That is an input, not an output. It is a very noble thing and quite commendable, but at the end of the day - most People will look at the final deal. PinePhone can copy. They get same benefits. That is an output. The real world works a bit different to intentions sometimes.
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I think there is a flaw in the expectation that things will always run smoothly or get increasingly better. Like expecting simple system behavior in a complex system. The component shortage and leadtimes have become worse again. As a happenstance, I note that Broadcom gets mentioned, which may particularly effect L5 (and set it apart from PP). Of course, that is a general report, and based on averages, so reality varies (by size as well, as has been argued - and likely not for better), so fluctuations have to be expected. These do not explain everything away, but do give a more realistic base and some explanation for current situation.
And, just give some perspective and as a reminder, we’ve had this same and similar argument and argumentation on this forum a few times now over the years. You can search the forum. Comes and goes as new people start queuing and go through the pretty similar and fairly predictable pattern (something like excitement, hope, frustration, anger, bargaining, rationalization, re-contextualization… inner balance either via renewed hope through changing expectations or giving up / moving on - very broadly speaking).
Welcome to the support group. We should have jackets or something 
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I wish more of us acknowledged exactly that, and stopped comparing a phone that depends on an automotive SoC to a phone that doesn’t.
A more reasonable interpretation is that when Purism started shipping Evergreen in Nov. 2020, it deliberately limited its production, because it didn’t yet have working cameras, which was necessary for FCC certification. By the time it got FCC certification in July 2021 and was ready to do mass production, it was facing a 6 month lead time to get the i.MX 8M Quad processor and the automotive-grade Micron RAM it was using, because it had the bad luck to select components which are heavily used by the automotive industry that has huge shortages and long lead times. Getting the i.MX 8M Quad got even harder and that lead time turned into 12 months in Q3 2021, so Purism is only able produce in small batches. Purism recently got a new production batch of 1160 phones that it just started to ship, and it shipped out a similar sized batch in Sep-Nov 2021.
Based on that info, a 12 month wait time to get a new L5 order looks more likely than the 3-4 years that you are predicting.
I think that Purism planned to do exactly what you are advocating (ship the hardware then provide software updates to make it functional), but it first had to get FCC certification before it could start ordering a lot of production batches, and once it got that certification, it got caught by the global parts shortage, so it couldn’t do the frequent production batches that it planned. At least, that is my interpretation of what happened, but it would be nice if Purism would tell us if that is what happened.
I doubt that stopping the software dev work would make any difference in how fast Purism can deliver the phones, since this is a parts supply problem. The software developers have nothing to do with the assembly of the L5’s in China or the shipping of the phones from Carlsbad, California. They do help the support team to solve customer problems, but that is after the phones are shipped.
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If you folks want another data point, I ordered mine on 2017-11-09 and was told that my place in the queue was ready on 2020-12-23. I chose to wait for FCC/CE certification and was then told on 2022-04-12 that it was being shipped. It arrived today (2022-04-18) and thus begins the task of shovelling KDE into my phone. Because I hate Gnome.
So that’s a 3 year lag time for a “normal” order or a ~4.5 year lag time after having chosen to wait for it to pass tests (plus get whatever bugfixes would have arisen in the meantime). Take that how you will.
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I decided to post too for 1st time more as a way to organize my thoughts than anything else.
- HW gets obsolete. What Purism is doing in offering long term support etc is great and commendable but there are so many things beyond their control. Very simple example - one of the things I use my phone for most these days is browsing internet and this is the single biggest driver for me personally to upgrade HW (besides gaming of course ) . Web gets heavier and pretty fast - maybe it’s the ads, new technologies or something else I have no idea, but it’s why my old devices I love are gathering dust now (N900, Pocket Chip…)
L5 specs were let’s say acceptable 4 years ago when I placed my order but are quite pitiful today. This is not complaining about its price performance or anything I’m just afraid that when I finally get it will already be an impractical toy for me.
Also I understand they cannot just re-spec and make it faster mid-production, but bumping up RAM? That should be pretty easy and have minimal impact on price - I’m guessing with this kind of device the BOM is actually not the primary factor impacting price… - Communication from Purism is pretty bad. I would love them to be much more transparent. Somebody said here maybe they don’t communicate much because they don’t want to spam people - then why am I getting like 5th email about investment opportunity? I always see email from Purism and get my hopes up and then… plus the investment topic itself - do they have money issues and are desperately trying to get some funding? If so I would love to know upfront because it is/would be completely understandable and I would consider it as a means to HELP not investment as I couldn’t care less about investing…
I’ll just keep patiently waiting now because I’m interested in the device and want to tinker with it finally. Also I’m not entertaining the notion of this ever becoming my main phone my needs are too mainstream for that so no rush…
But yes I’m convinced Purism has made many mistakes over the course of the campaign so let’s not deny that. They’re still a company taking our money for a product, not our favorite football club after all…
PS: one more thing if I may - I myself am not an English native speaker, but reading some of the posts here is literally painful. Guys, please there is no point in posting if you cannot articulate your thoughts…
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An earlier topic - specifically about this funding - said that they managed to raise plenty of cash. So it doesn’t seem likely that they are desperate for funding.
Because you didn’t action:
If you are not interested and don’t want any more emails from us, please let us know and we will be happy to remove you from this private mailing list.
after the 1st email about investment opportunity?
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Ok, fair enough on the investment emails.
Btw I hate writing on onscreen keyboards - any sign of plans on Librem Pro with a HW one? 
I guess you mean a phone with an integrated keyboard because you can easily add a USB or Bluetooth keyboard to the Librem 5.
Because the Librem 5 is already relatively thick, I have my doubts that they would be adding an integrated keyboard but I have no inside knowledge of future plans.
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This is mostly ads and crappy JS. Try noscript addon and the web will get back on track. See also: The Website Obesity Crisis (discussion). AFAIK there is no such problem with free-software websites like Mastodon or this one.
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At least they are different than the aperiodic shipping or delivery update email that says you’ll be contacted later (paraphrased).
Here is how the Librem 5 compares to new smartphone models introduced in 2017 and 2022.
Percent of new smartphone models (according to gsmarena.com)
| Component | 2017 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| <=4 CPU cores | 48% (220/455) | 4% (7/162) |
| <=1.5 GHz CPU | 66% (300/455) | 6% (9/162) |
| <=3 GB RAM | 63% (288/455) | 10% (16/162) |
| <=32 GB storage | 67% (303/455) | 7% (11/162) |
| <=280 PPI display | 32% (146/455) | 28% (45/162) |
| <=5.7" display | 89% (403/455) | 4% (7/162) |
| Single lens back camera | 82% (374/455) | 5% (8/162) |
| <=8MP front camera | 75% (341/455) | 38% (62/162) |
| <=4600 mAh battery | 94% (427/455) | 28% (46/162) |
| Only 1 SIM | 8% (38/455) | 5% (8/162) |
According to the gsmarena.com database, 63% of the new smartphone models introduced in 2017 had 3 GB RAM or less, but only 10% of the models introduced so far in 2022 have 3 GB RAM or less. Likewise, 67% of the new models in 2017 had 32 GB storage or less, but only 7% of the new models in 2022 have that amount of storage. In other words, the L5 matched the majority of smartphones in its specs when it was launched, but it has since fallen to the bottom tenth of new smartphone models in terms of RAM and storage, while more than doubling in price over the last 4.5 years.
The rise in the prices of smartphones is an industry trend, but the L5 is significantly higher than the trend:
| 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smartphone global average selling price | $282 | $288 | $295 | $302 | $309 | $322 | |
| Librem 5 price (at year end) | $599 | $599 | $699 | $799 | $1199 | $1299 |
Having said that, it appears that Purism has lost a lot of money on this project and probably will never recoup it investment in the L5. Doing custom design for a low-volume device is expensive and paying for software development is extremely expensive. Apple, which does its own software development, charges similar prices to Purism for its phones. Google only charges between $2.50 and $10 per device to license a device like the L5 to use Android, so we have to keep that in mind when comparing the L5 to Android phones.
In terms of the specs, I don’t think that that the weaker hardware specs on L5 are going to bother you that much if you are using it as a phone. Yes, a recent Snapdragon/Dimensity/Exynos has over 10 times better CPU performance, but the L5 is still decently responsive in my opinion when using the interface. I notice that it takes twice as long to open Firefox on the L5 compared to my Android phone with a Snapdragon 660 processor, but once an app is opened, I generally don’t see much of a lag. (In contrast, I do notice the weaker hardware on the Pinephone when using it–see my benchmarks).
Where I think the weaker specs will make a difference is if you are using the L5 as a convergent PC, because 3GB of RAM isn’t enough for a lot of desktop applications and you will have to limit the number of open tabs in the web browser. Unfortunately, the i.MX 8M Quad doesn’t support more than 4GB RAM, so there isn’t much expansion possible. There isn’t that much software to install when using the L5 as a phone, but once you use the L5 as a PC, you will probably fill up the 32GB eMMC with software and files very quickly, and the L5’s microSD card slot is not very fast.
I think that Purism should increase the L5’s RAM to 4GB and the L5’s storage to 128GB, because the cost at today’s hardware prices would be minimal, and it would help market the L5 as a convergent PC. People might balk at paying $1299 for a half functional phone, but they can justify paying those prices for a convergent PC that can be carried around in the pocket. Most Android phones that support video out (like the Galaxy S/Note/Fold, Xiaomi Black Shark, Xperia 1/5/10/Pro, Huawei Mate/P, Asus ROG, OnePlus) are also very pricey phones.
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Well, sure, but that kind of proves my point - you cannot just use web out of the box as you would on your recent iOS/Android device - or maybe you can today, but not over the planned lifetime of the device. Plus some websites’ may very well depend on those scripts.
I’m totally aware this is not Purism’s fault and I hate the bloated mess that is web today, but alas that is the way things stand.
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Interesting data, thanks.
I actually had no idea the selected CPU doesn’t support more than 4GB RAM. In that case I suspect it wouldn’t be as easy as I thought to increase it even to that maximum as anything other than doubling may require a significant redesign.
It just means that you won’t pay with you CPU power and electricity bill for the ad networks and stupid web developer decisions. And you indeed shouldn’t.
Noscript allows whitelisting. This is what I do.
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If you look at the aggregate CPU grunt available in a 6-core or 8-core chip v. a 4-core chip, this is only a fair comparison if the application of interest is capable of utilising well-enough most of the cores. For an application that was not designed for multiple cores at all, it may be that the fairest comparison is the single core performance.
It wasn’t clear what precisely you are quoting in the above.
(To complicate things, the Snapdragon 660 is a 4 big + 4 little chip.)
As you say, convergence makes a difference here. If you are using your phone as a convergent PC then you are more likely to be running lots of applications and/or lots of tabs in a browser all concurrently - and hence able to use multiple cores more effectively even when the individual application may not be able to use more than one core effectively.
On my iPhone I would almost never have more than 4 tabs open concurrently, just because the overall interface is so clunky on a small screen.
OTOH on my Android phone I often have 20+ tabs open - just because I use them as reminders, live bookmarks if you will. Thankfully mobile Firefox is smart enough to save the session to disk while keeping resident in memory only those tabs I’ve used in the last x days.
Edit: Sorry, I’m terrible at quoting correctly on my phone…
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Here is how the i.MX 8M Quad compares with the best Snapdragon and A-series in Geekbench 5:
| SoC | Cores | Geekbench 5 single core | diff | Geekbench 5 multi-core | diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i.MX 8M Quad (28nm) | 4x 1.5GHz Cortex-A53, 1x 266MHz Cortex-M4F | 131 | 453 | ||
| Snapdragon 8 gen 1 (4nm) | 1x 3.0GHz Cortex-X2, 3x 2.5GHz Cortex-A710, 4x 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 | 1195 | 9.1x | 3407 | 7.5x |
| Apple A15 Bionic (5nm) | 2x 3.23GHz Avalanche, 4x 1.82GHz Blizzard | 1698 | 13.0x | 4425 | 9.8x |
I was surprised to see that the i.MX 8M Quad does a little better in multi-core performance than in single-core performance compared to the best Snapdragon and A-series. I would have expected the opposite.
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Speaking in general terms (i.e. not looking in detail at the two specific chips to compare) there can be various reasons for that:
- when all cores are running at 100%, the frequency is actually throttled down i.e. can’t really handle all cores at 100%
- is memory-limited i.e. all cores can go at 100% but there is insufficient memory bandwidth to keep them busy (obviously depends hugely on the specifics of the benchmark - a true CPU-only benchmark may be able to avoid memory limitations but it also depends on what level and number of caches exist and how they operate)
- poor multiprocessor synchronisation overhead (again depends on the specifics of the benchmark)
Either way, there’s no disputing the overall conclusion that the best available current CPUs significantly outperform the CPU in the Librem 5.
Whether that is relevant could come down to whether the Librem 5 can do adequately what you want it to do.
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Anyways aren’t we all on the same oppinion, that when we talk about computers (and Librem 5 is a phone format computer), it is normal for the hardware technology to improve and it is normal that software developers trade improvements in coding speed and efficieny for use of more computational ressources.
Thus if Librem 5 wants to have a future (and I really hope for Librem 5 to have a future), then there is a need for a clear path for hardware improvements in the future so that the hardware could keep up with the more ressource hungry programs coming up in the future.
I remember 15 years ago EDGE Internet was sufficient for browsing the web using a cell phone. Websites had optimized WAP versions that were build to be small and efficient.
15 years later websites are so heavy that EDGE is not really usable anymore.
New inefficient apps will come that the Librem 5 users will want to use. It is inevitable.