Email from Purism, thank you Purism šŸ™‚

And surprise - itā€™s a robot and no animal. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Just a side note: Every device thatā€™s ā€œsmartā€ (like smartphone) is against user rights and not owned by users. So I would say L5 is no smartphone at all. Call it pocket computer (like I do), call it minipc, call it just (mobile) phone ā€¦ all is closer then smartphone.

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Well Purism calls it a phone soā€¦

But then Purism also calls it The General Purpose Computer In Your Pocket :wink:

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Yes Kyle does, but I was referring to the actual Purism page where they describe it as a phone.:wink:

Amazing the silly things that get debated on this form. :rofl:

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I also used this term in my post. :wink:

I think this thread had better: It's a phone ... but what is it? :upside_down_face:

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It looks like youā€™re assuming Iā€™m one of the people who want a refund. No, I want the damn phone already. (And it looks like my dogwood preorder counts for nothingā€¦same timeframe as people ordering new.)

EDIT: Iā€™m talking about the Librem5 USA I switched to hereā€¦I didnā€™t realize this was a regular Librem5 topic.

Todd said (among other statements):

ā€œā€¦We will send a separate email later in September to each of you with a firm delivery date for your Librem 5 order. ā€¦ā€

Has someone already received such email? Ok, September isnā€™t still gone fully.

Thanks

I am also curious about this. Will L5USA orders also be getting this email?

Unfortunately, by that logic, it would still be a drop in the ocean of Windows phones owned by all the Windows users of the world. :joy:

Nah, Purism has a problem. It needs to charge these outrageous prices because otherwise they would lose money. But in raising the prices to this point, theyā€™re pricing their device out of many potential customersā€™ budget. And if we factor in that the phone is currently not even ā€œfinishedā€ (software still lagging, abysmal battery time until they address that through a kernel patch), it becomes an even harder sell.

Right now, I can imagine a lot of people waiting to see what happens. Before investing in the platform, they want to know whether it will take off, and whether more affordable devices will materialise in the future. At $600, those concerns were present as well, but more people could justify the expense.

And then thereā€™s also the Pinephone, which may be less capable, and not as fanatic about security-hardening their hardware, butā€¦ For $1300, you can now get 8 regular PinePhones, or 6 PinePhones with the Convergence Pack, and still have money left over. And undoubtedly, more competition will emerge once the platform has proven thereā€™s an actual demand. And a lot of that competition will be taking sales away from Purism, while simultaneously profiting from Purismā€™s software efforts that created the market in the first place, without contributing back.

At a lower price point, more people may bite. But at a lower price point, Purism will go out of business. At the current price point, fewer will bite. And because of that, Purism may still be faced with the difficult choice between abandoning the project, losing the company altogether, or trying to find the balance between slowly improving the phone while also remaining financially viable. I think the latter is their current modus operandi, as they grossly underestimated the cost and effort required, or overestimated their working budget.

Not an enviable position, for sure.

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An idea for a market strategy at this point could be a kind of partnership. Yes, Purism did do all the heavy lifting up to now (sourcing, planning, engineering, developing, marketing, ā€¦), but if they lose this phone business, all the work up to now will have been done for others at best, and for nothing at least.

Given that Purism has built up the know-how on this kind of open phone thingy, external partners would be glad to not need to invent the wheel again. Being first is always hardest, being second is way easier.

A well chosen partner, maybe in another region (EU might be advantageous because of potential market size and harmonized regulations and market rules) could speed up the market placement of the phone and therefore speed up further development.

There are reasons if Android has had such an enormous market acceptance, and some of them might be replicated. I personally hope this particular Linux ecosystem succeeds on smartphone devices, but obviously in a market economy any economic venture has to play by the rules of the market.

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I was today asked by Purism to confirm my shipping address and the modem type. My order dates are October 7 and 9 of 2017.

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Sorry if I missed this, but this is not for L5-USA, right?

Edit: I mean for @guruā€™s order

The package is within DHL for one of my orders. Hurrrrrah! Thank you, Purism!

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I was asked yesterday by Purism to confirm my shipping address and the modem type. My order date is October 7 of 2017

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Please post your dates in structured form here: Estimate your Librem 5 shipping
and update it, when mail/shipment arrives. We collect the data there,

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anybody else have not yet received the email from Purism? I know I know, still a few hours left to September on the USAā€™s west coast, but this is cutting it closeā€¦

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Still waiting here as well! Maybe the person hitting the Send button is in Hawaii. That would tack on another hour or two :grinning:

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Ay, still waiting to hear from my old order too. At this point Iā€™d settle for an update and re-evaluation of previous statement. Iā€™m kinda missing the monthly development update but would also like to get a monthly or bi-weekly message about how production is going - just to know it is.

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It seems production has started up again, though, or at least shipping has, as people are starting to post about receiving their phones. Probably just kicking into gear now.