Librem 5 Ready-To-Market?

It can and does connect to 4G network and use it for data connection. Since there’s no VoLTE, it automatically drops to 3G (or 2G if there’s no 3G reception) when calling.

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This is just with the Broadmobi modem and is a modem thing, not an L5 thing as such, isn’t it?
Has the Thales modem been tested yet and shouldn’t it work?

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Ah yes, VoLTE is a modem thing and AFAIK it’s supposed to work with PLS8. Personally I haven’t tested it by myself yet, but I likely will soon. From what I know there were some tests made in the past, but I wasn’t involved in it back then :wink:

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Now I know how to pronounce you last name :slight_smile:

@dos Yeah, I’m sticking with “dos.”
:no_mouth:

This is wildly disrespectful to pine64 and the maintainer of other phone operating systems. Kde, ubports, etc dont really get anything from the librem project. This project is not the holy tree from which all mobile linux variant spring from a lot of other projects actually have to get an L5 and make THEIR stuff work for L5 not the other way around

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What? Not CP/M ?!?!

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Maybe @taylor-williamc should have been more specific and said “Phosh users,” but he is pointing out something that I have also frequently encountered online. A lot of the PinePhone’s success has depended on Phosh, and I see little acknowledgement of that fact by the critics of the Librem 5 on r/Purism and YouTube. (I haven’t seen much criticism of Purism on the PINE64 forum, so that is a sign that most of this criticism isn’t coming from actual PinePhone users.)

When I created this poll on the PINE64 forum, it got 54 votes by 36 people and I was surprised by the results:

Which interface(s) do you use on the PinePhone?

Interface Votes % of voters
Phosh 25 69%
Plasma Mobile 10 28%
Lomiri 6 17%
Hildon 1 3%
Silica 1 3%
Android 2 6%
Other 9 25%
Total voters 36

Further proof that the PinePhone depends on Purism’s software development:

  • 9 of the 17 distros for the PinePhone include Phosh, whereas 3 of the 17 include Plasma Mobile and 2 of the 17 include Lomiri.
  • 2 out of the 3 PinePhone Community Editions have preinstalled Phosh.
  • The distros that people report as being the best on the PinePhone are generally Mobian/Phosh and Manjaro/Phosh.

I think the PinePhone is great because it brings new users and developers to Phosh and they are helping to package Phosh in many different distros, so we should be happy that Phosh helps PINE64 sell the PinePhone. My hope is that the Librem 5 will become a way for people to use Lomiri and Plasma Mobile as well, so the Librem 5 can help contribute users to the UBports and KDE communities as well.

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@ozpi That is fair. I wasn’t thinking about the other environments when I said that, but I had previously seen reports like what @amosbatto posted suggested phosh was the dominant environment.

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Yup. A barebones phone that would gain functionality through software updates is exactly what we were promised. Frankly, when I backed, I seem to recall I was expecting something that would run Linux, have only a minimal set of applications (think: calculator, notes, probably a browser, maybe a media player), and would be able to do little more than make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages, and hold a charge long enough to make it through the day. I was honestly expecting the feature set of a Nokia 3310 for the first couple of months.

I disagree. You can always go into your camera settings and lower the quality of the images to save on disk space and/or bandwidth if you don’t want or need high-res images. You can also tell your phone to upload over WiFi only, if you’re only concerned about the bandwidth on your cheaper plan and not so much about the disk space required. But for those of us who do want or need higher resolutions, there’s no way to toggle a software setting that magically allows us to make high-res pictures with that low-res sensor.

That said, the sensor quality matters a lot more than raw pixel count. And the quality of the optics, and even the software, obviously.

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Digital camera - yes. Phone camera - not so sure about that.

I had a quick look at my spiPhone and I couldn’t see such a setting. Happy to learn still, even though said phone is in the last few weeks(?) / months(?) of use, if you know where the setting is.

I’m OK for the L5 phone camera just to take the photo at full sensor res all the time but we don’t want to confuse pixels with quality, as you say.

Later on someone can add a setting to dial down the resolution used to capture an image - and then everyone will be happy.

Hmm, had a quick glance at the settings on mine, and it appears you’re right. I can only choose it for videos, not for photos. Must be misremembering that.

That said, if you’re on Android, you can still limit your data usage for photo backups. You can change the quality between Original Quality and High Quality (which is described as "store more at a slightly reduced quality). You can also choose whether to back up photos and videos over the mobile data connection, and whether to allow backups when roaming.

Which, to go off on a bit of a tangent, I find pretty hilarious. Because at least on mine I can disable “back up photos over data”, yet enable “back up while roaming”. Does that mean photos taken abroad get backed up over the mobile network, but not the ones taken in my own country? Now, I know what you’re thinking: “you probably need both active; the roaming setting doesn’t take effect because you disallow backups over the mobile network, and roaming is just a special case mobile network”. But that seems to be contradicted by the fact that the “back up videos over data” option is grayed out until I enable “back up photos over data”. :man_shrugging:

No, you’re not misremembering. I still have that and use those settings regularly. A lot of full size at best quality but also selected smaller shots. As I have thousands of photos on my phone, the size does become an issue but in reality, I should archive a lot of them more often and I’m hoping a linux phone allows me to finally do that somewhere other than cloud. If the photos would only be saved at full&best I could probably live with a feature where I could make smaller&compressed versions - preferably baked in to sending MMS (would use that probably even if the camera already allowed to take different sizes).

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Tell that to the maintainers of the multitude of Pinephone distro’s using Phosh.

Oh, I didn’t notice that one before.

As an example from my own yard, we’re pushing some solutions to Wayland problems affecting everyone. And we help them implement it: you can ask Bhushan from KDE.

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What!? I thought you just pointed authoritatively at the screen and said “Enhance!” --always works in the movies… :wink:

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Eh, goes to show how behind the curve I am when it comes to technology… :wink:

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… along with stripping the metadata.

And if you can configure a preferred ‘size’ for sending MMS then you should be able to do the same for sending email (either the same limit or a different limit).

The spiPhone already does this but it asks every time, which is not ideal.

“You’re gonna need a bigger µSD card”

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… you are setting me up for all kinds of replies on that and there are just too many and too dirty to choose from :sweat_smile: :zipper_mouth_face:

Those are the best. Don’t be selfish, share! :joy: