Questions about Dogwood and phone calls

Can’t find my caliper right now, but using a ruler yields “the same” measurements as for Chestnut. I’d say any changes are pretty small.

The phone weighs 240 g, out of which 62 g is the battery alone.

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I will, if I get around to do more specific testing :slight_smile:

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Great. I added that info.

10 g more weight is the tradeoff of having a bigger battery. I love the idea of a modular phone and using separate components, but the L5 isn’t going to win any fashion awards.

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Are the battery measurements somewhere? And the contacts on them?

Pssst. Measure three Triple A’s. (Humor.)

Caution though, it was specifically stated that Evergreen will be 3 mm longer than Dogwood: Blog Post: Librem 5 Evergreen Update: Mold and Milestones

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As viewed from the back side of the phone:
Battery measures 57.2(w) x 51.5 x 10.5 mm.

Contacts are located centered left/right and at the bottom of the top narrow side of the battery. There are three of them and they occupy an area approx. 4 mm high and 6 mm wide. Polarity is - to the left, + to the right.

(Sorry for taking almost a month to reply.)

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@Tracy: AAA size is 44.2 mm length, and 10.2 mm diameter. You could fit five of those, and still have a wiggle room for a contact adapter and a charger chip. Cheers! :slight_smile:

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One of us should take a pic with them duct taped together on the back and post it as if it were real. (We can wait for April Fool’s day.)

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I think, 4 would be more realistic, as you need some room for a bracket to hold them (as I expect you want to be able to change them without using tape). A special back-plate could be made to allow access to the battery compartment without removing the whole back (bracket could be part of it - 3D print as one). It’s nice that the size allows it… almost like it was planned… :thinking:

And about that picture… You mean like this?

Thanks @lipu - it’s not like we don’t have a month and a half to kill (at least)…

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I don’t know if this has been discussed elsewhere yet, but with no voLTE capability, that means that in the U.S., the phone won’t work on T-Mobile as of January 2021, or on AT&T as of February 2022, right? Verizon already requires voLTE/HD voice, so it’s out of the picture, too.

Edit: And T-Mobile has already started disallowing any non-voLTE new activations on its network (since August).

How is that in Europe? I can’t find any mention of a voLTE capabilty being required over here.
If such a restriction would exist, this would be pretty serious - as in leaving the L5 dead in the water.

Any thoughts on this from the Purism offices?

Exactly, that’s the picture I was hoping for!

As I understand it, this will depend on when (or if) a country’s carriers retire their 3G networks in favor of 4G, and will likely be different for each country/carrier.

Seems that here 3G shutdown is coming in a few years too (depending on service providers - some sooner some have no plans yet) but reading form the carrier web pages. 2G on the other hand is left alone since 3G is the one which frequencies are wanted to be used for 4G. A lot of IoT and stuff need the older 2G and 3G so sone of them is often still left standing.

But, since voLTE is used only if possible, and it reverts (at least here) to 2G/3G for voice and 4G for data if not, I’m not really worried - calls will work and data will flow, just not using voLTE.

Here is a list of sunsetting 2G and 3G around the world (check your carrier for more info).

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If providers start banning non-voLTE phones, it will be a problem for the L5…

From my understanding, the modems used in the Librem 5 have VoLTE support to some degree but there is some software work to be done for it to be usable.

But @dos can correct me on this.

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PLS8 has VoLTE support advertised. BM818 does not - it internally has some preliminary support, but needs compatibility testing and configuration in order to work internationally.

From our software point of view, there’s no such thing as VoLTE. It’s the modem’s job to handle it and it’s transparent to the software running on the CPU.

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So, am I right in thinking that the Gemalto might be the best bet when it comes to picking a modem (for Europe, in my case) - even though the Broadmobi supports more (quite a few as a matter of fact) frequencies?

To put @dos in other words (and do correct me if I’m wrong), the L5 is good: even at worst it’s only about changing the modem.

Is the BM818 situation regarding voLTE such that Purism has nothing to do with it and we can only wait and hope for news from somewhere? Will it cause a delay? Will it be a firmware upgrade kind of thing or…?

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