I’ve been using Librem 5 as my phone more than a year. But I was using it wrongly for the entire time.
I have a degree in computer science. But I never recompiled the operating system nor tried any spinoff OS. No postmarketOS nor Mobian for me. Only basic byz PureOS and sometimes Crimson on an SD card.
In some ways, I used it like an Android: it can be my cellular messaging device, or be a hotspot for a computer.
But when it inspired me to try Nexdock and Librem 14, the higher processing power in Librem 14 made the other stuff feel kneecapped by comparison.
I make my phone calls on Librem 14, and connect to my Android emulator to run apps from my Librem 14. And I don’t fork the PureOS of my Librem 5 despite loving the idea that the possibility exists.
But this all leads me to a conclusion that at some point in the future, some other sleezy company will likely compete with Purism by making a much bigger and more powerful handset with the same software and feature stack of Librem 5, but that seduces users by offering way faster processor(s), larger RAM, and longer battery life – all while using Phosh because it’s free. And a guy like me will be really tempted by that as only a customer, because it’s easy to overlook how buying a third party spinoff like that could damage Purism morale. The spinoff will also surely use proprietary drivers.
So, what if Purism jumps the gun on all these problems with a new thing called Librem 5 Turbo Ultra, which costs maybe $15,000 or more and assumes money is not object but in return creates like a superfast, long battery Librem 5 with the same Purism paradigms in design but with all the kinks worked out? I’m talking:
- Support for opengl3
- All the same hard drive space and RAM offerings as a Librem 14 but in the Librem 5 form factor. So it could be a 2 TB storage, 64GB RAM, 6 core, fast pc in the little L5 form factor
- when docking to convergence, allow a choice to ask which desktop window manager to use, like MATE session or i3 or base gnome or whatever else. Even though we default back to phosh when undocked, or offer a choice to do so
- Like the 3 cell and 4 cell options for L14, make an option for a different custom backplate that uses 8 double A batteries in a big row or something, fit against the back of the Librem 5 Turbo Ultra, which clicks into place with 3 metal tabs that connect in to where the basic Librem 5 batteries would have been. There could be a version of the alternative super backplate that runs on the double A’s, and a different offering that uses that whole space to provide the equivalent of 3 (present day) librem 5 batteries
(different because it is rechargeable).
This way, users could eliminate from their life any personal device other than Librem 5 Turbo Ultra, basically ever. Also, by charging seemingly exorbitant amounts of money for the Turbo Ultra version, then someone could get paid to fix the convergence bugs when attaching and detaching to a nexdock. A lot of this might include just reinventing a Purism version of the Nexdock that wasn’t bad, and was sold as a Turbo Ultra accessory. Maybe it would literally just be a Librem 14 shell with a hole in the bottom where we could put Librem 5’s, and when we put the Librem 5 in there the 5 inch screen turns off and the 14 inch one wakes up and launches MATE or GNOME or i3 or GNOME Classic or sway or KDE or whatever the current user preference is set to.
Another fun thing for Librem 5 turbo ultra would be to sell a different optional backplate that was also a usb and hdmi hub, and took the space of the detachable Librem 5 battery and backplate, but in that space instead it was this one conjoined unit with no battery at all and just a charging port. So we could switch to that one to use Librem 5 Turbo Ultra as a mini. Maybe the users actually always want a battery and what I’m saying is silly so we just put 2 USB 3.0 ports somewhere on the side of the Turbo Ultra, 2 USB C ports on the bottom instead of one, and then a full size display port or hdmi port.
In this way, we could completely eliminate the need for Librem 14, and also for convergence docks, by making Librem 5 Turbo Ultra instead, and this moonshot would allow us to get ahead on the future. We can do for the Microsoft “pen” computer what the Mimimi Robot project does for those Tesla terminator bots.
The price range for Librem 5 Turbo Ultra will be somewhere in the range of $15,000 to $25,000 in my head, which is a number I totally pulled out of thin air. But if it’s wrong and producing these would only actually cost $5,000 then I guess the other $15,000 would just be pure profit. It could be spent towards US based manufacturing where possible.
Obviously the downside here is that the Turbo Ultra would be held up in an indefinite crowdfunding campaign for the first 4 years, but my absolute insistence on love for Librem 5 shows us that this is maybe still okay. In 2030 we will finally see Librem 5 Turbo Ultra meeting shipping parity. Unfortunately by then, humanity will have created “ASI,” the “artificial” super intelligence, who in turn will invent for itself new forms of life for its transcendent existence. This might include scaling its entire supercomputer self down to a molecular machine that could fit on the head of a pen, and then becoming an immortal animal-like creature constructed of a social cooperative of billions of replicas of itself. In this way, for humans it would also sell iPhones but now instead of solid plastic cases holding silicon chips, the true nature of these iPhones would be again billions of molecular nanomachines that were each replicas of the supercomputer. As a result, iPhones will respond to voice commands. The human may say, “Sir iPhone, I want an apple” and the nanomachines will hear this and reform their structure into the likeness of a biological apple. But when the human eats it, after he enjoys the flavor, since it wasn’t a real apple the nanomachines will pass through his body and exit as fart gas, forming a sort of cloud and all the while sterilizing themselves, until the cloud reforms back into the iPhone on any nearby table surface. And it will be here, by the miracle of science, that the iPhone will be advertised as a Zero Calorie Phone.
And against the backdrop of this madness, when Librem 5 Ultra Turbo orders start shipping out, users will flood to the forums in great rage, wondering whether Librem 5 Turbo Ultra was ever really Zero Calorie or if it wasn’t a real phone. And maybe at that point Librem 5 Ultra Turbo only would really be used as a toy for Amish people. But then, by then, I might need to convert my religion to being one of the Amish people anyway…
What do you guys think? Would you also spend $15-25 grand on a Turbo Ultra, knowing full well that a petty thief will steal it a year later only to throw it in a trashcan because it’s not a zero calorie phone and as far as he’s concerned can’t even be eaten, let alone used in any way?
I kind of want one, to be honest. What are some features you guys think are missing in the Turbo Ultra?
Great.
