I have my old N900, which was a linux-phone killed by Microsoft, lieing in front of me. That was a time, where Smartphones could be thick, without someone complaining.
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The first real review:
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Re sim/card tray - my understanding is that is to allow them being hot-swappable. Pull smart card - all your passwords gone. Swapped sim - switched to another operator. Removing back-cover is risky to accidentally powercycle the device. I know it currently does not work but could pretty sure be implemented in the future.
Also, I was thinking more along the lines if, gawd forbid, the need to pull and swallow arose.
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Yuck, I hate swallowing smart cards
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I suspect that Purism simply did not originally intend the back cover or the battery to be so easily removable, and by the time they had made that decision it was too late to be making changes to the PCB layout.
Probably the parts for a sim tray are more widely available and cheaper.
https://lbry.tv/@TheLinuxGamer:f > the review is ~30mins long > TL;DW > awesome BETA GNU/Linux digital-freedom and security/privacy oriented personal-smart-phone convergent-compute-device that is ALSO Free-Software-Foundation endorsed.
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Bluetooth is coming…
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He says something about accessing L5 through serial. I did not understand this. Can someone elaborate? We do not need ssh to access the phone on the cli? How do you do it?
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I did that from a linux pc since it’s my workstation.
Simply connect a usb cable from your pc to the phone.
And a device /dev/ttyACMx will show up. Normaly it will be /dev/ttyACM0
I installed a terminal application minicom and then minicom -D /dev/ttyACM0
You shouuld now see a login prompt
enter :
purism as username
and your pin as the password
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Most devices, especially these single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi, older PCs, phones, etc have a way of accessing a console through the serial port (yes the same old serial interface that PCs used to use for e.g. mice, before USB took over). While that traditionally used to be through an actual serial port, that doesn’t fit on smaller boards so most of them use the USB-c interface, or some dedicated pins on the board, for this.
It’s a great way of debugging/troubleshooting boards and phones without depending on more complex display and kb drivers to be working properly and as pointed out by @kieran, … not requiring the network stack to be working and configured.)
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… and not requiring the network stack to be working and configured.
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Good point, added to my post!
Very nice. I did not know that L5 had this capability. Yes I remember the serial devices with mice, UPS’s, modems etc but never used it for a cli. Thanks. So some devices offer serial over USB. Some but not all, right?
I need to test then all my androids. But what kind of access android gives? I mean it is so restricted anyways.
True some devices does not do this. Serial is it’s own thing, and having it over USB need some hardware so some devices does not provide this out of the box.
Some device have the serial PINS on the mainboard and you have to open the box and connect to it.
Some device dont even have the connector soldered on the final produciton board, but have the holes in them for it which you have to solder then connect to it.
And for the “old” RS-232 DB9 connectors for serial, you have to use a USB to serial adapter if your PC dont have that RS-232 DB9 connector ( most PC dont have this anymore )
Some routers have those serial pins on the mainboard you can use them for recovery.
Most devices remove them because “regular” people would brick their devices.
For android there is the SDK Provided by Google that give you a “shell” like access to the OS.
Full page -> https://developer.android.com/studio/
Direct link to Android SDK For linux -> https://dl.google.com/android/repository/sdk-tools-linux-4333796.zip
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Most new motherboards don’t have a DB-9 connector for RS232, but they often still have the RS232 serial header pins on the motherboard.
Note that the new standard used by components is called TTL Serial, it is pinout but
not voltage compatible
with RS232 serial. TTL serial uses 0-3.3V or sometimes 0-5V for signaling, where RS232 uses from -3 to up to -25 V and 3 to up to 25V. In practice those were usually around -12V and +12V. Bottom line is if you don’t have a level converter and hook the RS232 port on the back of your computer to something like a raspberry pi or a modern router, you will fry something.
You can pretty easily make yourself a converter with a handful of cheap components and a soldering iron, or you can get a USB to TTL serial converter (or a voltage level converter).
As for android phones, they do present a serial device, which talks a non-standard protocol. ADB (android debugger) is the program you need on the host machine to talk to them, and the phone must be in ‘developer’ mode for it to work.
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Can you create a dedicated tread for this subject and keep this one for media?
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Another @hackersgame video, lots of good info as usual:
Did you know he has a patreon page? https://www.patreon.com/hackersgame Who knows, a few more contributions there and we may get more of these nice videos. 
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