"SHIFT happens"

[Quarnero]

@eNZymOrTHe

Could you tell us a bit more about it (maybe in a separate thread)? Thanks!

@eNZymOrTHe, I didn’t noticed right away myself that my previous post link here DAS #LOVEPHONE axolotl actually contains stable 20210507-RELEASE-LIGHT-OTA and degoogled compressed file for SHIFT6mq.

Last but not least, I just found out that The #LOVEPHONE products are available for purchase within official New Zealand’s SHIFT Limited Store: “SHIFT phones have been developed by a small family business in Germany without investors. They have a clear goal; to do as much good and as little damage as possible. Similarly, our New Zealand team takes this goal very seriously. All aspects of the manufacturing process are carried out with the highest levels of social and environmental consciousness. Furthermore, we don’t take any personal profits and all net proceeds will be donated to environmental and philanthropic causes.”

Actually, what I find as most important fact is that SHIFT GmbH actually runs its own manufacture in mainland China (Page 18), see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdbK6Hgp_O8&t=48s

Also important, as we already know that Purism follows pretty much the same (or even better one in several aspects) smartphone building blocks modular approach, just take a quick look at this short demo: “We do so much talking, and sometimes it’s just about doing”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66tEqUX1XKo&t=4m34s

[amosbatto]

The best idea of the ShiftPhone was the way that versions 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 were backward compatible in their design so you could upgrade version 5.1 to version 5.3 by putting in a new PCB, rather than having to buy a whole new phone.

[Quarnero]

Yes, it is all right (important) to remind that you wrote about that eventuality, concerning Librem 5 PCB upgrade, already:

@amosbatto

The SHIFT5.1, SHIFT5.2 and SHIFT5.3 were backward compatible phones, so you could upgrade the PCB of the SHIFT5.1 with the PCB of the SHIFT5.3.

As someone who ordered the Librem 5 v1, I’m hoping that the PCB in the Librem 5 v2 will backward compatible. However, I think it likely that Purism will try to make the Librem 5 v.2 thinner and lighter, which makes it unlikely that its PCB will be backward compatible. Purism mentioned in one of its posts about Birch that later batches of the phone would likely be thinner, but that didn’t happen, so I assume that Purism will do that in the Librem 5 v2.

Anyway, it is not to be forgotten that initial, IMHO, Librem 5 PCB modularity idea belongs to:

@nicole.faerber

Though I fully understand your concern and wish!

Once we have a case design (I mean a design and fit of internal parts) we can discuss with the manufacturer a possible solution so that users might be enabled to replace the mainboard by a later version, e.g. with i.MX8 and so at least reuse case, display, battery etc. I can not promise anything right now but we will surely keep this in mind.

Cheers
nicole