New Post: Librem 5 Update: Shipping Estimates and CPU Supply Chain

A straw man argument and out of line here.

But if you really believe it, then this is a good reason why the U.S Constitution must be defended and not attacked.

I’m in about the same position in the queue. I think Q2 of 2021 is more likely. The first Evergreen batch was limited to a very small number (probably because there are still many software issues so Purism can’t overwhelm its support staff with a large number of customers, and developer models that don’t yet have FCC/CE certification have to be limited in number). Linear projection based on the first batch is inevitably going to wrong.

Evergreen is ready for early adopters like me, which is why I’m glad that Purism is finally shipping, but the software still needs a lot of work and Purism may still need to change the hardware design if the FCC/EC certification finds problems or they find some issue with a component such as the cameras, smartcard reader, etc.

Your expectations need to be calibrated to the fact that Purism only has 10 developers working on the Librem 5’s software. It is unrealistic to expect a finished product at this point in time, given the amount of technical challenges Purism has to overcome.

If you want to criticize Purism’s poor communication with the community and the marketing of the Librem 5, then I think that you have a point, but criticizing the company for not yet having a phone ready for mass production is not fair in my opinion, given the company’s resources.

You are comparing apples to oranges:

Purism Librem 5 PINE64 PinePhone F(x)tec Pro1
SoC NXP i.MX 8M Quad Allwinner A64 Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
SoC mass production 2018-01 2015-06 2017-Q1
Kernel The Librem 5 has been an early adopter for many new components (i.MX 8M, LM3692 x , MAX17055, LSM9DS1, BQ25890, MLAF057WE51-X, etc.) and Purism has made over 100 commits to mainline Linux to support the new hardware. PINE64 selected older components that already had good mainline Linux support and only had to make a couple commits to get the PinePhone supported in mainline Linux. The Pro1 uses Qualcomm’s kernel and Android drivers through libhybris.
HDMI or DP video out 2020-07 2018-12 (Linux 4.20) 2017-Q1
camera interface still adding to mainline Linux? 2019-05 (Linux 5.1) 2017-Q1
Suspend-to-RAM not yet Crust developed since 2017-10 2017-Q1
How designed Designed from scratch and early adopter problems with a new i.MX 8M SoC and no i.MX 8M phone reference design was available. Required 5 prototypes (pre-Aspen, Aspen, Birch, Chestnut, Dogwood) before mass production. Designed from scratch since no A64 phone reference design was available, but PINE64 has been designing boards with the A64 since 2015. Required 3 prototypes (pre-developer, v1.0 Developer, v1.1 Braveheart) before mass production. Used a Snapdragon phone reference design from Qualcomm or an ODM.
Electronic components 1304 + roughly 100 more in two M.2 cards 704 400-600
Software development Developed the new Phosh mobile environment. Made over 100 commits to mainline Linux. Paid Silicon Labs to alter the RS9116 firmware. Outsources all software development to communities. 70% of Pinephone users report using Phosh developed by Purism. Some porting work of Ubuntu Touch, but very little software development.

Purism outsourced the Librem 5 design to a Chinese firm, but if I were to guesstimate the amount of labor by hardware engineers to design these phones, I would say that the Librem 5 required twice as many hours as the PinePhone and four times more than the Pro1. From what I can gather the Pro1 was mostly designed by 1 guy, which is doable when working off a standard reference design.

PINE64 does no software development and relies heavily on the software development being done by Purism, so your comparison makes no sense.

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Omg this forum is all fanboys.

My complaint has nothing to do with software. It’s with purists inability to deliver and their INSISTENCE of hiding their process as if it’s normal. I’ve backed 2 other phones, but designed in-house, amd both are somehow able to do what purism is struggling to do, and fanbois are choosing not to acknowledge. Product or transparency. Stop holding us hostage to our deposit. Especially after they raised money last year.

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FanMEN. And fanwomen.

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I’m definitely a fan. :slightly_smiling_face:

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If you need a reliable smartphone for daily usage, you probably don’t want the PinePhone, since you are probably going to install Phosh, and going to be waiting for Purism’s software development, just like you are waiting for the Librem 5. The Ubuntu Touch port for the PinePhone still has some problems and the Plasma Mobile requires even more dev work than Phosh.

What I did was buy a Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 for $175 and installed LineageOS. It also works with Ubuntu Touch. The downside is that you need a computer with Windows (not a virtual machine) to unlock the bootloader for Xiaomi phones and the Note 7 doesn’t support many of the LTE bands in the Americas, but there are many other phone models that support LineageOS. If you live in Europe, the Fairphone 3 with /e/ preinstalled is a good option, if you don’t want to mess with the hassle of reading xda-developers forums to figure out how to install LineageOS on your phone.

I think this is an issue of finances at Purism. If Purism has the money on hand to pay for a big manufacturing lot and can hire more people at its Fullfillment Center in Carlsbad, California, then it should be able to produce 10k phones very quickly. Another issue is that Purism may not want to overwhelm its tech support staff by shipping too many phones at once when there are still a lot of software issues to resolve. If Purism gets 10 new customers per day complaining that WiFi doesn’t work, Purism can tell them how to set the datetime to make it work, but Purism can’t do that when a couple hundred new customers are getting their Librem 5’s every day.

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Thanks for the feedback @amosbatto!

If you have an excuse for a lie it doesn’t make you honest, it just makes you a liar with an excuse.
As much as I understand what you are saying and still want them to succeed with L5, it doesn’t allow me to become their “customer” instead of a “backer”

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Not even close.

There is worst in this forum : haters who subscribe only to criticize Purism, again and again with the same broken arguments
Which one, fanboy or hater, gives some fuel to the motivation of Purism’s team ?

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Which two other phones?

It took 5 years of software development (2003-10 to 2008-09) before Android shipped in its first device, the HTC Dream. It took Canonical 3.5 years (2011-10 to 2015-02) to develop Ubuntu Touch before it shipped in its first device, the BQ Aquaris E4.5. KDE Plasma Mobile has been in development for 5.5 years (since 2015-07), and it is currently behind Phosh. Apple managed to get iOS to market in 2 years, and Mozilla developed Firefox OS for two years (2011-07 to 2013-07) before the release of the ZTE Open. Given that it has taken Purism 3.3 years to get the Librem 5 to market, it isn’t doing too badly compared to other new mobile environments, especially when considering that Purism has only had between 8 and 13 people working on the Librem 5’s software.

As I said above, you have a point if you want to criticize Purism’s communication and its marketing of the phone, but it is downright wrongheaded to compare the Librem 5 to the Pro1, because they are vastly different in terms of the dev work to bring them to market. I have worked in companies that developed new hardware and new software, so I have some idea of the work involved. I can tell you that developing the F(x)tec Pro1 from a Snapdragon reference design with a kernel and drivers supplied by Qualcomm and porting Ubuntu Touch with libhybris is nothing like starting with a new SoC and no reference design and having to do kernel work to support the hardware and having to create a new mobile environment.

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What about Jan 2019? How many until then…asking for a friend.

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It goes beyond that. There are good reasons to criticize Purism (there are good reasons to criticize anyone, goes with being human). The mindless anti-purism garbage makes it much harder to have a clear-headed discussion about their strengths and weaknesses. It also makes anyone criticizing them look like a jerk. Seriously, you might not agree with the explanation of something, or not be satisfied with the reasoning, but seeing the same tired old doom-and-gloom brought to every thread does no one any favors.

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how many people working in the sig-int community have ALREADY received the El Cinque ? but i guess we will never know … :innocent:

0? They would be ordering the USA Edition and as far as I know none of those have shipped yet although I am sure the sig-int community won’t be advertising the fact in this forum when they do get their phones, whichever edition.

unless they specifically want the made-in-PRC-edition … there is a market for sig-int specialists there too ? remember the world is usually divided into spheres of political influence … at a time ofc :wink: or it could be both ? like 007 ?

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My bad. One can only speculate …

That would be… funny: Sigint and other intel & sec outfits and agencies could have ordered L5, because it’s so good. They want convenient privacy too! Which could be delaying the shipments to consumers. Would be good, that the device gets recognition but it would probably also get poked at to see how to get in. So, is this the latest (conspiracy) theory why the delays have happened (surely the global logistics explanation was a smokescreen, right)…? :wink:

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I made an extrapolation for your friend here: 3500 phones ordered, almost $2.5 million raised

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I disagree with this (what’s before is compatible with what I wrote, and I don’t feel concerned by what is following it)
That’s absolutely not my view, criticizing is healthy, that why I took time to answer clearly the first time (like other did)
Now when the reaction is dismissing everything said by “y’all fanboys”, contradiction with himself, and pushing more criticizes, then the credibility is not higher than a troll

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Being a mobile platform developer is the new rocket scientist!