Since Purism dev 2023 roadmap includes focus on user experience improvements here are some of the items i think users would value:
Phosh Shell:
smooth screen rotation it feels buggy currently as background is shown, top and bottom panels unfold and fold and it rotates inconveniently when picking up the phone from a desk after laying horizontally
when user types or interacts with an app, say clicks and views drop down menue, do not switch to a launched app, and just launch them in background,
Recent phosh 0.27 has been buggy and occasionally causes shell to freeze requiring restart, especially on resume from suspend, and when interacting with shell and plugging in to charge,
Modems:
Make wifi connect and work reliably (4G is way more reliable currently)
Remove bluetooth stutter
Application
optimize firefox for mobile use (such as swipe support for navigation, or tabs at bottom with reduced tab width - maybe wrapping tab titles in two lines) and make it use less resources, when scrolling this input box in firefox it flickers slightly and so do the menues, remove flickering,
make the software store reliably install and uninstall apps, after install the app screen refreshes and reloads, it should not only the button should change from install to open
speed up app launch, especially Settings should launch instantaneously
Photo/ Video
For some reason i havent been able to play any videos in Electron apps at higher resolution (it actually used to work but an update caused some sortof regression), support higher resolution video in electron apps, or firefox (when playing even lower resolution video phone gets pretty hot using youtube)
Runtime / Battery
rework auto brightness, its not usable at this point and have never had it enabled by default, making this work will actually increase battery runtime
Hardware
Allow for variable refresh rates depending on whats happening, watching movies or playing certain games at far below <<60Hz is not ideal, while switching apps and animations thereof could be rendered at lower refresh rates.
Sell matte screen protectors.
Sell motherboard, screen, camera, switch etc replacements (limited to one purchase each directly on the website).
I don’t agree with Firefox (things like tabs at bottom). However, give a look into this thread. There are some modifications like tab on bottom, less flickering and some more.
Would still be great to get rid of all that flickering by default.
About screen rotation:
There is also a new bug. After lockscreen auto rotation gets disabled often (button still looks like enabled). You have to hit that button twice (disable + enable) to get it working again. Hoping for a fix soon, since it wasn’t there before (still better than landscape view in lockscreen).
Make it possible to autorotate 180° in lockscreen. When I put device on power, I often use it upside-down and also have to tip in the password upside down.
Also the behavior of showing/hiding keyboard could need an improve. Sometimes it disappear when it shouldn’t and sometimes it will be displayed when I don’t want it. There is no solution for every case, but there is still some space to improve it.
However, all just little issues, nothing to worry about.
Edit:
UI does not react from time to time. Pushing the button for lockscreen helps, but it’s something that should definitely be fixed some day.
I agree that those are all little issues. However I appreciate making lists of little quality of life improvements. Having the screen rotate smooth - maybe even showing a rotating animation would improve the feeling while using the phone. Maybe even an animation to activate / deactivate the keyboard? It seems to need time to resize all windows correctly - would be nice if this time would be used for an animation - I know it’s not that easy.
I am using the Librem 5 as my daily driver for two months now and these things are by no means the ones which would frustrate me if they aren’t there (most of the frustraters are mentioned in the good blog post). Those are things are to delight in case everything else works and I think if purism knows them and those are low hanging fruits when something else is touched - why not? I guess purism would prefer to add them to the gitlab issue tracker.
Can confirm that too. That would be all part of item 1. make rotation work in all cases. It could be it’s own release just to fix those pesky rotation issues, there are several more bugs i have posted in the past.
