Librem 5 USA after 2 years without a smartphone

[fsflover]

@octoplex

In summary: The Librem 5 USA has a lot of potential, but the immensely-powerful processor inside it is struggling to run a bloated-mess of Apple-esque UI-nonsense. There seem to be a lot of layers of frivolous graphical effects slowing everything down.

I guess you should like https://sxmo.org/. I really hope it can be ported to Librem 5 at some point. The website is down, so here are alternative links: Sxmo - postmarketOS Wiki and https://web.archive.org/web/20220127122917/https://sxmo.org/.

@octoplex

I won’t go into details, but before adding a ‘Chess’ game, or a ‘Weather’ app, the engineers on this phone should fix the basic functioning of things.

The problem with your “simple” solution is that adding existing apps is super-simple and many users would notice it and benefit form it, whereas “fixing the basic functioning of things” is the hardest and most time-consuming part.

@octoplex

Let’s face it: child-slavers will not inherently be good designers.

Isn’t iPhone’s interface designed in the US? So you have any links saying otherwise?

@octoplex

We can buy our own headphones; most of us can’t re-code the OS. Focus on that.

Software will be fixed at some point. Hardware can’t ever be. Purism chose the long-term strategy, and I agree with them.

@octoplex

Can a privacy conscious phone really come with Firefox?

In fact, it does not come with Firefox. It comes with Debian repositories and you can install Firefox from the command line AFAIK. Using Debian saves a huge amount of time in the development, but it does not have to be the final destination (see SXMo).

@octoplex

Therefore, it is extremely disingenuous to include Firefox on a privacy-conscious phone.

Most people can’t live without a browser on the phone. Firefox is the most privacy-conscious browser among the existing (well, maybe GNU IceCat is better).