I just hope FIR comes to fruition . Purism has said it will go into production after evergreen is complete but this world is in a dynamic state of flux so im not counting on anything .
And I dont want ANY part of 5G high frequency millimeter wave electro magnetic radiation .
I expect that it is a matter of when, not if.
Maybe Purism can still improve with the existing CPU, either with software updates or hardware revisions. The CPU is not the only part of the circuit that needs power reduction, but I am not sure how much can be saved. For example, USB 3 uses a significant amount of power. They have probably already implemented a standby mode for that.
People have speculated that Fir will use a CPU that reduces convergence performance (based on CPUs publicly known at the time), but there may be a part that does not do that. I would be happy with the existing CPU undergoing a process size shrink / improvement (lower power & slightly faster), and more RAM.
CPU power reduction will come with frequency scaling and finally getting cores to idle properly . This will all come in time as development continues.
I remember early android had the same problem and they had apps if you were root to control frequency throttling and such .
Over time as development continued idling became more efficient . processors were further developed and overheating really became a thing of the past except for under heavy gaming loads.
So these things will take time but Purism , Pinefone and others have started something here with these linux devices . And as development continues and progress on function progresses more and more will be jumping in on the ride up .
I’m happy with Purism’s progress , I just hope hardware manufacturers follow their lead.
we don’t know when and IF, a 5G modem on m2 card will be available for purchase for the Librem-5-Evergreen and up.
however, even IF it becomes available at some point, the fact remains that currently the 5G modem’s firmware is a black-box(no source-code available at this point for analysis and distribution). that being said 5G uses more power to radio in/out the higher frequency spectrum and unless you have clear line-of-sight up to 100-200m to the cell-AP (access point) there is little point to even attempt this while the C0R0N@ curfews, etc. are in effect in different parts of the world … 
i heard talk of cutting trees inside some urban areas to make way for these 5G deployments but thankfully there are still reasonable people around that RESIST such ideas …
True but the same is true of the existing 4G modems. They are all blackboxes.
Yes. But it could take a year.
In theory you may be able to disable 5G and force the phone to fall back to 4G - for as long as the 4G network is available at all.
You, me and everyone else. In the last 12 months, almost every order I have placed for anything electronic has had unusual delays.
Not entirely: https://linuxsmartphones.com/hackers-develop-open-source-firmware-for-the-pinephone-modem-use-it-to-make-phone-calls/
Fair cop - but the Quectel range of modems isn’t an option for the Librem 5 right now. I guess there is hope for the future that someone might do the same for the Gemalto PLS8 range or the Broadmobi modems.
I’m really hoping that Purism will offer a Quectel M.2 card as an option. That would give us a universal modem that can be used in most places in the world, and is looks like the PinePhone community is solving most of the big problems with the Quectel drivers. I was really skeptical at first whether the major problems would get solved with the PinePhone’s modem, but I have to say that I have been really impressed by the community work on the Quectel software.
My idea is to put a 5G modem in the Librem 5, but not hook up the mmWave antenna(s). If the chip is manufactured on a smaller process, then the 4G parts should consume less power. The only issue might be it being confused about why it cannot connect to anything via mmWave, but maybe the firmware has an option to disable it. mmWave is surprisingly useless through walls.
It seems that they are proposing 5G mirocells for indoor APs. Personally, I would prefer WiFi access points and WiFi calling. But this is interesting: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8269057 “The theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm increases the indoor positioning accuracy in Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) environment and centimeter level positioning accuracy can be reached.” Great, so 5G cell phones double as tracking devices down to the centimeter. I think that there are already ways of tracking them to something near that level, but this would be an improvement and more universal.
yes it does
(not just in the context of Purism)
yea i dont know why theyre proposing high frequency mm wave electromagnetic microwave phones instead of building up the amount of wifi access points doing away with harmful data frequencies .
they need 5G’s extremly low latency for autonomous-cars in the future … and the future is now …
im staying on my motorcycle then xD
I can’t read the paper, but the key words “unlicensed spectrum” and “60 GHz” in the abstract give me the impression they are probably talking about 60GHz Wi-Fi networks, rather than 5G cellular networks. Will 5G cellular network operators really try to compete with the peasantry’s signals on the 60GHz unlicensed band when they’ve got great swathes of licensed spectrum practically all to themselves?
Of course they will. And once having a foothold there, will insist for this spectrum to be licensed too. To them. Because peasantry signals will be in the way of their neatly organized spy networks.
It looks like they used 60 GHz because it is both unlicensed spectrum and higher frequency. Millimeter wave spectrum, in general, is the band of spectrum between 30 GHz and 300 GHz. “High-band 5G uses frequencies of 25-39 GHz, near the bottom of the millimeter wave band, although higher frequencies may be used in the future.” So maybe 5G is less precise due to the lower frequency, but regarding that tracking range: doubling a small number is often still a small number, and they may increase the frequency later.
I found this: “Qualcomm, Facebook, Google, Intel and Samsung are concerned about drones and other radar devices being used in the unlicensed 60 GHz spectrum. Leica Geosystems has asked the FCC to allow the operation of its drones in the 60-64 GHz portion of the 60 GHz band. And Vayyar Imaging is seeking a waiver to allow its interactive motion sensing device to operate within 57-64 GHz.” ‘Qualcomm’s VP and regulatory counsel for government affairs, added, “Any unlicensed band can also be used for 5G, and our unlicensed technology for this band can support both Wi-Fi and 5G on the communications element.” In fact, the 3GPP’s Release 17 will expand the 5G standards to the 60 GHz band.’ “Facebook established its Terragraph mmWave technology to meet demand for high-speed Internet in both urban and suburban areas as well as remote rural areas. Terragraph uses the 60 GHz frequency and mmWave radios to create a distributed wireless mesh network.”
You don’t need line of sight for 5G, only for the mmWave part of the spectrum.
Seeing your confusion about 5G, you might be actually meaning to ask about mmWave support. The answer is that the Librem 5 was not designed for those frequencies in mind, and it would be a minor miracle if they could be received inside the current case at all.
i’m not confused but it’s a drag to write it the way you did. “the mmWave part of the spectrum” is precise wording and not confusing but it’s still longer to write than “5G”.
i’m making this support statement since we don’t know what that black-box firmware is doing and when it’s doing it.
thank GOD there is no mmWave support with the Librem 5 antennae … one less thing to worry about in the future … however in the future that support MIGHT be added … we don’t know what the future holds … but whatever it is …
Could you explain why autonomous cars need 5g? I’ve heard that claim a lot and I don’t understand. These cars are driven by AI:s that can simulate human driving, and humans don’t need 5g to drive, hence AI:s should not need it either. Or will 5g enable some super-human driving?
The argument is partly marketing BS and partly true. Autonomous vehicles are possible with 4G, as Tesla is already demonstrating. However, autonomous cars will require a lot more cellular traffic, and 5G makes it possible to send more data over the same amount of spectrum space. Autonomous vehicles need to send/receive a lot of data to/from the servers and there are proposals that they be able to communicate with other cars on the road to coordinate their driving. 5G will make it possible to handle a lot more cellular traffic, so the system can handle milliones of autonomous vehicles on the road.
However, the mmWave spectrum is not reliable enough for autonomous vehicles, because its signal can be blocked by rain, snow and hail. Low band 5G doesn’t allow much information to be transmitted, so it isn’t any better than existing mid-band LTE in terms of data speeds (although it has much better range). It is only when you are looking at mid-band 5G (between 2 and 6 gigahertz) that 5G really makes sense for autonomous vehicles and in the US very little of that spectrum has been allocated for 5G so far.