Throwing up a thread to track call / text quality issues for daily driving tests. There are a lot of threads on various aspect of the topic, but there are HARD requirements for the L5 being able to act as a daily driver phone:
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Battery life - this is pretty much resolved as far as I can tell. Earlier in the year it was a showstopper because 4h of usable battery life was never going to work but 8h of normal usage is okay.
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Texting - I got it to work, all tests indicate it was working, not enough time testing to really find out if it is reliable or not.
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Phone calls - Fail. First call today and either I could hear them or they could hear me or neither of us could hear each other.
SUMMARY:
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Amazing: The battery life is amazing and they have done a terrific job optimising that beyond any reasonable expectations.
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Amazing: Browsing over mobile data is great. I get 4G reliably and the phone notifies me when it is dropping to 3G and then back to 4G. My android never gave me this notification, it is very useful.
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Amazing: WIFI access point let’s me share my data plan with my wifi devices, this works great.
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Not Sure: Texting worked out of the box although I had to use IP:PORT for the MMS Proxy setting instead of url. The problem is that if you google text related issues, a lot of issues happen at the carrier level, never mind having a client that can reliably handle texts, so I don’t have enough experience yet to trust the device.
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Broken: Phone calls. Today was the first official day of trying to daily and the first phone call was totally broken. The person was able to text me which is great, but the call was just broken.
VERDICT AS OF TODAY:
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DATA ONLY DEVICE - As of this post, the L5 is a data only device from the perspective of someone that only needs rock solid phone calls and texting right out of the gate.
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WILL IT GET BETTER - Looking at what their team did for the battery life optimisation, I am certain they will get calls and texting rock solid next. This is just the reality of the world being locked down for two years for no good reason and everyone almost going broke. They managed to survive and keep going and if tenacity is the core value of the organisation, they will get these key features correct, probably soon.
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THE FUTURE - Here is reality of phones and the mobile future: Phone numbers over cel networks + texting are legacy technologies from the days of the old analog mobile networks. The future is the Librem 5 acting PURELY AS A DATA DEVICE and our phones / messaging will be virtualized. Voip is standard for all business phone systems these days, I have had Voip for 10+ years and frankly, my personal number will be moving to Voip soon as well, pending testing of SIP clients. The reality of the L5 is that it is a device DESIGNED FOR THE FUTURE that has to spend money and time building out legacy support. If I was 100% confident I had a reliable SIP client on ARM Linux, I would just port my phone to Voip, buy a $15/mo data plan and be done with it. The L5 would be a daily driver right now.
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THE NEXT STEPS - I have to keep on using my Android because I am familiar with the call / text reliability of the device (though everything else sucks) for now. I will be using the L5 to test SIP clients and see if I can modify my workflow in a satisfactory way.
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SATISFACTION - I am very happy with the device. If I was fully Voip on my personal number, I would get a $15/mo data plan here, my Voip service would cost about $5/mo, I would get all of my voicemail via email (as it should be) and if I had a reliably SIP client that could text, I would basically be running a future mobile platform. As soon as the Librem team can confirm rock solid calls and texting on the device, it is a daily driver for the legacy services that I currently consume.