I’m curious to hear what feature or improvement you want most for the Librem 5.
What could be holding you or others back from using the Librem 5 as daily phone?
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My most feature is to remove SystemD and Waydroid, Flatpaks these sucks power and security holes for L5.
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We need VoLTE to work for all carriers in Sweden. It currently works for two of four carriers, nobody seems to know why. This is critical now since 2G and 3G have been shut down in Sweden.
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Volte cant be fixed via software by Purism because volte depends on vendors blobs, so to fix it need via hardware
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Recognizing the devs’ great work that’s constantly improving the software, and acknowledging that I haven’t really tried much to use the Librem 5 as my main phone, so maybe some of these are no longer problematic, my list would include:
- long-lasting battery charge
- less heat generation
- reliable network connections
- good turn-by-turn navigation and voice prompts
- reliable notifications for any running services
- a unified XMPP client for use with JMP Chat phone numbers (calls and messaging)
If we’re also considering physical factors, form-factor redesign, etc.:
- multi-region modem
- lighter weight
- less bulk
- a protective case that doesn’t cause overheating or add much bulk
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I actually might give it a try now that I’m running crimson. 
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PureOS Dawn and fully upstreamed kernel/DE changes.
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Software improvements:
- GLES3
- PureOS Dawn and its software (Updated Phosh, Squeekboard and Nautilus in specific)
- Energy efficient software (also good for desktop) - generates automatically less heat, too
- Reliable connections
- Suspend after 3 seconds when screen is turned off (button usage). I don’t like auto suspend
- Camera API
- Portals for screen capture (or whatever is missing) - for things as desktop/app streaming via Matrix etc
Hardware improvements:
- One of these solid state batteries as soon as market ready
- 5G multi-region modem with free firmware (so we don’t need to worry about 4G shut down and have to reverse engineer just one time for potential multiple phones)
I already daily drive if for over 2 years, so nothing of this is a real deal breaker.
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Hi. I’ve been daily driving Librem 5 since March/April 2023. Nearing 3 years. I’m writing this post from my phone, which is a Librem 5.
Dawn:
- I daily drive Byzantium based on the theory that when I tried dev Crimson a year ago random stuff didn’t work.
- I assume part of the problem is government conspiracy to make GNOME worse, i.e. as soon as Dawn is good then its upstream Debian version will be surprise deprecated.
- As such I assume only a best effort from Purism is okay, but I hope to retain Byzantium featureset as baseline as goal for foreseeable future
- This includes:
- Working camera
- Working modem with call and text
- Working onscreen keyboard with enough settings that I can disable all forms of autocomplete or autosuggest, and also enable arrow keys in all situations
- Ability to copy text in terminal emulator (although didn’t we lose this in Byz in a patch a year or two ago? regardless I want it back)
- Ability to use touch interface to select text in a manner that is intuitive (In Byz there are times that right click menus fight with app drag select, such as FF, maybe its not an OS thing and is an FF application issue but something to look out for)
Hardware:
- Size: Some people say make a slimmer device like an iPhone; I think they are wrong. I don’t care about that. Last few weeks I’ve been using an enlarged 3D printed back of the Librem 5 that stores 2 additional batteries embedded in the modified 3D printed battery cover plate. It’s honestly quite nice, especially as an optional attachment that can swap back to the slimmer 1-battery normal configuration like I’m doing now in bed to write this. (while not traveling, not at work, don’t need 3x batteries)
- I was disappointed from day 1 that there is not an easy way to boot the Librem 5 while both (a) battery is removed and (b) it is attached to a dock.
- These two together would have made for a nice PC experience (“convergence”) when at home
- Can this be fixed?
- I saw an advert for somebody that was going to rip off Phosh and make a Phosh handset “phone” with 32GB ram and 2 USB-C ports
- If I had 2 USB-C ports on the Librem 5, I am sure I would find something to do with them. But it might not be strictly necessary
- Would it perhaps be better to have 2 SD card spaces in the tray, and to offer Volume Up key during boot to pick the second one to boot while starting up, similar to the current Volume Down dual boot? Then we could have triple boot with (a) eMMC for Phosh, (b) micro SD card #1 for a non-phosh desktop environment for convergence, (c) a microSD card #2 for insecure apps, Waydroid without access to secure encrypted eMMC files
- The plastic frame part that includes the “camera glass” and “torch” cover has them embedded in. What if we want to change geometry of that part of the frame and 3D print a different one? Can the next version change this so the camera cover and torch cover are separate and we can CAD edit the plastic surrounding them to reprint our own?
- Performance is key but difficult to master. After using convergence for some months, I bought a Librem 14 and basically never went back to convergence.
- One of my hobbies uses GLES3 that Carlos keeps harping on. Its libre code so I could port it to GLES2 some day, but I never had time
- Software IDEs that I would use to develop code tend to lag terribly on convergence, to a point of not being worth using. Eclipse / IntelliJ IDEA are some examples. IntelliJ is maybe not libre and maybe bad, but even Eclipse lags. These days the IDEs may be introducing AI antifeatures so it may be increasingly difficult to make these work on a L5, perhaps this problem can’t easily be solved
- Convergence suffers from reliability issues. It was common for me to memorize rules such as “This monitor can only be used with a L5 + dock if the phone powers on, then the monitor is plugged in, and not vice versa.”
- Similarly, if I connect the L5 to a 4K monitor it will accept the connection and suck up phosh app windows into the 4K resolution area, but not actually draw them. So convergence begins with a laborious process of fighting “Settings > Display” to lower the resolution, until a point where the L5 actually starts displaying on the other screen.
- So more driver polish and testing might be the solution here (?)
- I don’t know what 5G is other than marketing – now that I’ve learned it isn’t restricted to a 5 gigahertz band – but if corporatocracy will declare my BM818 is not allowed anymore then Purism must sell me a replacement chip for 5G please
- Any more RAM or CPU/GPU speed we can shove into this thing without losing battery life would be great
- The GameBoy from many decades ago had a door for swapping batteries. Mine still works in GameBoy Advanced now 25 years later after it was purchased. However, the backplate battery cover of my Librem 5 ripped apart years ago. I copied the GameBoy removable door hinge design and 3D printed it so that one of the batteries in my 3 battery Librem 5 backplate is removable/swappable in this same way. My design is a proof of concept; Purism can do better. But why not give it a try? Embrace the battery swap as our alternative style of phone usage. Maybe sell battery chargers on Purism store, and spare “gameboy doors” for $20.
- The lapdock thing, I ordered one from Purism years and years back and they forgot my order and never shipped me anything in all the chaos. But I ordered a second one directly from Nexdock and it mostly feels like garbage. I don’t trust it how I trust Purism devices. Is there some way to sell Librem 14 shells that can wire up to Librem 5s as their keyboard and display out??
- I use a 1TB microSD frequently with a dual boot on there. This is still a bigger budget purchase clocking above $100 last time I looked, and there are many options boasting varying speeds from many vendors; it can be tough to know who to trust. Would there be a benefit to Purism offering these with the Librem 5, possibly ones with a fast speed that are optimal for dual boot? Maybe you already do; been some time since I checked. But I assume 1028GB eMMC is an unreasonable and superfluous ask, so I throw in this other idea instead
- If you can make the camera pictures incrementally prettier it would be fun. Some of my night/low-light photos look like the “Render Noise” button on GIMP. (But I keep the photos anyway, so this isn’t a true need.)
General Software:
- I would like if Shift on the onscreen keyboard used the established paradigm of SHIFT on Linux, such that CTRL+SHIFT+C and similar keybinds would actually work. People who want SHIFT not to be SHIFT seem like they might be part of a conspiracy to sew chaos and reduce functionality
- I would like to use other non-Phosh desktop environments when docking to convergence mode. A straightforward solution would be to add non-Phosh (but still ARM / Librem5) PureOS downloads – then let me put them on my uSD and dual boot it
- This would be essentially the experience of raspberry pi desktop, but usable simply by docking
- Phosh while docked is a reasonable approximation of this, but it isn’t as good and likely never will be by design – trying to fit Phosh “back” to desktop is overengineering when other desktop environments already exist
- It would of course be easier not to have to dual boot. A logout to gdm/lightdm/etc that exits phosh/phoc or whatever would be fine too, but I’m not quite sure how it would work.
- Have a way for noob scrubs to put LineageOS for Librem 5 on a MicroSD card similar to GloDroid for pinephone. Ensure wifi works, cellular data, and maybe camera/bluetooth.
- We can still shun the noob scrubs for using it but it eases the transition – eliminates the life where these people go back to a second duopoly device before they learn that software freedom is good even if it doesn’t have your AI buddy telling you what to buy
Improvement WIshlist for a Future Version (In Descending Order)
-
Faster CPU and more RAM
-
Better microphone and speakers
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Faster microSD capabilities
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More storage
-
Better camera
-
Longer lasting battery
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Debian releases are being deprecated on a reliable and well-known schedule, never by surprise.
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- A UI switch to enable/disable passwordless screen (un)lock mode, so that I can put my phone in a pocket with screen locked (to avoid unintended touch events on screen) without the need to enter password each time I need to use it when I go around my home.
- Tray icons in Phosh. I am forced to have windows of some apps always opened because I can not hide them to tray. Some other apps suppose that you would interact with them through tray icon.
- A switch in Phosh to disable cellular data, but not cellular modem. It happens that carrier may provide IPv6 while there is no IPv6 on WiFi. In such cases some connections would unexpectedly go over cellular network. It is inconvenient to go to settings each time for that.
- A good camera app.
- Camera accessible from apps other than the camera app.
… unless the modem manufacturer fixes it in the blob. So, yes, Purism is dependent on the modem manufacturer and that is not a desirable situation.
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Comes with Dawn. In mobile settings you can disable the need for a password on login screen. A swipe up and instead of PIN-page you will be on “desktop”. You can build a settings plugin to expose the mobile-setting to quick-settings.
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Bluetooth working with Waydroid.
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Your text was so much, that I initially did not read it. But I did it right now.
Squeekboard 1.43 or beyond will add a Shift modifier (coming with Dawn). And Squeekboard has arrows and no auto completions and you can modify it to your behalf or just download my layout (or one of someone else).
Stevia on the other hand has the space bar touch-and-move feature as arrow replacement. It works well to left, right and up, but not well to down (not much space to screen edge). And I updated something on Mobian few days ago and on update I got asked for a keyboard option and I wanted to select something with this feature and accidental selected something wrong, because it hit the space bar at some point. Stevia also has a row with shortcuts and no autocomplete without installing it (I think).
Whatever you like more, but both should be able to solve your requirements.
A newer technology standard. With a lot of innovations and a lot of half true marketing to let it look like a “must have” technology (which is not).
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A switch in Phosh to disable cellular data, but not cellular modem. It happens that carrier may provide IPv6 while there is no IPv6 on WiFi. In such cases some connections would unexpectedly go over cellular network. It is inconvenient to go to settings each time for that.
This and a bunch of other things mentioned here are in Phosh since some time so will come automatically once PureOS updates, Dawn will be sufficient for this particular one.
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If that’s what you want (never to have autocomplete / suggest / correct) then that’s totally fine
but …
… for the general customer this setting should not be used in the onscreen keyboard itself because the onscreen keyboard has no idea whether “auto” is appropriate in the context. It needs to come from higher up in the software stack down to the onscreen keyboard on each and every activation of the keyboard.
Different applications may have different requirements e.g. Chatty sending a text message (yes) v. shell commands (no).
Even within one application, different contexts may have different requirements.
e.g. within a web browser, some entry fields may benefit from auto while other entry fields will be stuffed up by it. As an example of the latter, entering anything like a strong password, you would not want auto anything.
or e.g. within a text editor (say vi), if creating a miscellaneous text file, it may benefit from auto but if editing a programming language source file, it is doubtful that you want want auto, unless the auto functionality is quite sophisticated so as to understand e.g. the reserved words (keywords) of that programming language, and its syntax, and e.g. to recognise when inside a comment - and usually if you want that level of sophistication, you should be using an IDE.
A customer may be able to nobble auto-anything permanently by nobbling the underlying dictionary.
Regarding the on-screen keyboard, I find wvkbd (the default keyboard with sxmo user interface) to be excellent. I’ve tried to add it to PureOS, but I couldn’t get the compatibility to work. Official help getting wvkbd into PureOS/Phosh would be amazing. Or even better, offering sxmo as an option in PureOS instead of Phosh.