Librem 5 — painpoint assessment 2021

Where exactly? I just tried in GNOME Contacts and I can.

This is just an issue with context menu; you can either pop it up by pressing “Menu” button in Squeekboard, or copy directly via pressing CTRL+C.

Generally copy’n’paste works (at least across GTK apps as there’s a touchscreen accessible UI for that), with a few exceptions that will have to be handled case-by-case.

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Beg pardon, My Lord … just tried … last time I couldn’t.

I’m not even able to select text! Plus, where is the “Menu” button?

Why the resolution is so low? It gives 1560x2104 about 260 Kb jpg file. Shouldn’t it be higher?

I agree with others that suspend and VoLTE are higher priority for me too. Plus a matrix client that supports math (such as Element) (although I understand that this is very low priority for others).

In Terminal mode on Squeekboard, tap the >_ key. Then you’ll see Menu.

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Yup, text selection via touchscreen in Epiphany needs to be improved. You can however double- and triple-tap to select a word or a paragraph. Selecting seems easier (although still not annoyance-free) in Firefox, for what it’s worth.

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Make enabling Flathub smooth.
Clicking the Flathub repository file button should enable Flathub.
I still had to do the manual installation.

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Well, Purism has been and still is advertising it as “A Security and Privacy Focused Phone”, without adding an asterisk as in “Phone*” with further explanations (*will make phone calls only under certain circumstances and in certain ways …), so in my opinion the ability to make phone calls of the kind as any other phone on the market comes first, anything else comes later. Otherwise it’s a misnomer, as much as I like the idea of a truly accessible computer in my pocket.

Furthermore, is Purism already giving the possibility for cash refunds, or do the prefunders, preorderers, orderers and whatelsenot do have to wait for their place and time in the queue? If so, than it is not a matter of “purchasing a car”, but of “getting the car I paid for or get back the money paid upfront for the promise of a car not yet maintained”.

While complaining does not fix anything, without complaints broken things won’t get fixed, so… it seems a necessary but not sufficient condition :smile:

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It can make calls and has been making calls for a long time. Your issue is with the carriers, not purism. I don’t understand why you people always find some new way to argue with me about why you should be allowed to continue to be angry/discontent/impatient/something negative when all I’m trying to do is make you feel better.

And speaking to that, if you can’t be bothered to suffer the mild inconvenience of setting up a SIP account, why did you opt to purchase a new device that’s never been made before? Find peace with a device that already works!

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Very good, so if we tell carriers to reactivate soon-to-be-phased-out network technology, will this happen? Don’t think so. In such a case L5 without VoLTE might become “A Security and Privacy Focused Not-Anymore-Phone” :slightly_smiling_face:

And if by any chance you feel offended by anything I wrote with a more or less agreeable humor, I am sorry; please tell me what to do to make you feel better as well :slightly_smiling_face: I fear the issue is not about feelings, and in particular not about yours, my fellow human.

I for myself did pre-fund a device because I read the description and advertisement and thought it would fit me well. If after 4y, many all-too-optimistic statements and promises, a pandemic and major industry disruptions, I still think what was (and still is) promised should be delivered, you might excuse me on this topic, but I don’t feel I’ll change my opinion on this.

EDIT: In any case, I am confident in the development team, and that VoLTE support will be reached; if not for other reasons, because people will keep bothering about it :slightly_smiling_face:

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If you guys want to continue this VoLTE vs SIP-whatever discussion, could you pretty please do that in a separate topic? It does not contribute much in improving the pain point list. Thanks :slight_smile:

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I’m quite finished, sorry @Caliga.

Though one of my pain points in regards to this device is the impatience of its customers.

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Major Improvements Needed

  • time between charges
  • (daylight second) :slight_smile:
  • usability of camera app - want point-and-click
  • emergency functionality - call without SIM, call with SIM for wrong network, Advanced Mobile Location (AML), receive emergency alerts
  • web browser performance

Less Major / Near Term Fixes Needed

  • GPS working and integrated out of the box
  • WiFi hotspot (it’s on the GUI - unsure of current state - I think not out-of-the-box last time I tried it)
  • VoLTE
  • convergence to work more seamlessly and with more hardware
  • Files app needs work on adaptiveness - including using a better image viewer (and/or thumbnails)

Minor Annoyances

  • fix calculator app adaptiveness
  • show battery percentage on lock screen
  • give some kind of change log when updates come through
  • SIM unlock to default to numeric keyboard
  • some GUI way of clearing the call log
  • call log to have some way of showing the number that was used (not just the contact name)
  • if a string search in man fails then man exits immediately with Pattern not found - this doesn’t happen on my desktop or on other Linux computers that I use
  • very pedestrian uSD card read and write speeds - 10 MB/s approx - for a card that I know can achieve much higher speeds

Longer Term

  • need Anbox (or other solution) for those Android apps that are impossible to avoid, mostly government and banking authenticators for me

Important Note: I’m still on amber. Some of these may already have been addressed.

Edited to add the item regarding emergency functionality. @caliga

Edited to add the item about man on the Librem 5, which has been bugging me for months.

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A fair comment but I think that would need to be configurable i.e. some users might legitimately want to prevent anyone seeing or messing with an alarm unless “authenticated” by unlocking e.g.

Erectile Disfunction Clinic Appointment 4pm :slight_smile:

might not be something that you would want to share with your work colleagues.

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I don’t know that this is necessarily very secure. For the time being at least, you are more or less forced to have a numeric and insecure password. Given an unsophisticated attacker armed only with a midrange Intel CPU, your 4 digit password is gone in under a minute and your 6 digit password is gone in an hour or two. (A sophisticated attacker would be armed with one or more GPUs and you can divide those times by 100 or 1000.)

So if your “PIN” is gone, would you want to unlock a keyring and expose all the keys within the keyring automatically?

Still, your phone, your rules. :wink:

I would rather that the keyring unlock using the smartcard (and have the hassle of entering a PIN for the smartcard after a PIN for the phone). Is this currently possible???

Things might change once full partition encryption is available.

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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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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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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.

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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Useful information is available at:

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Provide a help application for new users.