The Future will amazing in Librem 5, freaking Butter everywhere in the system, starting on crimson. Sadly i hate Gnome because Cheaper UX and Slave from Redhat and Ubuntu.
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I have issues with phone calls too in a similar manner to yours, but I have not been interested at all to troubleshoot them.
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I didn’t have such issues with calls yet. My only problems with calls were user error so far because I forgot to toggle on the hardware kill-switch for the microphone. Not a huge deal in my opinion.
I assume you had different issues though. Maybe it depends on the modem you have?
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Oh. Maybe I made the same error. I will be testing that again, I could have sworn I double check though.
Thanks for the friendly reminder.
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I mean, I can’t say whether your SIM card, modem or other aspects cause different issues. But I wanted to put my experience here with the calls working quite well. Obviously improving things like you suggested would be great anyway.
I also remember that I didn’t receive a call once because I switched off the modem via hardware kill switch and still I was surprised by this. I really like having this much control easily available. But coming from an Android device where you don’t think about connectivity of parts from your phone on power level… I needed to get used to it for daily driving it. ^^’
Something I would like to see improve for everyday use is GPS. Currently it’s neither quite accurate nor reliable to update. I think this could be improved with sensor fusion and potentially using Wifi triangulation. However I’m not sure there’s libre infrastructure around to store GPS locations of Wifi networks (since that might contain sensible data or metadata from users sending updates/requests). But maybe it would be possible to encrypt the data to exchange useful information for estimation of the own location.
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Use this thread.
I will need to test this myself before I potentially add it to the Librem 5 Community Wiki, unless the GPS situation has changed since then.
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Yes the Librem5 have some cons and its not fair to compare it with some Android or Apple device, cause they just have spend much more energy and money before. And they sell your future predicted by a nudge…
So if you can fix your issues based on data, do it. If not wait for a patch. It will come, and if not your may be already lost to this data raptors.
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Thanks for the heads up, much appreciate it.
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Sure it is. Purism compares it against android amd apple devices all the time. It would be unfair to cherry pick which comparisons are allowed and which aren’t.
Purism brought on those comparisons, that includes accepting when the comparisons aren’t favorable to the Librem 5.
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This is a fair statement but you are comparing two different categories of things. Here is the error you are making:
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CATEGORY: Public statements / marketing.
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CATEGORY: The reality of a general purpose computer capable of making phone calls + reality of FOSS + reality of the lockdowns + reality of business + reality of the need for the company to stay in business for the ecosystem to set down enough roots to flourish + the reality of software development + reality of having to back port / develop legacy calling features for a device designed for the future where all of our identities and phone numbers are virtualized and provided via voip hosting providers and we only subscribe to data plans.
You are talking about Category #1 above and you are correct about that. We are talking about Category #2 and we are correct about our assessment that the comparison is not fair for so many obvious reasons it is embarrassing that someone has to point this out to you.
The reason that we are right in our assessment and can fully dismiss your comments as irrelevant is because those of us that speak about Category #2 above did not buy into the marketing and knew fully well what we were buying.
I accept your critique as valid and Purism needs to keep on hearing about it and they put them selves in this spot. However, it is not unfair to also fully shine a light on these sorts of critiques and point in the general direction of the motivated reasoning behind them, however well founded.
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That’s exactly cherry picking what kinds of comparisons are allowed…
Sure the Librem 5 can do a bunch of things as a general purpose Linux conputer that androi/ios cannot. The Librem 5 as part of being a newer product of a smaller company has less development time and resources directly invested and as such doesn’t have some capabilities and stability that android/ios have.(indirectly there’s the time investment of many of the included open source projects that Purism touts as things that run on the Librem 5 that eclipse android and ios)
This isn’t a category, it’s a list of a bunch of things which aren’t even all related to each other.
This was never articulated as part of the design plan nor design goals and is not a plan that fits with how the goals were communicated by @todd-weaver
SMS and MMS still being unreliable at this stage is a very fair comparison to make against Android/iOS which both had this consistent and reliable with their respective initial public releases.
Call audio quality comparisons are very fair to make for the same reason.
U wot m8?
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No, this is not fair. Google as part of the big tech which doesn’t care for user rights has a very different connection to the modem industry compared to Purism that is trying to avoid proprietary stuff or even the connection to RAM used by modems. Also Google has billion of dollars that can be invested in thousands of devs to make an initial release quiet perfect.
It’s not fair in so many points, but the reason people (and even Purism) still compare those 2 ecosystems is that Google and Apple implemented a standard which the Librem 5 cannot beat on the current stage. But people also often like ignoring the fact that the Librem 5 standard is not just worse, it’s different and has its own strength. A strength that Android could have, but where Google doesn’t want to provide it to its consumers.
What you call “cherry-picking” is more about “Purism cannot” and “Google can” (but does not). Some people look at “what is possible” (aka “can” aka fair comparison) and what is the reality on every single point (aka “unfair” comparison by different start parameters that cannot compete).
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You realize sms is a text standard designed in 1986 that predates google by over a decade and predates apples interest in the phone space considerably as well. Even if we use the first implementation date of 1992 that still predates google by several years and both google and apples interest in the mobile space considerably.
Phone calls themselves are obviously much older than that.
Mms still predates google and apples interests in the mobile space so no.
These are not standards from google and apple to keep purism down. They are ancient standards that should be stable before selling a device as a cellular phone. And I do mean just cellular phone as these predate the concept of smarphones.
Comparing basic cellular phone functionality between cellular phones is very fair. In its current state the librem 5 is less stable for sms/mms/phone calls when compared to a nokia 7250 which is not a good look. The nokia phone can’t do nearly 1% of what the librem 5 can do, but it is still fair to compare phone capabilities between phones…
Not liking the results of the comparison is different from how fair the comparison is.
I think that does a great disservice to the Purism team. Just because these features are not currently as stable as they should be doesn’t mean Purism cannot get them stable. There has been excellent progress made in stablizing mms and improving call quality and I anticipate more improvement to come.
That improved state to come isn’t here yet and as such comparisons are made between what is here and what is or was for android/ios not what might be in the future for the Librem5/Android/iOS.
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You totally missed my points and you also compared new things that are different. In a phone from early 2000s or even before modems where far away from what they’re these days. They where no computer themselves with a whole OS inside that have access to the RAM to do whatever it could do. And even if - as I said for Google, companies just don’t care. Purism has a totally different job here to do and still is a company without billion of dollar to invest. So Purism has much more work to do with much less developers for same functionality.
And because it’s much more complex, it also can have much different bugs compared to a typical smartphone or much more compared to a phone from 90s etc. The things that doesn’t work right now depending on those bugs, where Purism devs said that it’s hard to debug (also because not everyone has it). You’re speaking all the time about standards that doesn’t exist here. Yep, phone calls exists for long time, but the hardware changed a lot. And the fun fact is, you also said it with “Nokia 7250 can’t do nearly 1% of Librem 5” and you forget that the other 99% also have dependencies on the 1%.
Here again, you totally missed my point. I never was speaking about the skills. I was speaking about the amount of devs and the time they had to bring the device to a specific state. And even with the very best devs in the world combined … they’re still no mages and need time to develop things.
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A couple of other points to consider with call testing. The headset that comes with phone gives another way to hear and talk, and it uses different sound settings.
Speaking of sound settings, don’t be shy about adjusting the levels from the swipe down menu, and the drop menu next to the volume slider in the swipe down menu. A lot of microphone issues reported on this forum were solved or improved by changing the mic level.
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Oh, really? Okay, thanks for the heads up.
I do not think this way OpoJOJirYAIG. Purism, and we as Opensource-Community or Developers have too, just in the Way of Darwin’s Evolution. Like Children glued on a Phone and Apps because the System pushed the Dopamine Card to much.
We are in the same situation as the first PCs dropped down to a effort Level in the 1980th. When a new Technologies crowd, like many companies around the world, try to build and enhanced, Hardware and Software over some free standard(s).
Today Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet, flush this Marked with free Development Kits, and Apps. That there is easy way to understand and develop Software or Hardware in an easy manner, because everyone use the fine WYSIWYG Editors by this companies. Of Cause its nice and its cheaper in development, but sell privacy and user Data.
So we have that strange market, and everyone will get flushed up in high ranks on this social Media and important Search Rankings or Influence Channels. This Way the Companies control young humans interest to study and develop only with the franchise of Meta, Amazon, Apple or Google. And yes there is the big Money. That way it frame it not sexy to use free and open Source Software. But it is the only way, where you have kind of freedom this days. And its so invaluable that most do not understand it. Its like the freedom of Speech, or to understand Physics and Chemistry at all. On every level in today’s commercial and Working place groups use much money and effort to create high tech products. But in the Background on 99% they relay on a Free and Open Source Stage. They are too standing on the Shoulder of Giants.
Its like the A.I. Hype. Its only possible with very large Databases and self optimizing neural Networks, cause of the interacting with Humans. Like the old Web-Page A/B testing, just to include more Data. Like Brainwaves, Micro expressions, and tune in talks about content to other social peering partners.
Right now we are far away to have more then hundred companies try to compete on the Linux Mobil Market. I hope we will see some big players from china, India or Brazil too. Right now there is the language gap and the usual Linux community in Europe or US, have some shrinking cause everyone get older and not everyone likes to code for this new Hardware. It will be more and more in the future, on the long run we will win. Like as right now every one who will have a Linux Desktop with privacy and a Fair access to the Internet, have one.
Will Linux Mobil be a Mainstream Product? Yes it will! Because some day you will not have advertise include in your screen while watching your Data or your Phones Menu, like the Big Player on Android do. Apple is fine, but just another surveillance operator too because the will not fall behind in the A.I. Race to China, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft or Meta.
You are right about SMS and MMS, but its not so reliable if you use it over different Systems as you think. Apple and Google are known for having issues of interoperability, just to push humans using the same Ecosystem on there devices. They booth love to have a new feature and Version or Messenger which is incompatible to the other and older Versions. Google request the EU to force Apple to open its Imessage Application. And Apple try to confirm it by implementing the RCS Specefication, from 2008.
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Just dropped in to make a few notes for those that are searching the topic:
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I am now daily driving my L5 for professional use.
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The original FAIL in the title should read IDIOT USER. It turns out, everything was working fine, I just had the mic turned off in the initial tests.
Will be posting a new thread as a reference point and to share some user experiences for others.
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Done, but I edited the title to read “user error” instead, as making mistakes doesn’t make anyone an idiot - it’s how we grow. 
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Thank you.
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