Hi All,
Everyone ok in lockdown?
So, I love Purism, I love their ideas, and what they stand for.
I am waiting for the chestnut or fir to be released.
Are there any Librem 5 reviews in the US or UK or elsewhere that show the phone actually making calls from one person to another?
Or any detailed reviews from customers?
Thanks in advance. Stay safe.
LinuxNew
Lockdown been pretty bad 
There are not any real âhands onâ reviews of the product from what I have seen on youtube without the CEO breathing down your neck while you show it to your audience. Chestnut (unless I am going insane) is already out, evergreen will be the proper release and fir will be a completely new phone after. Fir is a long ways away. I will drop some links that kind of show it doing a voice call. You can also scour the purism youtube account for any clips as well. Just kind of comedic that there isnât a proper review of it. From what I see, a normal phone call isnât possible but I may be wrong. I will go do some more research.
https://youtu.be/Mqmz0cJkYRQ
https://youtu.be/QNKCneLS8Dw
https://youtu.be/1haFGa7ZyPs
edit:
I believe this is the latest progress update of the librem 5 though it is a bit old.
https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-august-update/
Latest update is from March. And you forgot that Dogwood was supposed to have been just shipped - and for obvious reasons is a bit late, it seems (or did someone get a confirmation/shipping email yet?). That would be first version that actually should be mostly ready, shipped to first regular people and thus would probably feed the videostreaming industry.
Havenât heard of any news about dogwood shipping yet. Also, the latest progress update is very plain and not in depth. There isnât a video of pure maps working. There is an image. We canât see real world performance testing on battery life. We get a graph from them. Also, I thought low spec hardware was a sacrifice on making battery life really long but it isnât. UI changes are so small that they are practically pointless except the task manager section which seems pretty good. They didnât mention anything about key features of the phone like making a phone call which is what not only this person but what everyone wants to know about. Pinch to zoom seems very poor but is progress from the original scroll wheel like zoom you would have on a desktop. Everything generally looks slow such as clicking of a quick access button in the video taking a few seconds to launch the application. I also see random quick popups of the keyboard for no reason in situations like opening a website. The RAM optimisation is fine at 50% usage and that is with just a few firefox tabs open. On my phone, I currently have 34 tabs open and I only had around 8 yesterday and I do not think the phone can handle either of those. What I am saying is that it looks very incomplete and I really would like a person with no knowledge about anything technical to try and make a full review of the product without the CEO with them and then also a person who is technically knowledged to try use the product. I do not mean holding the phone and pressing firefox and opening two tabs but having it as a normal daily driver and come up to a decision after at least 24 hours with using all features on the device possible.
Think about how different expectations are between different people.
It is enough for me that the battery charge lasts one day, that I can make a phone call, that synchrony with nextcloud works and, basically, that I have linux as the operating system.
Hey Everyone thanks for the comments.
I agree with a lot of what is being said. I would love to have a fully operational Librem 5, that would be amazing, but as there seems to be no customers reviews with someone actually making calls at length in countries other than the US, and there seems to be so many questions over the other features, I fear that this will be a long way off
Not that what you talk about wouldnât be nice, but I think youâre missing the thought behind the different releases (and it could have been made more clear and talked about by Purism or they could have opted for a different coms strategy, but thatâs another thing). The first iterations that have been shown to some influencers and developers, and (partly) videoed, are not the final hardware nor software. I can imagine that Purism does not want reviews on them because those are not the product. Dogwood is supposed to be the release candidate and Evergreen the working (and upgradable) model and both are still in development. The D-version was supposed to be shipped to the selected people first and soon after to the common backers, if my memory serves. Then, after that, it would be more reasonable to expect videos. So, there seems to be some (marketing) reasoning involved as the project would not benefit from videos of prototypes (of a kind of a prototype that the L5 itself is, in the grander scale). We just have to see how long the delays are due to corona as well as getting changes to Dogwood hardware to RC level.
On the other hand, yes, it would be interesting to see one of the early models in an actual test and review, instead of these glimpses. Maybe someone could do a in-depth comparison video of the changes between all the trees at some later time?
Sorry, I just tried to make a video showing the Librem 5 making and receiving calls but I am just terrible at making videos. I donât have great equipment for it and I donât know my way around video editors. So, while I did record some video of it working, I canât really post it.
But I can tell you that phone calls are definitely working on my Chestnut L5. I am in the US and I had a FreedomPop SIM in a OnePlus One running LineageOS and an AT&T SIM in my L5. The L5 can call the OnePlus One and the OnePlus One can call the L5. Audio works in both directions regardless of which device initiated the call.
I recognize that I am asking for a lot of trust for me to post this with no video evidence, but I just want to spread some positive feelings about the L5. There will eventually be video evidence, so just try to be patient as difficult as that can be. It is a decent device and it is getting better with every update (both hardware and software).
There will eventually be an actual phone - then you wonât have to watch videos or trust anyone, just trust your eyes. 
eh ⌠with a little study first maybe ⌠
Note that a delay due to Corona was announced in February: https://puri.sm/posts/coronavirus-delays/
If this still holds true, people will get their Dogwood in about a month.
Maybe weâll get a glimpse on the internal hardware revision before that.
Several people here on the forums have reported calls to work. Maybe Purism wants to save some things to âshow offâ for closer to Evergreen?
@user1 I have to ask: how better than with a graph would you demo the battery life? Would you rather make a six hour video of the battery dying? 
For some of your other comments, it seems to me your picture is incomplete - e.g. there were two pinch-to-zoom demos so far, AFAIR. The second was much smoother, as the browser was switched to request mobile versions. BTW, I use a Galaxy S3 with 1.5GB RAM as my daily driver. I can open as many tabs as I want. All mobile browsers just swap out non-active tabs.
I want someone independant not from your company to leave the screen on and see how long it lasts, on a normal use schedule to see how long and testing standby would be nice too.
Improvement is good but it still doesnât look good. If the most basic things like a web browser perform like that, I can literally only imagine how others from the store are due to no independant product review or at least a video from the company showing off applications from developers running on the device.
My device uses about 3.38GB usually and with 1.12GB of swap. I guess it is nice that browsers do that but I would be annoyed going from youtube to another recently used tab and it just to refresh. Companies like apple put so little amount of RAM in their phones and their OS is so efficent that you canât even notice any real RAM limitations but I strongly doubt a small company like purism will be able to do the same as apple. Tabs on it isnât too much of a problem though it still seems slow to launch and pinch to zoom doesnât seem perfect.
With all the people in self-isolation at the moment, that could be the highlight of their day.
I want someone independant not from your company to leave the screen on and see how long it lasts, on a normal use schedule to see how long and testing standby would be nice too.
Just for the record, Caliga isnât a Purism employee, heâs just a prolific forum regular. 
Oh okay. Thought he was because he seemed big brain.
Many fora explicitly identify employees, or more generally the role that a person is playing. Has Purism consciously chosen not to do that? The Discourse forum software appears to have the functionality.
Anyway I regularly comment that I do not speak for Purism just in case someone mistakes my feral opinions for company policy and if I had a phone, I would be more than happy to provide independent measurements of standby time etc.
@Caliga, you big brain 
True about the delay, but itâs still âoriginally plannedâ vs. âhow long will the delay eventually beâ. And how long it takes for someone with interest in videos to get one and make an attenboroughish or mythbusterish (or michaelbayish) documentary. Iâd bet on the glimpse as well.
And, like @Kieran said, at the moment such a [battery depletion] video just might have an audience (even if I too like the graph). I mean, we have plenty of time to verify the graph data now
And please if you grab that video leave the clock on the screen somewhere so that noone can discuss that purism stretched the time or something ^^
maybe also open up the fragments app and pirate a few AVs so that we can complain about the battery and heat build-up
Hey FamousJameous,
If the chestnut is making and recieving calls just fine, it mkaes me wonder why no one else with a chestnut has put a video up of it making calls?
I love Purism, and Iâm making the move from Windows to Linux, and love the whole community, so I really want the Librem 5 to work out, however, there seems next to no real reviews and footage anywhere?