Zelkova?
What about yabloko? (As long as we’re switching alphabets…)
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I’m glad I’m not the only one who looked up what type of tree starts with Z.
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Zebrawood is all I could find.
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I hope I will have individually milled case.
This is a luxury never seen before for a smartphone, as for an aeronautical or Formula 1 part!
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they will ship metal milled untill q2 2020 (included) and only Fir(q4 2020) and onwards will be plastic casing - did i understand correctly ?
That’s not my understanding. Based on the post it sounds like Dogwood will be the last batch to have a metal milled case, and Evergreen shipping in Q2 2020 will be a “molded” case which most of us are assuming to be plastic.
Interestingly, Dogwood is currently the least popular/anticipated batch according the poll.
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This idea “mold only applies for plastic housing” is wrong. Purism wanted this phone to have a “quality” feel as most of the people [unfortunately] perceive. Other reason might be the heat dissipation. As long as the first batches don’t show any significant issues with signal strength (inferior to plastic anyway) they will stick to original design.
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Since I’m likely to be in Evergreen (ordered July 2019, just before price increase), I would certainly be happy if Evergreen included a “molded” metal case. This didn’t seem to be a likely possibility as “molded” to me implies plastic. I believe the Linux Gamer video talking about the shipping batches may have also said something about the “molded” case being plastic (but I only watched it once).
It would be awesome if Purism could clarify this point, even though it’s almost a year away, it will be a long wait!
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I hate to rain on everyone’s parade, but it’s also entirely possible that a “milled-case” is plastic. As many things are milled out of plastic as metal in this world. That being said, I hope it’s metal. I’m probably in Chestnut-Dogwood. if it is a metal case for Aspen, I’ll stay, otherwise, i may bump myself back.
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He just assumed, that’s all.
And I’m pretty sure (speculating again :)) that Purism is super cautious on these shipment schedules and the estimates are very conservative. Q2 starts on April 1st and highly doubt they will stretch it as far (to Jun 30th) as they did with this announcement. If not in the first weeks of April, Evergreen should start shipping out in early May.
Could antenna reception strength be a strong reason to go with plastic? My particular L13 laptop is very inefficient any distance away from Wi-Fi TX source. I read that others have noted a similar problem. My unit could simply be fixed by a tweak on the antenna gain. Anyway, an antenna weakened by metal could be a disaster on a phone.
Well, the phone manufacturers got that issue figured out long ago. You just make sure that you have the cut outs on the shall. Some would do around the frame edges, some on the back or both. But, whatever you do, it still falls short a little.
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Too bad there isn’t a way to plug in a USB external antenna for those poor reception areas.
I guess two weeks or so from now, the first lucky backers should be holding or about to hold an Aspen batch phone in their hands, so we will have an answer for Aspen on metal case vs plastic (which likely applies through Dogwood) pretty soon.
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It should be possible. This is exactly what Technoethical are doing to provide wifi for their phones and avoid proprietary drivers: https://tehnoetic.com/tehnoetic-s3-phone-replicant
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What are you talking about? Purism told long ago that they aim to make the metal case. See https://puri.sm/faq/will-the-phone-have-nfc-technology/
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It’s just occurred to me that when they talked about “initial board” and “next run of board”, they might have been referring to running the board through the assembly process (mounting all the components onto it and soldering them down) as opposed to ordering batches of blank PCBs.
In which case, my speculation could be wide of the mark. (I’m not in the mood to think it through again based on different assumptions.)
Milled and moulded cases could both be either metal or plastic, and we have been told it’s a metal case.
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If it’s not especially needed for something (like heat dissipation), I would prefer non-metal (hightech woodfiber? naturally according to each batch… 
). It shouldn’t be too late for Purism to change their minds - possibly due to radio problems or thinking ahead of someday using NFC or some other last minute snafu. On the list of things L5 may have been promised to have, this one is not a deal breaker - to me at least. It’s a separate issue what the case would look like (I liked the metal renderings) and what are the quality implications.
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the first person doing a full review should clearly and comprehensively talk about this aspect (antenna signal reception - metal vs no cover - and show a measured reception)
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Yep.its all about the decibels 
It’s been an obsession of mine ever since I started using phones for work. That and battery life.
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