I am just thinking for a longer time that maybe the main problem of Librem 5 is that there are several very different use cases and Librem 5 tries to satisfy way too many user groups at the same time leading to many people disappointed and to splitting the highly limited resources to work on too many topics at the same time.
- A 4G mobile phone that is more trustable than the mobile phones on the market.
- An Android phone where you have real control over the camera, microphone, and wireless communication like LTE, WiFi, and Bluetooth.
- A general purpose Linux notebook in the size of a Smartphone.
- A Linux Smartphone.
Librem 5 tries to be all 4 at the same time and ends up in the middle due to limitations in the CPU and energy consumption.
So actually there could have been 4 different devices:
The first one could have been something with even less computational power than Librem 5, but do the job of being a secure mobile phone well. Kill switches, good battery life, stable modem, Linux based OS without modern apps. No desktop Linux apps. Weaker and less power hungry CPU. Something like the Precursor phone but better (Precursor does not even have a modem at the moment if I am not mistaken).
The second could be an Android Smartphone with stock Android that gives hardware control to the user. Just Android but with hardware kill switches for sensors, camera, microphone, Bluetooth, WiFi, and LTE modem.
The third is what Librem 5 currently tries to be, but the task is a huge one.
The fourth would be a Linux Smartphone without the security bells and whistles. Focus not on the higher hardware security compared to Android or iOS, but using similar SoC like Android and iOS and delivering just the Linux alternative so that the users benefit from the better performance and battery life and the ecosystem of apps gets developed. No better security. Just breaking the oligopoly of Google and Apple.
I think we suffer due to too high ambitions considering the limited resources. You see, if an engineer spends time to fine tune the thermal sensor and make it work and to write an app for the thermal sensor, the same engineer is not working on other topics. So you are not getting a better product. You are sacrificing the core functionality in order to get some decorations on the top.