It seems that with each update to my Librem5 (now on the Crimson release), more things work more poorly. Today’s particular annoyance is the now noticeable lag between tapping a conversation in the chat app and the thread actually being displayed. Also it doesn’t ever scroll to the end, even after I hit “send” on a just-typed message. Now, I can no longer type in a phone # for a new text message by reading an existing conversation, which I could previously. Even though both the main window and the new message window are both shown in the task list, tapping the main window shows only the child window. So I cannot use chat as a reference while I create a new message to a new number.
Next in line is the significantly increased power burn, especially during phone calls, so my phone is practically a cook stove. Don’t even think about disconnecting power during a call.
In my fantasy world, software should become easier to use with each new release. Changing the interface and task flow does not make it easier. An update should behave the same or better.
I’m actively looking for something other than PureOS to load onto my phone to be able to use it reliably. Gnome is a very poor choice for a phone “desktop”, IMO.
What is your uptime like? Have you restarted your device after installing updates? I haven’t experienced these slowdowns and in general, my experience has improved since upgrading to Crimson
New failure: tried to dial 911 last night, and after 30-45 seconds the 4G icon went dark, then after another 30-45 seconds, the signal strength bars greyed out, while phone indicated “Calling…”.
It just keeps getting worse. Now it isn’t even functioning as a backup/emergency device.
I use PostmarketOS and I am on their most recent stable version. It works quite well for me.
Reflashing is probably a good idea anyway.
I have found that relatively frequent reflashing is just part of the game with the Librem 5. I do not like it, but that is how I feel.
It is interesting because the freedom to do what you want with it means, for me, breaking something in the software every 3-4 months. I admit to a lack of sufficient Linux skill (sometimes) to fix the otherwise fixable problem. I try, but when in doubt, I just reflash it.
Are Purism products really that experimental that “reflashing” is the way forward in the face of unwanted behavior? If so, I will have to rethink my reliance on them.
Next question: is there a typical expected battery life for the Librem5? With only chatty, a terminal, and the text editor open, mine is now draining in just a few hours.
From the perspective of an internet rando, who doesn’t know the history of what has happened on your phone, and who doesn’t see exactly what is occurring on your phone, it can be that reflashing is the most expeditious approach.
If nothing else, imaging the phone (so that it can be restored later), then reflashing, then retesting the troublesome behaviour, then restoring the phone … can be useful fault isolation.
If you are not otherwise using the µSD card, you may be able to shortcut that process by reflashing onto the µSD card. Then you can retest troublesome behaviour just by booting from the µSD card.
When powering on the device, hold the Volume-down button.
If going down that route then you don’t need to either image the phone or reflash the phone. (Hence the only other required task would be creating a suitable µSD card, which you would do on a host computer, before shutting down your Librem 5 and inserting the µSD card therein, then booting from µSD card whenever desired. I’ll see whether I can come up with some instructions for you.)
I did the opposite of reflashing. I have one installation of phosh PureOS that came with my first liberty phone in late 2023, and since then if I dropped or damaged the phone I ordered another and then bit-for-bit imaged the same files and system onto the new handset memory. So I kept using the same configuration as it aged.
But this also means I never broke it. I never have used an L5 to call emergency services, and I dont install flatpaks in general and keep my software coming from apt on command line, or use browser apps, or write my own apps to solve problems.
