Let’s not jump to conclusions. 
It says “Based on current projections, we will start shipping Evergreen to customers mid-to-late November 2020”. The projections could turn out to be very far off (that happened before). Also, even if they start shipping Evergreen before christmas, are you sure you are first in line? How long will it take from the start of Evergreen shipping until all the several thousands of preorders have been shipped?
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If it takes 6 months to ship all the Evergreen preorders, then Purism won’t be producing the phone in the most economical manner. It will cost Purism less to produce all the Evergreens in one large production batch than in many small production batches over six months. The most economical way to do this is to produce a small initial batch to catch any flaws that need to be corrected, then to produce all the rest in one large production batch.
Purism can raise capital through Kickfuther (which it has already done 8 times), if it needs capital to manufacture the Librem 5 in one large batch. The question is whether the software on the Librem 5 will be at a good enough state that the release of the phone will generate a bunch of new orders in order to pay back Kickfurther with interest. If the software isn’t ready, then I expect that the initial reviews will be poor and there won’t be many new orders after Evergreen is released, so Purism will be forced to produce in small batches as it slowly collects more funds to pay for more production.
PS: Of course, I’m speculating here, so take everything I say with heaping dose of salt.
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I think the bottleneck is not the production of the batch in China but the final integration of modem and expedition in USA.
All Evergreen L5 can be produced by the end of November but Purism can take 6 mouth to send the 4-5000 pre-order.
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Probably by the time Evergreen ships. The Linux Gamer says that cameras are next on Purism’s list and the last change log shows that Martin Kepplinger is working on the cameras:
[ Martin Kepplinger ]
- arm64: dts: imx8mq-librem5-r3: fix camera_pwr gpio
- arm64: dts: imx8mq-librem5: camera1: add more useful comment.
It’s obviously a placeholder and disabled, no need to write that down.- arm64: dts: imx8mq-librem5: camera2: fix i2c address and add VCM.
The rear facing camera is at 0x10 on the bus, not 0x2d. Also, descibe
the voice coil motor we have.– Guido Günther agx@sigxcpu.org Tue, 18 Aug 2020 12:14:44 +0200
When I asked Guido Gunther on Mastadon about the MIPI CSI2 interface for the cameras, he said:
@amosbatto #imx8mq CSI2 for mainliine is still being worked on (as is mhdp for DisplayPort HDMI) by various parties but the diff has become more and more reasonable.
Gunther is talking about the difference between NXP’s kernel for the i.MX 8M and the mainline Linux kernel. Purism is having to take pieces out of NXP’s kernel and put them into the Librem 5’s kernel, but these changes take a while to get into mainline Linux, and the mainline Linux devs often want to implement things in a different way than NXP.
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Not to mention that “shipped by Purism” is not equal to “received by customer”.
There are postal delays. There may still be COVID delays. Where relevant, there are Customs delays.
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from the moment the INDIVIDUAL customer receives an official shipping notice from Purism that should only take 1-2 weeks if the said customer uses a serious shipping company that can ALSO mediate the customs processing on his/her behalf …
that being said the WHO has said that they expect COVID deaths in the cold-season … so that hammer is supposed to fall nonetheless as that seems to be the PLAN … during the summer they’ve hammered the media with CASES and then it’ll be DEATHs non-stop …
With all the people at home iso-shopping, transport companies and postal systems and, to a lesser extent, Customs are snowed under - just at the very time when some of their workers in some of their locations are unavailable.
I ordered something from overseas recently and received the shipment notice 24 calendar days ago, and counting, …
Another item the shipment notice suggested that I allow 15 to 25 days for delivery. Don’t even know whether that was calendar or business. Either way … delays.
Pretty sure it won’t be collected and pre-paid by Purism (as it would be for your Amazons), so that means at minimum, a demand for payment from the Customs agent and you have to make the payment. If you miss the contact or can’t do it immediately, that could be a day or two even with the agent doing the “form-filling”.
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in addition stocking fees if you allow the package to rest with the customs for more than 4 days (that’s how it is in my case) … speaking of which gotta split - pay my customs taxes and all that filling of paper-work
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I love the progress. I love that nothing seems to be holding the Librem 5 from becoming better. I want to thank the development team whole heartedly. You all are doing choice work that is going to benefit all Linux users.
I know some are especially anxious for camera functionality, but the thing that is the most important to me is the suspend to RAM functionality. I believe once that is accomplished there will be time to fix everything else.
Very much looking forward to getting mine and getting it all setup just my Librem laptop.
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It seems like it would be advantageous to Purism to set up a bit of a new marketing campaign of secondary products that go with the L5, shortly before they start shipping the Evergreen L5 in mass. They could farm out the production of those secondary products if they want to.
I wouldn’t mind loading up and buying from an online Purism shopping cart with an order for overnight shipping for my L5 (a shipping upgrade), an L5 case with belt clip and screen protector, another modem (the type that I didn’t pick to go with my phone), an extra phone battery and external charger, and maybe even a Librem 5 t-shirt.
I’ve already considered my payment of the L5 gone for some time now. So I wouldn’t really notice spending a few extra bucks (maybe a lot of extra bucks now if they market things correctly) on accessories to go with the phone. When I buy a new phone at Verizon or T-Mobile, I usually leave their store loaded up with the accessories that I will need to go with the phone that I just bought. Why should Purism walk away from those kinds of profits for themselves from the L5? Any enterprising person might be tempted to do this if Purism doesn’t do it, if they only had advanced access to the L5 case, and an exact knowledge of how many pre-orders there are, as Purism does.
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Why suspend to RAM is so important?
In this mode, all activities are stopped, no? As I understand it, it’s like to shutdown the smartphone but with a shorter booting time at the wake-up.
Similar to your computer there are things which can wake the system from suspend. They can be network activity, WOL packages, timers, or clicking on a mouse or keyboard.
Suspend to RAM is low hanging fruit that would allow the L5 to go a full day or longer. My needs for what could wake the L5 from suspend are very limited. Only incoming calls or text messages. Everything else (emails, chat, etc.) can all wait until I wake the phone again. This is probably the difficult part. Getting the phone to resume fast enough to handle the incoming call, etc.
However with this working the development team doesn’t need to nickle and dime every bit of power savings into the phone. It gives the development team time to focus on other things, like the camera, for example.
With suspend to RAM we have the ultimate high breed of the mobile world. It is basically a tablet laptop with cellular functionality and smartphone format.
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I totally agree, great idea
Ok, I understand better your need.
I hope that power management progress will be enough to have a use more closed to traditional smartphone.
Today I use more chat app like Matrix than SMS, and suspend to RAM will not be useful in this use-case.
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@Kyle_Rankin
given the doubts that exist, could Kyle be more specific and descriptive? that is, are all buyers of the Librem5 in the crowfunding campaign covered by the November shipment?
regards
I agree - I also moved from calling and texting to calls and chat via matrix. But as @2disbetter mentioned wakeonlan packages… maybe it would be possible to let the matrix home server also send packages and let the librem 5 wake up upon them to show an incoming call?
Having the librem 5 not wake up on such events would in my opinion contradict the “IP-Native Communication First” selling point.
https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
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While we intend to scale up our shipping/fulfillment team to meet the surge of pre-ordered phones, I can’t commit to how fast that team will be able to process orders at this point. I also imagine if it’s like past experiences with, for instance, the devkit, things will start out a bit slower and then accelerate as tasks become second nature and we continue to find better efficiencies in our process.
For instance, I helped with the devkit shipment. At first it took me quite some time to connect those incredibly tiny and delicate WiFi antennas. About 50 antennas in I got really good at it and by the end I was incredibly fast at it.
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With respect to power management, we have been prioritizing runtime power management over suspend right now because we want you to be able to use the phone for a long time. Having a phone last in your pocket all day is nice, but is less valuable if you can only actually use the phone for a couple hours. A lot of phones out there have nice idle times but don’t last all that long if you are actually using them. My laptop can be suspended for days, but I’d be upset if it only lasted for 4 hours when I was using it.
We know that suspend will come and when it does it will help with in-the-pocket idle time, but there are still a lot of “low hanging fruit” with respect to active power consumption we are focusing on first because in the end it will be more valuable for all use cases.
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Indeed, and even just turning the screen off with good idle power management will allow it to last a decent amount longer.
Absolutely. If there is plenty of low hanging fruit to pick, go for it all. I don’t mean to say that suspend to RAM is more important than usage time.
Heck if I can get full day usage without any kind of traditional suspend scenario, that would be even better! Still being able to suspend or hibernate my phone will just be cool.
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