Price of phone is so high :(

wow. This phone is literally increasing in price. 750 USD plus tax. I like security and privacy but I simply cannot afford such a high cost for a device. My current phone was bought for less than a quarter of that second hand. People say the hardware of the device is superior and explains the price but is still very weak compared to many other modern phones. this is also just pre-order price so I believe it will increase even further in the future. What I am recieving for spending such a price for a phone that can’t even help me do something important such as avoid carrier tracking is honestly somewhat dissapointing. Yes it can do major things like have hardware kill switches for all sensors on the device and is a one of a kind device but the price is far too high for normal consumers to afford for the performance it will give let alone the thousands of incompatibility issues. Sorry but I simply cannot purchase such a high price phone. I’d honestly rather live on burner phone to burner phone.

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https://images.app.goo.gl/VvzoRLjr7Akg3C9f7

uhhhh.ok??? Not sure how to respond…

Just tryin ta warn ya what just happened. Generally people on this forum don’t care about the topic of your post. Pinephone is the other option but again you’ll have the same carrier tracking issue

The pinephone is terrible though. The librem 5 hardware beats it but they both generally have very weak hardware. Its like comparing a blackberry to the first android phone when the 2g iphone has been released.

Yup, I hear yah. That’s the two real options for anyone wanting a smartphone truly running Linux. Things may improve with time but that’s the current state of things.

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I understand where you’re coming from and am glad I bought in before some of the later price increases.

With that said, I think there are two real counterpoints for what you are saying.

  1. The price is higher than “normal/average” because you are paying for the device in full with money directly instead of paying for the device in part with direct money and the rest with tracking and other personal information.

  2. When the kill switches are off the phone cannot be tracked by the carrier. Of course the carrier can track you while you’re using the carrier but there’s no feasible way around that at this time. Burner phones are also tracked by the carrier while they’re on and in use.

As an aside, comparing the second hand monetary cost of your current phone (ignoring the cost paid by the previous owner in both money and personal information) to the new cost of any other phone is disingenuous at best.

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You have fair points. Though the phone doesn’t run android or IOS but yes I still accept and agree with your points.

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Also whats the state of security against IMSI capturers and what is the progress made on apk support on the phone and the sandboxong of them because I’ve heard they haven’t got very much progress at all yet :(.

Actually, purism has stated in the FAQ that running android would be desirable. It isn’t a current task, but it wouldn’t surprise me if eventually it became one. It certainly is not being excluded and it should be possible to deny such apps access to personal stuff with a jail of some sort. Linux already has android solutions.

Also wdym by ‘running android’. The whole idea is to not run android or ios. if you are referring to apk support, ‘eventually’ seems very sceptical and unreliable to acutally happen one day or have some sort of massive draw back even if it can run the apps. Obviously it isn’t being excluded as so nany people cannot even use core things such as online banking so of course they will continue to work on it though that doesn’t mean they will completely succeed though purism is a very dedicated company. I don’t know why the way you described the idea of sandboxing in such a strange way but many linux distros already do sandboxing such as parrot home OS and I don’t know if it will be possible in tge near future on the librem 5 though I feel the company will be able to achieve this as the first thing before actually anything else for android application installation. Yes linux somewhat has support for apks already but as the video shows, there are many issues with it running on a librem 5 linking to visual errors and the kernel.

I think to is fair to say we are voting with our dollars… asking for a future where there will be choice and options available for the average joe/josephine instead of accepting what is basically a duopoly…

At least I see it that way… the investment is even on behalf of future generations. (For one day, more people may come to value privacy again … foregoing the reliance on the gadgets that keep creeping towards the creepy).

But sure, a lower price would be nice. =)

We are still early to the party, IMO.

We are pioneers even… forging towards a new frontier. For me, is about the principle.

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750 now ?! BWAAAAAHAHAHAHA c’mon man …

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$799 come April (if they actually release it then)

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you’re kidding right ? 799 for a phone they HOPE will get 3hrs runtime ?

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Nope. They released an announcement couple weeks ago

Welp , I’m sure pinefone is going to love hearing that news considering it’s 150.00 pre order and 200.00 final price and the fact Plasma mobile is almost at final RC .

The pinephone is targeted towards a different audience