I was looking at the MR draft for hibernation, and noticed that Martin was saying that a justification for this feature was missing. The purpose of this post is to provide that justification. Jets don’t fail me now…
At the heart of the L5 we see a traditional Linux desktop. In a very real sense the phone in your pocket is exactly the thing sitting on your desk. They are both computers. Purism has had a lot of success getting suspend to be rock solid on the L5. It was no easy task and the work isn’t really over just yet, I would imagine.
Battery life, however, is still a concern, if you are not able to charge. And because the phone in my pocket is a computer, I use it like a computer. I open things and leave them open so that I can continue working on them as time permits.
If I know that I will not be able to use my phone for a period of time, due to security regulations, etc. instead of leaving the phone suspended, where the battery continues to drain, but no calls or use is possible anyway, or off, meaning I need to re-setup my workspace again and get back into things, being able to hibernate would allow me to conserve power in this case.
Instead of having my battery drain for 8 hours doing nothing, my workflow/space is maintained, it could be not wasting power altogether. And when I retrieve my phone on a break, etc. I can easy just boot right back into my session.
This is the thinking. This line of thinking is in line with the convergence aspect of the phone. Yes it looks like a phone, but lets not limit it to acting like a phone.