“you have no idea how important a free developed hardware” … on the contrary Christal I do understand the importance of open source hardware. I also understand the importance of decentralized technologies and applied cryptography. I worked as a full stack developer and architect for 30 years give or take. In that time I wold guestimate that 50% was spent in R&D. The bulk of this time was focused on decentralized solutions utilizing various at rest and in-transit cryptographic solution within layer 7.
I appreciate your zeal and passion for privacy and the threat that big tech and governments pose on us. I actually wish more younger folks felt the same. It is quite real.
“There may be manufactured Backdoors, but are really unlikely” and you know this how? Unless you are using 100% open source hardware you have no idea apart from putting wireshark or equivalent and packet sniffing… that is assuming in-transit is not encrypted ;-). Also, with a SIM of any type in the phone your are compromised to some degree irrespective of the hw/sw stack you are using.
You missed my point, and some of that is on me. I dropped nearly a grand on this phone because having a secure linux device in a cell phone form factor in my pocket sounded interesting. Of course I can (and do) put a raspberry pi in my pocket with hardened linux using only foss as well. I can also plug the pi into a CrowView and use it in a form factor i prefer to use.
If someone can tell me the secret of interfacing my Librem5 to a CrowView or equivalent that is not hit or miss I am all ears and will turn the thing back on. I truly hope open source sw/hw wins. I believe it will. But it will win because the rails that are built are decentralized peer to peer. Similar to how our money will eventually work (like BTC, XMR, ZEC…) on a much more wide stream peer to peer basis than today.
Keep up the fight for privacy. It is important more than ever.
Because technicians know that every hardware backdoor can be lost or make the device or human lost to some “foreign” hackers or A.I. - so its easy to have some software level of snitching above like a root kid or collecting telemetry… that every times push some health status of human and computer device to some other and non expected kind of normal predicted future can be measured.
I am sick of the complex level. We are here because we have some debug and personalized just in time debug and observation level only activated by some higher special case of malfunctioning only some A.I. or agents from different country match on some hardware and software mix, to focus on some expecting future or maybe changed mind can be influenced by a fist privet device which itself may be focused on changing behavior if some Influencer use it.
I am for open source too, but we need to focus on less lines of code and ram usage too, and working offline. Encryption is fine but its just a temporary layer. In future it will be broken and data will be kind of a leak - so you have to think about computers like a snitching friend or family or A.I. is still there.
Add: I do not know what CrowView is… a portable Display? If it helps there some portable Keyboards and Displays out there which work with the L5, i did not test it but read about it. Like a docking station for notebooks. Yes open source will win every match.. because its like language and math or knowledge: communicative.
I gave up few months after I received the phone. I don’t have problem with the hardware but the software is absolutely rubbish. Phone can’t even read contacts from SIM card. So I would have to manually re-make each contact in L5. Bluetooth works only in one direction. I can receive files but I cannot send anything. When I plug L5 into my PC it doesn’t give me an option to access its storage. So I can’t easily move files between my devices. Regardless whether I use Windows or Linux. Most of the applications have problems with not fitting into the screen. So I open something and then I can’t close the pop up because the side of the window is cut off.
On top of all that battery life of 12 hours is just unacceptable. In conclusion this smartphone can’t do any of the smart things. The only thing that works well is calling and texting.
UK is switching off all 3G towers at the end of this year so my Blackberry Q10 will become useless soon. I bought Fairphone 6 with /E as a compromise between freedom and convenience.
FWIW I have finally given up on pine64 since my PPpro failed and then the modem failed on the replacement board. Librem 5 incoming because I have not ever used a user-abuser OS on a mobile device and before that it was all dumb phones. I just hope the Librem 5 is faster than a allwinner cpu Pinephone. Fun trivia I was the one who added the first hardware kill switches and was involved in the hacker bus I2C connection on the GDC Neo900 project Specs - Neo900
I want a phone that is not crackable using a cellbright dongle, I want a fully encrypted file system, I need a phone that respects me the user and is not designed to satisfy the needs of a government or a mobile phone service provider.
Is there any project on the horizon that really can do this other than pine or librem projects? And I specifically disqualify hardware projects that use lobotomized android install with the blob drivers and a libhybris or similar to attach a Linux distro to the stump.
If I give up, where exactly am I supposed to go? Or do I do like R.M.S. told me he does when I was asking for advice for the Neo900; he doesn’t use a mobile phone at all and has a pre-Intel Management Engine CPU IBM thinkpad laptop.
Unfortunately mine is partially broken, the pcb for usb seems to be broken or another fault. Display out is not working anymore and charging defaults at slow charging.
I think my time with it is over
But the path of mobile linux and open hardware hast just begun and I will take on my found solutions and hacks I got from the experience! I hope to see the next iteration in the near future. Keep it going on!
Can confirm too. My phone had the same issues (no video out, slow charging) after getting caught in the rain. I ordered a new USB board and replaced it myself. Disassembly and reassembly wasn’t the easiest, but manageable.
