Librem 5 Pros and Cons Compared to Android or iPhone

[kms]

@StevenR, why not make use of waydroid? that way you have a degoogled android phone inside of the L5. if you want to add microG to it you can. It is basically like having 2 phones in one!

[irvinewade]

@kms

why not make use of waydroid?

I have the impression that Waydroid is not quite ready for prime time. When it is available in the PureOS repo, installs out of the box without problems, is easy enough to configure …

[StevenR]

I hesitate to install waydroid if there is any way to avoid it. But I may try it out as a last resort.

[kms]

I understand your feelings @StevenR! I would rather not have waydroid also. however, what gives me some level of comfort is:

• waydroid runs degoogled LineageOS.
• the way it is implemented in L5 is such that it only has access to network connectivity. Not, filesystem, camera, microphone, etc. So, anything that runs inside of waydroid, can’t really interact with anything else on the L5 other than network access. @dos con confirm if I’m correct about the security aspects of waydroid on L5.

@irvinewade, following this thread, Anyone Successfully Run WayDroid on Librem 5? it seems waydroid is really close to being operational. Again, @dos can confirm it’s status. In terms of configuration, there is not much involved. It runs really smoothly, and has been a nice resource while I’m waiting for other aspects of the L5 to become more viable.

[Photon]

@StevenR

It looks like I’ll need to carry and use two phones. My Librem 5 will stay on all the time and I will use it for everything that it’s capable of doing. My Android phone will stay turned off all of the time, except for when I have a need that my Librem 5 is not capable of doing. Then when I use my Android phone I turn it on, use it, then turn it off. It’ll be inconvenient. But from the first day I carry the Librem 5, my privacy will go way up.

That’s what I do! The Android is only powered up if cell service is being weird on the L5 (not too often). If I need to navigate, I almost always use the stock set in my 2007 Ford (DVD database, no updates). It’s actually less stressful to use the L5 than the Android.

[Photon]

@fsflover

This is exactly what I am doing, but my backup phone is a Pinephone.

My Pinephone modem dies 5 weeks before I L5 arrived.

[Photon]

@StevenR

Does your Pine phone fill the gap adequately?

For me? No! Except for Firefox, everything is better on the L5 than Pinephone Mobian (even before the modem died).

[Zimmy]

@StevenR

It looks like I’ll need to carry and use two phones. My Librem 5 will stay on all the time and I will use it for everything that it’s capable of doing. My Android phone will stay turned off all of the time, except for when I have a need that my Librem 5 is not capable of doing.

I have an Android Pixel with GrapheneOS, without a SIM card installed, which I could carry with me, along with the L5. However I’m not sure that GrapheneOS stops cellular tracking as you can make an emergency 9-1-1 call (in the US) in an Android phone without a SIM. Nor can I be sure that the Android won’t send my GPS coordinates somewhere. Of course, I could turn off the Pixel when not in use, but is it really off? I don’t know.

To make sure of no tracking, I additionally carry a 6th gen iPod Touch, which has no GPS and no cellular capability, which I use for apps not on or not convenient with L5. The iPod Touch is essentially just like a first gen iPhone SE otherwise.

[irvinewade]

@Zimmy

but is it really off?

Carry it in a shielded container?

@Zimmy

as you can make an emergency call (in the US) without a SIM

Functionally, that requirement is global. So it comes down to how much chatter a phone that does not have a SIM engages in. I don’t know.

[fsflover]

@irvinewade

Functionally, that requirement is global. So it comes down to how much chatter a phone that does not have a SIM engages in.

Or you can use Pinephone as I do, which has the modem kill switch.

[oseo]

@Photon

Except for Firefox, everything is better on the L5 than Pinephone Mobian

I also have a generally worse experience with the Pinephone Mobian as compared with the L5.

[fsflover]

@irvinewade

I have the impression that Waydroid is not quite ready for prime time. When it is available in the PureOS repo, installs out of the box without problems

I confirm that it was really easy to install Waydroid using the instructions in Anyone Successfully Run WayDroid on Librem 5?. Works fine for me.

[Hristo]

@oseo

99.9% apps don’t scale to the screen to a point of being unusable

Well, maybe if you count all existing applications for Linux in the World, you might come to such number. Most applications will not have a build for an ARM processor in the first place and will not run on a Raspberry Pi either. But de facto the situation is not that bad if you use the website: https://linuxphoneapps.org/ and if you use the Mobile Settings App and if you don’t expect to completely replace your notebook with your phone.
For me personally there is currently only one app that I wish it had better mobile interface and this is Thunderbird.
I am also optimistic, that with time the responsiveness of the apps will improve. At the end of the day most apps have been written before the release of PinePhone or Librem 5, so in the past there was very little motivation to bother with the responsiveness of a Linux desktop application.

[oseo]

@Hristo

Most applications will not have a build for an ARM processor

I have installed Debian on a Olimex Olinuxino Lime2 and all the apps I normally use on x86 are working fine (well, don’t expect to use Firefox, CPU is not good enough).

@Hristo

But de facto the situation is not that bad if you use the website: https://linuxphoneapps.org/ and if you use the Mobile Settings App and if you don’t expect to completely replace your notebook with your phone.

This is interesting. I have no clue about the “appstream” links, what does it point to? Are these special versions aimed at a mobile phone screen?

@Hristo

I am also optimistic, that with time the responsiveness of the apps will improve. At the end of the day most apps have been written before the release of PinePhone or Librem 5, so in the past there was very little motivation to bother with the responsiveness of a Linux desktop application.

I had no issue with responsiveness so far, only with apps being unsuitable to display on a screen of the resolution of a phone. The website you have mentioned is listing Gajim, I recently asked the developpers, after v1.3.3, Gajim have on purpose removed the options of a window per conversation, does not plan to reintroduce this and does not plan to do anything for usage on a mobile phone screen. From that perspective, I find it rather misleading to put Gajim on that list.

I guess that there will be improvements but I don’t want to give false hopes to people looking for a GNU/Linux phone now.

My objective is having and promoting an entirely free software system, with only free software apps. For computers, GNU/Linux is obviously the way to go. For phones, using the same could be nice but there are 406 apps listed on the site you indicated, that may not work that well on a mobile phone, while I understand F-Droid main repository has about 10 times as many, specifically designed for mobile phones. So at this point, I am unable to say whether GNU/Linux or Android (of course, I am talking about an entirely free software distribution of Android, like Replicant) is the best strategy.

[carlosgonz]

@oseo

My objective is having and promoting an entirely free software system, with only free software apps

Seems you know what is good and fancy.

[OpojOJirYAlG]

@oseo

I am unable to say whether [snip] is the best strategy.

“Best” is relative, so it depends. I wouldn’t get too hung up on what “the best” is and instead look at what meets your needs and aligns with your goals generally.

In that light I consider it a pro for the Librem5 being more idealistic from a device and technology perspective.

[StevenR]

How does one compile an x86 program to run under ARM on a Librem 5? In theory I know that all you need is use the right compiler, and then just run the exact same uncompiled x86 program, through an ARM compiler and magically, you have an equivalent ARM program. However, I doubt it’s that easy. Is a cross compiler used? If you want to take an x86 program and format it to run on your phone, do you just link to a PHOSH or Libhandy library at compile time and let the compiler implement PHOSH by itself ? I doubt that implementing PHOSH is that easy also. Do you need to get in to some deep coding to make PHOSH work, or is it fairly easy? Are the software tools for all of this FOSS?, or is there a significant price tag?

I am looking for a ten-thousand foot overview and not for actual instructions to do all of this.

[irvinewade]

A separate topic perhaps?

[Emma]

@kms

why not make use of waydroid? that way you have a degoogled android phone inside of the L5.

@kms

waydroid runs degoogled LineageOS.

Waydroid is not fully degoogled. The Android system image it uses is based on LineageOS, which attempts to make connections to google domains. I verified this for myself using OpenSnitch:

From this executable:
* /usr/sbin/dnsmasq

To this host:
* connectivitycheck[.]gstatic[.]com
* play[.]googleapis[.]com
* time[.]android[.]com
* www[.]google[.]com

I also noticed that the Mull browser from F-Droid attempts to make unnecessary connections to mozilla domains:

* accounts.firefox.com
* firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com
* location.services.mozilla.com
* shavar.services.mozilla.com

[Emma]

Librem 5 compared to Android and iPhone:

Before you are allowed to use an iPhone, apple requires that it must first be “activated”. To do this, you need to load a SIM card into the iPhone (the SIM card doesn’t need to be activated with cellular service), and the iPhone must be allowed access to phone home to apple[.]com domains on either a cellular or Wifi network. You are disallowed by apple from setting up and using your own iPhone until you allow it to have network access so that it can ask permission from apple on your behalf. Fuck apple.

I do not know if Android phones also require activation like iPhones or if that depends on the type of Android phone.

My Librem 5 and my Pinephone never required me to do anything in order to use them. They work without needing a SIM card and without needing a cellular modem at all, thanks to the killswitches.

Conclusion:

• With iPhones, apple is the real owner of the device.

• With Android phones, google is the real owner of the device, unless you can fully degoogle the operating system on your specific device (which can be difficult or impossible).

• With the Librem 5 and the Pinephone, I am the owner/operator/administrator of my own device.