Seems like this might actually introduce wear-n-tear to the port, particularly if it gets caught under something somehow and breaks off in the port.
Librem 5 - “The bigger they are, the harder they call”
Hence the liberal use of hotglue - as in, “make it part of the case”. Just need to leave a couple holes for the speakers. But as I said, not the best nor first choice.
Librem 50 Table Tablet
How about the Librem Wall? I’d do it.
Anyway… getting back to earlier conversations on this thread: what can be learn about the new photos…
@ramnasko got it pretty right
Correct me if I’m wrong:
- I only see the three switches on one side. So no volume switch? Is the hand covering that and others?
- I can’t see how the card reader (or SIM) is supposed to be accessed…? By opening the case?
- Could this be just a test case (pun intended)? Looks plastic?
- Case design looks ok. Nothing gimmicky or fancy. I like simplicity. And will probably add outer shell.
I think that it is more likely that they haven’t yet cut the holes in the case for the buttons. The announcement said the Aspen batch has an “individually milled case.” I wonder if that means that they are using CNC milling machines.
Too bad that the photos are still too blurry and low-resolution to identify individual parts. They really like to tease us!
They do, don’t they. These are from marketing. We want the pics from engineers! Straight from back, front, top, bottom, sides. Closeups. And preferably pics with all the parts (sans case). A bonus would be an assembly series of images (one can hope, but may have to wait until delivery).
The 3 switches are the kill seitches as i‘m pretty sure they are toggel switches and not buttons to tap. And the are on the left side and in the first pic you can see the 3 kill switches in the case.
But yeah no power and volume buttons so far. Not even in the board so i stick with the gues that they are part of the case(on another doughterboard/flexcable) which will be connected to the main pcb.
I think we what we see are high quality 3D printed prototype cases. They probably iterated fast (i believe it‘s called rapid prototyping) over case versions to get slowly to the perfect fit before milling the same dimensions from metal. I hope they will share more details about the process of the mechanical design for the case. I think it‘s really interesting.
What i think is also missing is some kind of inner frame. There are no screws to hold the boards. They are just laid down on the screen i would say.
Based on Fairphones I’ve seen, and owned, I think this first milled case is on par with that. That is to say this is an ok case. The fact that the first cases will make disassembling your phone easier can be seen as a plus.
I’m really impressed with the PCBs here, as they are proof that Purism is taking modularity, modifications, and self repair seriously.
I wonder how long it will be before we see Lineage OS booting up on it?
Waiting for LineageOS or AOSP (even if it takes a while) as well, because I’d like to have some kind of dualboot setup because of some apps, which will never run on PureOS (and I doubt, that Anbox will ever work - good - there because the dev (s?) seems pretty much drown in issues) which are crucial for me to have the Librem 5 as my only (!) daily driver.
I’m hoping it wasn’t just a shortage of time that resulted in this concept picture not having a logo on the case. I really liked this post last year that talked about having minimal branding on Librem devices. I think the no logo design here is even better and looks more premium, at least to me.
I guess if they did put any logo on there it might not be until the moulded case anyway. If there will be a logo, perhaps it would be nice to have it on the inside of the back cover, so that people can see it when you impress them with the removable wireless cards.
Not long now! Can’t wait to see the real thing!