Just received my L5 USA and overall it’s been an interesting experience.
Right out if the gate, automatic date/time would not work, so I could not update the phone until I manually set the date and time due to certificate negotiation issues. Finally got it updated after sorting that out.
Next up, display scaling. The setting does not persist after rebooting. Additionally the keyboard becomes super tiny and quite difficult to use. Would be useful to either keep thee keyboard at 200% scaled or at least able to be set differently from the general display scaling.
Gnome browser breaks frequently, have it happen frequently on this forum for example where it asks me to reload. As well while writing this, I’ve had to close the browser (and swipe it up to close it completely) multiple times as it becomes unresponsive and keyboard input doesn’t work.
Auto display brightness is awful, way too laggy and too much range, goes from dim to almost max but not smoothly, jumps all over the place.
I know most of these are not applications maintained by Purism but OOTB experience is important IMO. Overall I am more excited than ever about mobile Linux having used it on my desktops and servers for over a decade and these are just growing pains. Still decently impressed with the product and I hope soon I can use it as a moderately reliable daily driver!
Let me know if there’s aby further information, details, logs, testing, etc. that can be provided to help with the above points.
Regarding the browser issue, I think this is a known bug that has been reported here. I use Firefox with mobile settings, but starting Firefox takes a long time.
I bought a Librem 5 off Ebay a couple of years ago, I kind of got used to certain issues knowing full well going in it won’t be as user friendly as an Android or Apple device, but my big gripes, I really only have two that totally prevent me from daily driving the phone, 1. Battery life is awful and sleep has not been implemented as far as I know to where the phone wakes up when you need it too like on a call, text, email, etc. 2. MMS, you can go into settings and depending on your carrier, might be able to get it to work from what I have read on these forums, but its still an issue for me, I need it to be more reliable there.
There are other issues as pointed out by the OP, but battery and MMS are two sticking points I can’t overlook.
I don’t speak for anyone else but I chose to disable auto display brightness and take responsibility for adjusting it manually. (In other words, I mostly agree with you.) That means remembering to do so if going outside during the Australian summer - otherwise it can be very difficult to increase the brightness once outside (I would be almost flying blind).
I expect that auto display brightness will eventually improve.
The good news is that, reading this forum, both of those are being actively worked on. If you are adventurous then you can already enable both. However MMS success will probably depend on your country and carrier.
As a starting point though you would need to flash to Byzantium (which could be relevant if you bought a couple of years ago and it is not your daily driver).