I keep coming back to this statement and worrying about how Librem 5 will go for you in this case.
I just got into bed and I’m writing you from my Librem 5. It’s actually not my Librem 5, because after I initially used my Librem 5 at some point I made a choice that I wanted what this thing stands for at any cost. So I bought a “Liberty Phone” which is the bigger and better Librem 5 (in terms of specs and capabilities). Using these has been such a saga. There’s duct tape on my phone that I’m writing from right now. Do you want to know why?
To know whether a Librem 5 is right for you depends highly on your computer skillset and what you want the device to perform. I graduated at/near the top of my class in a computer software related bachelor’s degree half a dozen years ago. Smart phones were almost always a joke to me. I’m a computer user; the “smart” phones to me seemed simply like worse computers. I got my first one when I started my degree program, when someone else gave me a $100 junk Android based on the idea that I was “supposed” to have one of these. I’m the type of person that would turn off the autocorrect. I want it to do what I want. Within my first year of having one of those, I changed the notification sound to “HEY! LISTEN!” from that little fairy in the Zelda games when I was a kid. It was so hilariously annoying but epitomized my perspective on what these devices are and what they do.
What is your phone for? Can you give a specific answer to that question?
I used those old Androids as a way to have access to SMS, and to have convenient internet access from more locations. That’s about it. It’s other uses were mostly stupid. In my last year at university, I changed phone plan providers and got a more powerful luxury Android phone. With my new provider, it’s been possible for me to text and call with a computer now for almost a decade. Last time I spoke with their customer support, they informed me that Librem 5 is not compatible with their cellular service, but what Big Brother doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
When my Liberty Phone arrived, my job “upgraded” that same weekend to a new system that required Android or iOS app as the only way to “securely” log in to work. They forced me to get a past-end-of-life piece of junk with a busted screen out of a drawer to log in, because using my Made in America $2000 phone wasn’t good enough for their programmers. They use a software login constructed by Microsoft, so for some reason it wasn’t possible for their software to support operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Linux as a “secure” means to log in. Then, it was published in the news that this same login system had a vulnerability known internally to Microsoft for years, which Microsoft kept secret because fixing it would’ve cost too much money, resulting in the U.S. department of energy (nuclear weapons) and FBI/CIA/etc all getting hacked by foreign adversaries because of what Microsoft knowingly sold to the government. And that same “secure” login is why I had to get my broken-screen, foreign made end of life Android out of the drawer to log into work.
And this is how I arrive at my sort of paranoid opinion that the purpose of “phones” appears to be to construct a global dominion over all the humans and not anything that I actually need. I generally prefer desktop computers.
So, I say that I have been using my Librem 5 for almost 1 year and 10 months. But when my phone rings, I find out 6 hours later when I check the call history in my service provider’s web portal on my Librem 14 laptop. If I need to call someone, I plug a headset in the Librem 14 and use it to make the call. In order to ensure their global dominion, the phone providers artificially throttle Librem 5’s when calling, or something. But a Librem 14 has a big processor and mine has a lot of RAM, so the call goes through fine. In 2006 we were able to do 6 hour Skype calls on pentium chips in large PC towers with half the RAM of a Liberty Phone today, and probably a lower clock speed. I don’t really know why the other side of my call would say my Librem 5 would have bad audio quality if it wasn’t something they did intentionally. I can play music on my Librem 5 uninterrupted for hours, or record audio fine with the camera app, or stream 1080p video when docked to a monitor or TV to prove the internet works.
I stopped receiving texts on the Librem 5 a few months ago. I don’t care about that anymore, really. I open Firefox on my Librem 5 and check texts in the web portal of my provider. This also allows WiFi based texting, which is convenient and requires less battery, so that I can typically keep the modem physical switch off anyway. If I roam away from WiFi out and about, I kill the WiFi switch and engage the modem, usually using it for data only anyway and then just keeping that same Firefox window up.
I attended a seminar back in my days as a university student where a former NASA engineer explained the revolution in ARM processor battery optimizations utilized by iOS to achieve more or less the same function output but without requiring constant energy supply from the battery. I wish I had taken better notes. I’m guessing the Librem 5 compiled the desktop Linux kernel ported to ARM without these optimizations, whereas the Android fork of the Linux kernel most likely includes them. What this means is that the Librem 5 burns battery power up like a laptop, not like a phone. The Librem 5 battery lists its storage at around 4400 mA or some similar unit if I recall, whereas my previous busted Android had only 4000 of the same units when I looked it up. Despite this, the Librem 5 battery goes for 7ish hours without use, 4-5ish hours without use if the modem switch is on, and less if I’m actively doing stuff – but the old Android can stay powered on for 3 days in airplane mode. That’s been a big issue for a lot of people on this forum.
But I don’t have that problem anymore because I made it go away. As I was about to get into bed to write this post for you and share a brain dump to warn you about the choice to financially lock yourself into Librem 5, I picked up my Librem 5 and realized it had run out of battery idling today and shut off. But I wanted to sit with the phone in bed and write you this message.
So I opened my bag. Last night I got home from a 7 hour bus trip at 2 am. In my bag I had 4 Librem 5 phone batteries, and 2 chargers. I had forgotten to charge any of the batteries today, but I checked all four with the chargers and one of them still had a charge! So, using chargers lying around my messy room – I have about 8 of them, more chargers than batteries, because the chargers cost $8 on Amazon but seem to break apart easily – I loaded up the 3 dead batteries from last night and the dead battery from my phone, to each their own wall charger, then I slapped the good battery into my phone and hopped into bed.
Historically, ripping the back off of my Librem 5 twice daily to switch the battery – so that I could always have the phone at the ready, and never wait while I leave it plugged in – was a behavior that actually damaged the molded plastic backplates Purism ships with these devices. They kept ripping apart.
And so we circle back to understanding why there is duct tape on my phone. I asked an LLM to suggest a fabrication site to me, then paid the #1 suggestion to make me a replacement backplate for the Librem 5 with a 3D printer. This 3D printed nylon is more powerful and doesn’t rip even if I pop it off and on everyday. But the downside is that the 3D printer was creating from the Purism STEP file they published (in the spirit of open source hardware) which was clearly originally designed to use in molding plastic. So on the fine details, the 3D print never quite fit right. But with duct tape to enlarge the physical tabs that attach – adhesive down so its not adhesing the backplate on, just making its tabs fatter basically – in such case the 3D printed back stays on yet is more easily removable than the original Purism backplate.
It’s honestly been really great using the 3D printed one.
Anyway, ever-increasing use of GNU/Linux in my life made me a terminal junkie, and so I often whip out my phone and do stuff in the terminal emulator. I’m not sure what I would do without that and I’m dubious that I could ever stand to go back to Android.
So I am a Librem 5 user, but maybe this is a consequence of inputting a large supply of money to demand this luxury. If we understand that the purpose of phones is to build global dominion over all the humans, and if you try to fight that then you will be made to suffer by the system – and if you’re okay locking yourself into that suffering with the limited money you say you have, because it’s worth it to you to pursue freedom from undemocratic global dominion – then this might be the phone for you.
Edit:
I reviewed this message for spelling and made a few corrections. My Librem 5 has gone from back around 70-80 percent or whatever when I got in bed, now to 25% from all this constant typing. [As you may see, I also made some other forum posts before this one from bed on this charge.] So, I’m probably going to power it off and set it down and rest. I hope that I have helped you to make good choices.
If you, too, are only allowed to do your work by logging in with Android or iOS, I can tell you that it’s about $400 per year for a high end VPS running Android that is always on in the cloud waiting for when you need to pretend you have one of those.
Goodnight, and good luck with your mobile phone situation.