For many people, it is a similar thing to PTSD and has a similar cure.
Tee hee, I don’t want to interfere with the medications they’ve got him on right now, but yes, I know my duty 
Purism won’t make a cent in profit until it recovers its development costs. If my back-of-the-envelope calculation is right (which is questionable), Purism won’t start making a profit until it sells over 12k of phones. Considering that Purism now has 20+ employees working on the Librem 5, it will need even more sales going forward to cover its costs.
Whether Purism makes a profit or not is your concern. The company relies heavily on its ongoing sales to pay for its operations, so it can’t run for years without profits like many Silicon Valley startups. We need Purism to stay in business, so it can keep improving the software interface and keep issuing software updates in the future. It is the ongoing software development which will make the Librem 5 valuable and useful. If you get your Librem 5 tomorrow, but Purism disappears, then you are stuck. Maybe the community will take over development, but critical things like figuring out the MIPI CSI interface on the i.MX 8M might never happen and all the power management problems might never get solved. Purism’s ongoing work is critical, because many of the components in the Librem 5 don’t yet have good mainline Linux support.
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I get your logic, and I agree that their marketing … ahem… has room for improvement. But they are between a rock and a hard place. Delays will occur, delays of a year are not uncommon (when did Samsung want to bring out their foldable thing originally? And they have unlimited resources). If they say: ‘Everything’s fine’ they have lied and if they say, ‘our phones still don’t do audio’ people will hate, laugh and demand refunds… You have to be somewhat insane to attempt what purism attempts. So that is why I am so lenient towards purism when I am not with other companies.
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Sorry to disappoint you or your positive oversight/intention, but, if this is about typical/usual NXT production, i.MX 8M Quad is based on 28nm High Performance Compact for Mobile (HPC) platform (might be by using High-K/Metal Gate option). Links that you provided are related to i.MX 8 QuadMax, i.MX 8QuadXPlus and other upcoming i.MX 8 derivatives that already are or will be based on 28nm FD-SOI process technology. @amosbatto, please take a closer look as I might be wrong.
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@quarnero,
Yes, you are right. This presentation shows that the i.MX 8 and i.MX 8X series are FD-SOI, but the i.MX 8M series is HPC.
That means that the i.MX 8M Quad could be made in either Giheung, South Korea or Austin, Texas, USA.
Unfortunately, this means that the i.MX 8M Quad isn’t as power efficient, but it should be a little cheaper to make, and it can more easily be shrunk to 14nm FinFET.
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Purchasing the USA model would have twofold reasoning for me: patriotism, and not supporting China. I would gladly pay this if, and only if, exactly 0% of it was sourced from China (nothing against the Chinese people, everything against their government), and preferably was truly 100% US-sourced and assembled, including the cables, literature, and box that ships with it.
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What I understood is that 28nm HPC process belongs to TSMC and therefore i.MX 8M might be made in their WaferTech L.L.C., Fab 11, Camas, Washington, U.S.A.
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For me at least, the security will only be proven once a number of people have watched the traffic in and out of the phone for a while, looking for unexpected data being sent to unanticipated destinations. However, if the PRC has included spyware components on the phone, I’ve already started to think about ways I’m going to troll them in an attempt to have to lowest social score of anyone on the planet.
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that’s hilarious
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If you are a high value target then this won’t be anywhere near good enough to “prove” anything. Look at actual publicly known cases of data exfiltration, remote command and control, and the like, and those are just the ones that we know about. Assume that the Chinese government employs thousands of smart people working on this day in day out. For most of us, if the device already contains spyware then we have already lost. Fortunately most of us are not high value targets anyway.
Security is proved by verifying the hardware and the software. There are limits as to what can be achieved today, and some effort doesn’t survive a cost/benefit analysis.
LOL. New topic in Round Table?
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Hi,
Are there any informations where the components of the not-USA phone are made/assembled?
I ask because of one aspect of the USA-option isn’t valued in the post and just slightly here in the comments. Its about the ability to choose where your money goes to (or ends up). To a suppressing regime/system that imprisons and fights its own ppl, or to a country where freedom (of people/speech/…) is of high value and protected by a alive concrete constitution. (btw.:I am not american myself nor do I live in USA, so don’t see this post any kind of patriotic)
So if production in the USA replaces production in China/Vietnam I would see it as a bigbig argument.
But if it replaces a production in Taiwan/India/… than there isn’t any advantage at all. As for me, I don’t trust US products more than any other products of real democratic countries. (but definitely less than products made in EU)
Additional wish: even if not so many parts of their products are made in China I would like to ask purism to put some effort into not producing their products in dictator-like countries. But in democratic, free countries. That way buying their product would also support real freedom (by not supporting oppression).
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It may be helpful to quote the actual marketing info from Purism.
The Librem 5 USA is designed for individuals or organizations who:
- Have a hard requirement for where components are manufactured and sourced from
- Are concerned about hardware backdoors
- Need a secure supply chain
- Want to trial a USA made smartphone for larger organization adoption
where the first three items are particularly relevant and the second item may be of greatest interest to end consumers.
However that doesn’t stop you from buying for other reasons.
- Where the money ends up, and
- sending a message to a regime, and
- labor standards
are all things that an individual buyer might consider.
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Well… they have Ubports working on it already. That’s great. I didn’t jump on the Braveheart because it will be useless for me. There’s no much I can do to help other than ordering in advance and I don’t think they are looking for that kind of help. Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on them. Ubports has my respect and in the end I think I’ll be working on their side. I love that community.
I’ve seen videos of plasma mobile on a devkit, looking forward to trying to load it and help improve it in whatever way I can.
You’ve got some good points there.
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I don’t like assuming things I don’t know to justify what I disapprove. The truth is L5 project is in a bad shape, meanwhile the company is entertaining itself with other projects. Birch was shipped not being a functional device and what people are saying about it is that its going to take a long while for it to be a daily driver phone. BUT Purism is talking about a L5v2 and a USA version of L5. TO ME this is chaotic and I don’t like it. It seems to be the wrong attitude in this forum to point at what I don’t like about the way Purism is managing this project. Maybe I’m joining the wrong crowd. I’ll find out…
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Maybe it would better to write, then, “My opinion is” because unless you are working on the L5 project, you “don’t know”.
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Then you know something you should share with everybody here. Birch has been a success and the internet is full of positive reviews, Kieran. Tell me…
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If you know the truth, cite it for us. With facts, not conjecture.
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