I made some size comparisons to other phones as the 5.7" 18:9 specs are not sufficient for me to figure out how big the librem 5 might be. I used the picture form the design report #5 and scaled it so that the diagonal of the screen is 5.7". The graphic is scaled to 1"=100px. The other phones are Nexus5, Fairphone 2, iPhone 8+/8/SE and Samsung Galaxy S8+/S8.
I started with a post in Librem 5 Screen size; Is the screen size too big? but extended it and thought that i might not be found there by others, so i post the extended graphic here.
With this graphic my opinion of the 5.7" screen went form “omg why sooo big” to “nice just as big as most recent phones”. If this design is anything near the final size this is impressive. All the taking about more space which is needed for bigger batteries and the M.2 mode, etc made me think it will be more like the + version form Samsung and Apple. Especially the width seams to stay small.
So well done purism!
Maybe just put some sizes in your design report next time as the screen size is so miss guiding.
I find this to be very helpful as this may ease some concerns for many other users. It’s very impressive that you took the time to give us a great visual and let individuals see those dimensions. I find this to be very helpful.
What comes to mind for me is phone cases once we get the phone to protect it. It would be nice to get a skeleton available so that different type of cases can be made by manufactures once the phone is released.
Ive been big fan of cased made by a company called Spigen. The current model that I have from them houses 5 credit cards or ID’s which eliminates the need for me to carry a wallet. Here is a sample of their products.
Hey every body. I jus checked if the new pictures form the latest blog post changed anything dimension wise and noticed i made a mistake in scaling. The Librem 5 will be much bigger i think. i’m very sorry for this. Maybe some is willing to double check my new drawings. The should still be 100px = 1inch.
So for me this sadly means the phone dimensions will be more like 150mm (6") x 71mm (2.8") x 14mm 0.55". Which is really big in my opinion,
Thank you for the update. It still helps with anyone trying to get an idea of how big this will be.
If I recall correctly Purism does have a goal of offering two different sizes in the future versions of the Librem 5.
If that holds true then I am still excited about getting one. I still support this project either way.
This picture from Softpedia seems to have pretty accurate measurements. Maybe you want to check it. Seems to be pretty official, but didn’t find it on this site.
That’s the development board design, seen in the recent hardware progress update. I don’t think the actual phone is going to have quite that much bezel around the screen!
It would be great if the outer dimensions matched some other popular phone[s] so that cases and accessories are more readily available. This is one point that I like about Apple and despise about Samsung. Apple sticks to a size, while every Samsung released is needlessly a few mm different from every other phone making case and accessory selection rather thin.
Second up, I hope that Purism can spin this into a smaller form phone, and a 9 inch tablet(with GPS, wi-fi, and USB port for dongles, cell data is optional, accelerometers a true bonus). I have a Galaxy grand prime 5" screen[6" overall] and it is OK as a sole mobile device but i would prefer a smaller phone plus a tablet. 5.5-7.5 inch screens are a bit of a wasteland, too big to carry everywhere yet not big enough to ease substantial reading or graphical interactions. Especially once you get a rubber bumper case.
Pilots all have 7-10 inch tablets these days for charts, weather, flight planning, operators manuals, approach and departure procedures(every airport is unique), logbooks, local ATC radio frequencies, temporary flight restrictions and FAA notices. The official term is an “electronic flight bag”.
While Garmin has a grip on mounted certified GPS, 90% of pilots choose iPads for E.flight bags simply due to the most popular apps’ availability (ie ForeFlight) and a level of known product consistency, they don’t want to fiddle with janky app interfaces and surprises in mid-flight or cause pre-flight delays.
I too have no issue with a larger device. I think we’ve reached a point where a lot of phones are /too small/. I want my primary daily driver to be big enough that I’m not constantly fumbling with it and have enough screen real estate to do a variety of tasks.
I think you mix two things. A 2:1 (squar-pixeled) screen with 5.7" diagonal is about 2.5 x 5 inch.
Makes it very reasonable that the phone is 6 inch tall.
Oh, so you’re saying that the 5.7” only applies to where the actual display is, it’s not the measurement across the diagonal of the front of the phone? I figured there must be something I was missing. Thanks.
You could take the pictures of the design report open it in graphic program like gimp and mesure the pixel area of the phone and the display to get the ratio. Would be interesting. Thought in my size comparison the red lines are marking outer boundery and display boundary. With that it seams to be have more screen percentage than the fairphone.
“A smartphone with an 18:9 aspect ratio gives you a taller screen with slimmer bezels on the sides as well as top and bottom. This means that you can get phones with large 6-inch screens while overall dimensions remain similar to a phone with a 16:9 aspect 5.5-inch screen. In other words, a new phone with 5.7-inch screen is about as big as a standard 5.2-inch device. Similarly, a new phone with 5.5-inch 18:9 screen is the same overall size as a 5-inch sized phone. Those with smaller hands can carry big screens easily with devices that have an 18:9 screen.”
For example the screen on the LG G6 is 5.7 inches (active display area should be something like 64,8(W)Ă—129,6(H) mm) in 2:1 aspect ratio or as they call it 18:9 relating to so called Univisium format display (brainchild of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro). LG G6 size is 6.5 inches from corner to corner.
A GNU-Linux box in our pocket will be AMAZING! My current compromise is an iPhone 6s Plus, it would be a great shame if the Librem5 screen is smaller than this.
