Librem 5 — painpoint assessment 2021

Hardware Librem 5
56

I think storage encryption is around the corner, but yes of course many things might need to be configurable.
For the alarms, it could also be that you only see that there is one and maybe silence/snooze it.

Mainly, the list is about perceived shortcomings, not judging the feasibility to solve them. (Although a helpful addition)

Btw, I didn’t understand daylight second :thinking:

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57

Apologies. I was using overly idiomatic English, and Australian idiom in particular. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/276691/meaning-of-the-phrase-daylight-coming-in-second

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58

Another painpoint item, arising out of the “Estimate your Librem 5 shipping” topic: there should be a basic Help app pre-installed that gives a cheat-sheet for basic functions i.e. where they are in the user interface and how to carry them out.

59

Somewhat related, I made it a habit to bookmark comments of @dos and other staffers along the lines of “oh yeah, that actually works, just do xyz”, with the goal of possibly adding them to some documentation at some point. :grin:

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60

Useful information is available at:

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61

Provide a help application for new users.

62

It’s already there - new phones ship encrypted. I’m not sure whether changing the encryption key after reflashing is documented somewhere (as otherwise you get the same key as everyone after flashing the same image), and ideally we would like to have it automated anyway, but all the pieces are there now in byzantium (which is already the default when reflashing).

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63

One more thing … I always get annoyed that the screen comes on when you plug it into a dock or power cord. You intuitively press the power button to deactivate the screen, but then it comes on again … I am not allowed to press the button - that wears me out: D

Please add the option … “Show display on connect - on/off” under power settings

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64

Forgot to mention on thing that bugs me daily. Lack of auto-brightness. You can turn it on, but it seems to sway around somewhat randomly. At present it’s not useful that I can tell.

This is mainly an issue as, I spend a lot of time inside and keep the phone brightness low when doing so. If I forget to turn up the brightness before going outside it can be really hard to see enough to login and do things

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65

Yes. To do things like … adjust the brightness. I got caught out by that the first time I took the Librem 5 with me when I went out (mid-summer Oz, blinding sun). In situations like that, voice control would be nice. Maybe Librem 5 v2 for voice control and in the meantime better auto-brightness. Or maybe overload the function of the volume control in some way??

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66
  • the heating problem isnt solved during decrypt password entry, which is especially dangerous because the l5 switches on on plugin; not giving the password should switch the phone off after a while
  • the status bar on top doesnt come down on swipe but on click; same thing with the arrow
  • typing is terrible cause the spacebar is near the up arrow; space doesnt end number entry which would be helpful; setting the cursor pos in the url entry is near to impossible
  • the screen scrolling is still not smooth
  • i didnt find a way to switch off the lock screen - during testing this gets anoying
  • i cannot mark text in the browser instead a menue pos up but i cant choose something
  • in the calculator the kbd os up while the calculator already has one
  • manuy dialog arent designed for the screen and sometimes i m stuck becuse i cannot close it

This is written on the L5 :smiley:

4 Likes
67

Touch the globe icon and then “Terminal” in the keyboard to switch to the terminal keyboard layout and it has arrow keys for moving backwards and forwards?

I wish it defaulted to “Terminal”. I guess that’s another minor gripe.

Probably not the answer you want, but it is possible for you to alter existing keyboard layouts and/or add new keyboard layouts. That’s the beauty of open source. You aren’t stuck with someone else’s design choices.

:+1:

68

i tab where i want the cursor which works most of the times but not in that bar. i dont want to change layout, navigate and so on. i just wonder what happens there: the balloon is in the text, if i drag it it jumps like hell…

altering the kbd layout isnt an option cause i like the spacebar exactly there

the arrow should move but i doubt i can do so in limited time :wink:

69

Yes, this annoys me, too. The workaround is to minimize everything and swipe the dialog box away, then maximize the original screen. On top of that, many dialog boxes don’t have an “X” to close them, even if you could see them on screen. (Is this some bizarre design choice of app developers?)

(This is not Purism’s fault, of course.)

I second that!

70

how do you minimize everything and see dialogs?

the ts lags alot, often the letters dont come through

71

Tap the ^ key, bottom center.

72

Ah - thats not “minimize” for me :wink: but it doesnt always allow to kick away dialog, sometimes i needed to kill the entire program

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73

I would like to refine my comment however: I wish the user could configure what the initial keyboard layout is (and I would choose “Terminal”).

I don’t actually want to impose my choice of layout on anyone else as the initial layout that ships with the phone. That can stay as it is.

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74

Is the naming scheme correct? I installed the latest update 5.13.16 and after reboot, uname -r still says 5.13.0. Shouldn’t it say 5.13.16 ?

75

That’s correct - this is how kernel packaging in Debian works to track ABI compatibility. Debian additionally adds the patch version to the description, which is something we could do as well (but don’t at the moment)

Librem 5:

Linux evergreen 5.13.0-1-librem5 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Sep 23 11:20:41 UTC 2021 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Debian amd64 box:

Linux debian 5.10.0-3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.13-1 (2021-02-06) x86_64 GNU/Linux
1 Like