It’s been 4 years and still haven’t gotten the phone. Either I get a refund or I contact my lawyers and start a class action lawsuit. I know there are many people here that has been scammed like myself
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Buddy you’re about to get your phone if it’s been 4 years. You’ll just make a bunch of lawyer richer. You funded the development of this phone, it was not a ready off the shelf product and still isn’t. You should have just stuck with the tracking devices and saved your money.
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No comment
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No consolation, but I am sure you will find a buyer on here if you want to sell it when you get!!!
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I take this with a grain of salt, but Purism’s latest update indicates that people who preordered the L5 should get it before the end of the year:
The Librem 5 will begin shipping in larger quantities starting in a month or so and continuing throughout the rest of 2022. We have set an internal goal to ship all existing orders before the end of 2022.
As the software improves, I expect that the L5 to become more useful over time. Even if you don’t want to wait, you will probably be able to resell your L5 for more than you paid originally, because of Purism’s price hikes. The other thing to keep in mind is that the lifetime software updates will probably help the phone retain its resale value if you decide to sell it later. Given the performance tradeoffs with the i.MX Quad Plus that presumably will be used in the future Fir batch and the software issues/energy consumption of the PinePhone Pro, I expect the L5 (Evergreen) to maintain is resale value for many years, just like the Nokia N900 did.
Like everyone, I’m disappointed by how long it has taken to ship the hardware, but the project has done better than I expected in terms of software development. Purism has created new software for the Librem 5 that contain a total of 303k lines of code:
$ python3 locPurism.py
Lines of code in Purism's projects for the Librem 5:
libhandy: 48035
libadwaita: 66095
calls: 25893
chatty: 47668
squeekboard: 21263
libcall-ui: 4678
proc: 21437
phosh: 54919
feedbackd: 6035
feedbackd-device-themes: 953
gtherm: 1734
haegtesse: 2105
wys: 2442
Total lines of code: 303257
Because of Purism’s dev work, GTK/GNOME is becoming adaptive (works on any sized screen) and better supports touch screens. Phosh is now the most popular Linux mobile interface, and is incorporated into most of the major desktop distros (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch/Manjaro), so they can run on mobile devices (that have Linux support). Purism paid for dev work on ModemManager, so we now have decent support for cellular modems in Linux (rather than having to use buggy oFono).
The most important thing is this dev work is being done in collaborative projects that are more sustainable in the long run, unlike much of the dev work on mobile Linux done by Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Mozilla and Canonical in the past that was largely siloed, and couldn’t be sustained once those companies gave up on mobile Linux. I think that Purism has avoided many of the mistakes made by the previous attempts at commercial mobile Linux.
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Just saw this email myself - since it’s just a goal I guess theoretically something could happen and things could slip again, but it still sounds like awesome news.
Well, hopefully this idiocy with Nutty Pelosi flying over there causing whatever diplomatic incidents with China has no impact to anything, as it should…
Off-Topic:
If a conflict China - Taiwan happens, we can forget about any products using electronics for quite some time.
And this would be the result of our own reckless stupidity to put everything on one single source.
It is like building all data centers in the World in just one city. And then a Tsunami or an earthquake or whatever happens.
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Well so far so good, I guess. I don’t really expect anything of consequence to happen, probably just political circus. It’d really suck to come all this way and then have the rug pulled from under us again…
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In all these years I’ve been waiting for this phone, it must have been at least the 15th “expected” date. None of them have turned out to be accurate. The lack of availability of parts is of course no fault of purism, but the fact that they don´t even offer a regular refund for a device that’s 4(!) years too late is inexcusable. (telling people they’ll get a refund when their “place in the queue” has questionable at best).
There’s at least two sides to this:
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On the one hand purism made some decisions that they shouldn’t have: could not get the parts, with no indication of availability, but instead of being up front about their inability to manufacture devices people have paid for they tell their customers their orders will be postponed. I think there’s nothing I can say about this that hasn’t already been said.
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On the other hand, if it wasn’t for this somewhat misleading move, no one would have ever gotten a fully libre linux phone.
Since i do feel a necessity for such devices, i have strong opinions for both sides of the coin here.
All in all, because no one knows how many devices are sold, the previous update about a container of librem 5’s lined up for shipping was pretty meaningless to anyone wanting to know if they could expect their phone or not. The current update, again, does not list any concrete information regarding the availability of parts, just that “the cpu is available” again. And everyone just needs to hope there’s enough to fulfill the entire backlog.
in the first few months I was excited about every update i got, hoping that I would see the device any time soon, so that it would allow me early entry in to the market of adaptive linux applications. That plan didn’t work out, and for two years I’ve already felt that “i’ve waited too long to cancel it now”.
At some point I had enough, I asked for a refund. The first response was quick, but in it, i was told that a refund will only be submitted when my place in the queue has been reached (as mentioned above). When I asked about an estimate(which i think was a reasonable question to ask), my e-mail was flat-out ignored. twice! Now, after all this time, I know I’ll get a device that still doesn’t last a day on a battery, still has issues with basic calling functionality, still has overheating issues when charging and does not have a functional gps.
That’s been my experience with purism, a company that prides itself on having sold many devices for some time, and therefore has “experience” in manufacturing and distribution.
Personally I would not recommend anyone to ever buy something from purism for these reasons, I couldn’t do that in good conscience. Their goal however of building a fully libre phone is still great, the hardware itself is still best in class, I just wish things would have transpired a little more “professionally” so to say. But i guess it is what it is.
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You aren’t alone. I requested a refund for an order (apparently in limbo) almost two months ago and have had exactly zero response from anyone at Purism except from my support contact (who has been a good communicator) despite repeated attempts to reach the right folks. He says he passed my request along, but no one has even had the courtesy to reply, let alone actually offer help.
It says a lot about a company producing a phone that contact numbers are not available anywhere on the site.
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I ordered min Oct 2019 and last week got an email saying all back orders should be fulfilled by the end of 2022. You are on the home stretch now I think. Don’t give up!
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Sadly, I have heard these kind of assurances before. My “expected” ship date has shifted steadily backwards, so I cannot trust any of them I am hearing now. If I could get a commitment of a shipped unit or a guaranteed refund on or before a given date, I would be willing to wait. But I cannot even get any kind of response whatsoever from Purism.
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I wish you were right. But I’m already dreading the day the battery dies. Purism says it won’t sell me a new battery because I’m overseas. Nor are there any reputable alternatives for a L5 battery.
My phone is essentially going to be a brick with near-zero resale value. (I know, it’s not Purism’s fault and I can still tether it to the wall or have it shipped to the US and back for repair. But I suppose few buyers are going to put up with that hassle.)
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I see many batteries for sale on ebay for the Librem 5, more batteries than actual phones for sale there.
See this thread for a first-hand account of what you’re signing up for if you buy a L5 battery from a third-party seller.
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I purchased mine in May 2018 and I already have it. It arrived last month. I don’t know what your number in the queue is, but you’ve probably waited less than I have.
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Already? Only 4+ years later? That’s amazing!
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If you pay them a lot more for a “USA” version then you’ll get it straight away.
The lesson here should be: never pre-order anything and, especially, never again buy anything from Purism.
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Pre-orders were done in 2017, I ordered somewhere in the beginning of 2019. That wasn’t a preorder, just a regular order 
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