’m sure purism will be able to make a discount for you 
I wish. Set the family up with them.
Edit: It isn’t like nobody is purchasing this phone so they are purchasing in bulk. Maybe not so much to bring to 135 USD but we don’t really know. I would expect 160 or 150 USD so total hardware may still be my original guess but they havem’t declared their costs for different parts of manufacturing the phone so yeah I cannot really know. I think they made around 10000 or so orders? I think I heard that somewhere and I think I heard goverments and other military contractors were interested in this product so I would expect them to order in bulk and also for future sales as well.
Edit2: Just on the crowdfunding, they got over 2800.
What I mean is - volume discount is for a reason, it’s not to piss off retail consumers, but to save on logistics and procurement overhead. You want now Purism to buy for you with volume discount and make retail sale with the same discount, absorbing the logistcs and procurement costs.
What. What cost do they face from saving money? I do not really understand your arguement. I do not have expertise in whatever this is but would like a longer explanation if you don’t mind.
Let put it this way, when you make a bulk order of say LPC812 chips (as I have in my drawer) you don’t get several dozens of boxes, each wrapped in plastic, each containing datasheet, manual, whatsnot. You get a reel, or a tape/tube section stuffed with chips, and perhaps a pdf which you can print. and it’s a very small bulk example. Plus you have order processing (once for bulk and severl dozen times for retail), bank fees, transportation from warehouse to shop, plenty of other little things you can never even think of (security clearance while passing warehouse)
So for ordering in bulk they are charged more than not? I understand there can be other fees but those are just normal fees that would come with ordering bulk or not anyway. Can you send importation charges for the products because most seem like they would come with bulk or not like bank fees, trasport from warehouse and also what is security clearance while passing warehouse? What even is that? I can understand quality assurance to make sure none are damaged but security seems irrelivent.
These are mainboards. How could they be in a tube or reel? Also, what problem will this create to increase the price of the product? You said…
But what problem does this create? Why would each need all that special bs when it isn’t really a necessity to buy the product? Only logical thing I can see there is each being wrapped in plastic but I am pretty sure this component would be as if it comes in a reel, which I doubt it does, you can have plastic covered reels. This entire arguement seems like an illogical excuse.
Edit: Sorry you mentioned chips rather than board in that message. I still do not understand what huge problem would come from them being in a reel though. What logistical problems come from this?
As your are criticizing missing transparency this implies they know how much a unit will cost. If you ever worked in IT or maybe also projects in general you know that if you do something you never did before, estimating that task is difficult. If you followed the history of the librem 5 and also read what ex purism employees said it seems that the librem 5 was more of a vision in the beginning, without knowing what it will cost or mean. Than there was the first PoC with the dev board and now first batches. Now is maybe the time when someone at purism can more or less say what’s the cost of a librem 5, however the development also hardware wise is not yet terminated.
As @ruff already explained a lot of the costs is the development of the software. If you now say that these costs should lower the phone costs later I would disagree. The software needs to be maintained and if the phone is worth it, it’s also worth to pay for it. It’s like Apple devices, there you also pay for constant software updates. The difference is (also as @ruff said) that you can use the software they develop on any other device, like if apple freed iOs for Android devices.
If the librem 5 fails because you have to pay for the development of FLOSS this would be a bad message in my opinion.
This isn’t about transparancy. It is about you making a claim to know the hardware and manufacturing costs of the L5. Do you know the exact cost to them for each piece of hardware? Do you know the price to manufacture a full single unit? Do you know the shipping costs for them? there is a lot that goes into making a phone, and getting it ready for sale. I do not know any of the prices except the one they are asking for a product. I don’t think it is a ridiculous price.
Depending on the OS, your battery life is probably only going to be roughly between 4 and 6 hours of use. And that is light use.
quickly is unlikely depending on how you’re connected to the internet and whatever else you have running.
As far as I know, without terminal hacks, there is no OS that does this out of the box yet.
This will require Anbox, which isn’t working on all the “supported” OS’s.
It really depends on which OS you choose which features you’ll have available. But the fact is, from what I can tell from my own device, is that you’re buying a 150$ Linux phone without a fully matured fully featured OS. Time will make it better, but it is still in heavy development for sure. So do not think that it is already “fully available and better than X”. I love the device, but I want the expectations known that it is not quite ready for daily use, depending on how you want to use it.
I know the software is the majority of the price but I want to know how much goes to software development compared to manufacturing of hardware. How much goes just tp maintaining the OS? They can get further income from Fir with software made for Fir being backwards compatable with evergreen due to similar architectures.
So they cannot even give information as they go? Will we even receive that information once development is complete and product is on release? They could still give what profit margin they are aiming at though. I would really appreciate them to make some video conference or something about this.
Fair point but I cannot pay for over 50% of the product price just for the software though I think it may be a higher percentage. FLOSS is important but I can’t do that price. Whatever. Guess you guys can enjoy the product which is fair enough as you can do whatever you want with your own money. Just ignore me.
I know pinephone isn’t very ready but it can do enough of these things. What you are paying for with purism on the L5 is mainly the spftware except the software isn’t capable of these things. You aren’t even buying much of a product. All that is bought with the L5 is just further software development and hope that they don’t go bust and can keep developing the software to do things a phone should be capable of doing. I can probably not really live without signal so I may have to keep an old iphone 6 handy which is a bit brutally damaged but at least it is something. The L5 has had significant improvement with some of these tasks so maybe it will do phone things. Not too long ago, they had finally got phone calling so maybe there is hope. Also, I think I heard the microphone is pretty bad but yeah. Guess you can just keep funding this ‘vision’ of a product but I actually need a phone and can’t fork out so high.
My pinephone already is benefit a great deal from Purism since I use Phosh, calls and chatty on it. So the price has already been worth it for me.
If you don’t think it is worth the money, then simply don’t buy it. Easy as that. They offer a product for an asking price, nothing nefarious. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
That’s ok - and even if you later use the software co-financed by the phone I bought I am glad if you do - as my goal is to make linux phones a success
I’m glad for every pine phone that is sold, as for every librem 5. I see them as two project sides of the same coin. Every pine phone sold helps the librem 5 and vice versa as it’s the platform that must succeed.
Hope is fine, certificate is better (something that you can hold on as wild animals you cannot/shouldn’t catch with bare hands anyway). Furthermore, eating domestic cats and dogs is not allowed any more.
Ah, no, please don’t get me wrong, having fear from “wild animals” is something you have or you don’t. For some of us Purism is, for some time now, nurturing few months old pet to something dear to us (by choosing right HW and SW components to have necessary, INDIVIDUAL control over it). If someone favorite pet is called Chihuahua as a newborn and turn out to be, from very next day, mirror of yourself for the purpose (money) of/for someone else, I don’t mind either (but not up to my REAL taste) as long as they feed it afterwards (don’t think so). Does Volkswagen emissions scandal make their diesel cars cheaper (or much cheaper)? Is there any other, smartphone related scandal coming up as next or is it already surrounding us or how much is your brand new smartsoftwarephone, as we know it, worth (to YOU) very next day?
And, warning: if someone don’t like dogs (house pets in general), please just don’t watch. Anyway, as this phone call (by imagination) is free of charge (sort of), here is link to this funny “software” video (out of any serious topic content, of course): youtu.be/ hwXMHYHHtRg.
@user1, as last but not least (and as being an lost in space man), grown-ups MOTIVATION (includes knowladge) have no price (as you cannot buy it from … whoever), someone carry it with self and it is not likely to be shared allover and everywhere (just like love). Sharing good vibrations is not my thing either, just wanted to put “hope” or price issue here in another, real-life (homo homini lupus) surrounding context (even if hard to swallow).
@Quarnero omg haha ! you killed it … now it’s like whaaat ?
@user1 nobody is accusing you or anyone else for not being able to take a bold leap ahead with the L5 (because there has been a certain risk involved from the beginning).
most of the original backers understood what that risk is and how it’s consequences might manifest but still they decided to go ahead … we’re not out of the woods yet - certainly - but we’re still HANGING to what each of us hopes to get out of this and it turns out that people such as yourself will still benefit from our risk taking in the end even if the L5 v1 will end up being treated as just a museum piece (in the end all tech-gadgets end-up on WALL-E’s trailer shelf)
that being said i don’t actually believe that’s going to be the case (about the museum piece part) since in Purism own words “we stand on the shoulders of giants” … the only real DANGER would be if those giants decided to shrug but even then people as smart and as driven such as yourself would have a high chance of picking things up where they left of … would they not ? the 4 freedoms and all that GNU copyleft stuff …
You seem to have it backwards.
No, bulk orders are charged less per unit, because the packaging can be simpler per unit. You only need one data sheet for the whole order, rather than one for each unit. The roll he mentioned is cheaper than individual wrapping, again on a per-unit basis.
Not fair at all. It sounds like Purism INVENTED Linux!! Purism said it will work with others ( Ubports for example) to make this project happen. They didn’t bother to reach out Ubports when they where supposed to. This was supposed to be a Linux community NATURAL effort. If it has been costly for Purism to have a OS ready earlier for L5 that’s mismanagement on their part. Nobody should be charged extra money for it. This project was meant for elites who can pay for privacy and security without questioning like User1 is doing which is A HUGE mistake in this forum. I’m keeping my support to this project but Purism is not on my line of work. I’ll get the phone but I doubt it will stay with me for long. Not if Pine64 makes the Pinephone a real daily driver phone. This is a personal thing. I prefer the crowds to the elites. I can’t help it.
PD: If I sell my L5 later it’s going to be at the same price I paid for it. Keep in touch 
Dude you are playing with fire right now. I have done so since the creation of this forum account and I have been burned though I have sometimes learnt some important reasons. Be careful.
I think that for Purism to raise the L5 price before the phone takes-off and dazzles everyone would be a mistake for them. But for us, it shouldn’t be about what the phone costs them. It’s about what the phone is worth to us. If the phone costs them more than it’s worth to me, then I am out. If the phone does what I want at a price that I am willing to pay, then it doesn’t matter to me what Purism made from me on it.
At the same time, I pay a higher price and let the company do some pretty dysfunctional things without canceling, because I believe in their mission. As one person in this forum said several months ago “I do this because this phone needs to exist”.
The Pine phone is a different market. If you don’t care about the proprietary firmware blobs and what they mean, then you should buy a Pine phone. I want to be able to audit everything and to have access to edit any of it. The Pine phone specs are lower too. I spent one thousand dollars on a new Samsung Note 9 when I could have bought a $49 phone at Walmart. My daily digital life with the Note 9 is a totally different experience. I won’t know how the L5 feels until I get it. I’ll put up with some lower specs to gain my freedom from Google and Apple. I’ll learn what there is to learn from the L5 when I get it. Maybe I’ll buy a FIR version too after it releases and can ship right away. I hope I never need to buy another Android phone again (a deal with the devil). The Pine phone seems more like a toy than a real phone, even if it does make calls. I quickly lost interest in the Raspberry Pi too. There is something about a finished product with room for improvements that is also worth paying for. If I ordered a Pine phone tomorrow and it arrived in the mail the next day, it would be obsolete before I even opened the box. If all I want is a bash prompt, I can root my note 9, install a chroot in to it, and install ubuntu there. That works. I’ve done it. At best, you get a successful science experiment that provides a few marginally cool features and then you go back to the Android (where Google owns you) for everything else.
Spend a few extra bucks to get what you want. Let Purism make some money. If Purism makes some money and you get a new toy that you really like, it’ll be a win-win situation.