Daily driver. If I need to exchange a quick message in Signal or Telegram, I open Waydroid, do my bid, shut it down.
Issues sometimes roaming from one access point to another at home, and I didn’t manage to configure MMS even with all the information from the carrier. I just didn’t figure out what settings go whever.
Have you configured the file ~/.mms/modemmanager/mms ?
This thread just popped into my forum view again. I had to wait till I got my phone this year. It took me about three weeks to fully switch over, because I was trying to align usage and de-google myself. (Not quite done yet.)
I was already a Linux user, so the phone is living up to my expectations for having a full Linux across all devices experience. I have found myself reverting to command line usage on many things, and I’m glad to have it.
I’ve found the default email, mastodon, and matrix apps lacking in many aspects, but usable.
Lower battery life is the biggest change, but I have chargers handy.
Bluetooth connectivity as a phone to my car is my number one need, but at least, I can work on that myself.
Overall its been a smooth transition with no unexpected hurdles. (Of course, I’m an 30+ years embedded software dev and Linux user, so I came into this with realistic expectations.)
While not a dev I too have used Linux for quite some time now and find the command line experience comforting on the phone along with the flexibility and granularity of control we enjoy with this device. I pretty much use it exclusively for updates now as I think the store needs work.
Once bluetooth becomes rock solid and works well (my wife still complains about feedback when I call her and using HSP with certain BT devices on calls and stuttering with simultaneous wifi usage).
I also think once the automatic suspend is incorporated into more apps that too will be a great thing, for example if I’m listening to a podcast I want the app to override the automatic suspend, but that just means training the app devs to disable it when an audio stream is active for example.
One other nit picky thing is on screen keyboard scaling. I use my phone in 150% mode and it would be nice if the keyboard were scaled up for my fatter fingers. Also would be nice to have a swipe keyboard but I understand that will be a bigger ask.
Overall I’m pretty much using it on it’s own but I carry a work phone so I have 2 phones going and well I use my work phone to hotspot to the L5 as my work phone has unlimited data…but in saying that I would feel comfortable using my L5 completely on it’s own even now.
Thanks for the tip. I only configured the GUI options.
I’ll be abroad for 3 weeks and look into this when I am back.
I can log into a carrier portal to retrieve the messages.
I would like to use it as my daily phone but it cannot read contacts from a SIM card. It’s been two years and this super basic function still has not been implemented. Mobile internet also doesn’t work and the Gnome and Pure maps can’t talk to the GPS module. So this phone is expensive brick at the moment.
Mobile internet does work and both GNOME Maps and Pure Maps do access the GPS module via Geoclue. Reading contacts from a SIM card is not something that’s even planned to be implemented anytime soon, but if you really need to access them you can always use modem’s AT commands directly.
I‘m using Linux mobiles since the Openmoko Freerunner ~2008 and no Linux phone stored contacts on the SIM. From where this request originates nowadays?
Not exactly true. FSO’s opimd used to be able to use SIM contacts as one of its backends: https://github.com/freesmartphone/framework/blob/1bd6c2f48d6dbca69991a0543fcf8ac8b28513b4/framework/subsystems/opimd/pimb_sim_contacts_fso.py
This feature got dropped in 2010 during opimd’s redesign though 
It also can’t do FAX. I guess we have to use e-mail then. 
This is a very interesting discussion. I was also discussing on the postmarketOS gitlab (it was Phosh on the Oneplus 6).
Please note that what I’m saying below also applies to the Librem 5:
Trying a well-known French operator (Free), I can be detected quickly with A-GPS while with another much more important French operator (Bouygues), it is impossible to detect me using A-GPS.
According to the expert :
You can have A-GPS via SUPL servers (agps-msa/agps-msb in ModemManager) or XTRA (inject assistance data in ModemManager). Carriers can configure all of this if they want in these modem profiles. They get activated by the operator ID on the SIM card normally.
Currently, we don’t have everything in place like on Android to handle all these options as everything is proprietary so we have to reverse engineer here what happens and what we are missing.
We do have options for AGPS on Librem 5 that don’t rely on any proprietary stuff, but it’s still in proof-of-concept stage and not well-integrated into the OS. Without AGPS techniques, catching a cold fix with open view at the sky can take several minutes, perhaps even some hours in poor conditions.
I was involved in HylaFAX, a project to send fax from UNIX systems using modems with fax features (for example ZyXEL and others). Don‘t know if this is possible over todays mobile networks at all because it‘s a protocol between two modems and mobile communication is package based.
Awesome, guru, i used it to the 2010th with some modem! However today less and less companies still send some fax and i abandoned them. Thank you for your patience.
@ Topic
My new daily driver is the Librem5 i have in addition some Linux Systems near by and some minimal android one for some work or offline navigation with OSMand+, or Editing Openstreetmap because i did not focus on Desktop solutions - which on the Librem5 are often to small. Need to buy an Docking stating with Power Supply for USB-C too.
However Tracking is no option so the Phone is already a relief.
Very funny. The next time something won’t work for you I will remember to ridicule you.
Come on, it was just a joke. SIM card contacts are a relict. There is like no argument against switching to a newer technology.
Technically, it can send and receive fax… I could log into my VOIP account via the browser, upload the “fax,” send it to a phone number, and also receive faxes to a number I designate as my “fax” number, opting to forward the received document to an email address on the L5.
To elaborate on the comment from @dos, instructions1 are here: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Tips%20&%20Tricks#import-contacts
1I can’t vouch for the full correctness of the linked commands (it’s not something that I do or want to do) but I can vouch for the basic fact that AT+CPBR etc. works in this environment - because my mobile service provider sends out the SIM with a bunch of (they think helpful) phone numbers stored on the SIM and I can and did list those numbers on my Librem 5, just out of curiosity.
You will probably want to use something like awk to massage the above output into a format suitable for importing. At least, I assume that the Import Contacts function can’t directly work with the format that the SIM card contacts display in.
I suspect that you will want to use a PIN on your SIM if you store contacts on the SIM card and you use an encrypted file system on the phone.
A question of priorities. You might be the only customer using SIM contacts. All other things being equal (which they rarely are ), it makes sense for Purism to focus on features that more customers will use. It is difficult to justify the effort if only one customer will use it.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with using contacts directly from the SIM card even. You would want to clarify whether you want to have the contacts strictly on the SIM card or you would be happy to be able to import the contacts from the SIM card.
As an address book, the SIM card is very very limited in all sorts of ways.
Personally, at the other end of the scale, I am hoping for LDAP integration one day …
Probably best to start a dedicated topic to troubleshoot that. You would want to mention your country and carrier.
Ironic you mentioned fax, here’s a little fax anecdote. The telco I work for we offer a hosted voice solution for businesses using SIP based phones and we have a couple hospitals that still use fax machines we have to employ analog terminal adapters to hook these up. One place has over 30 of them. You’d think we’d move on from this by now but the medical and legal business is still very much entrenched. Well the thing is the whole world is now pivoting to SIP, including all the backhaul connections and trunks between carriers and not doing things with TDM circuits (T1’s, DS3, OC3,12, 48…etc). Fax machines no likey the SIP even over an ATA. They have lots of trouble with it with calls erroring out. Turns out good old copper pairs are better for fax machines, but those days are rapidly disappearing as copper is no longer being installed, only new fibre and you can’t do battery and ring voltage over glass…lol.