In other projects I supported as backer I was informed in very granular steps. When hardware was delivered, when assembly started, when shipping was planned, when shipping started, how many parts are in one batch and therefore when shipping is estimated to be finished, etc.
I do not say, that I expect same granularity from Purism but I think we can all agree on that there is some room for improvement.
Still: I loaned Purism some money. They use it for developing and assembling an asset. And now delivery has been postponed several times. Now i still do not know when I get my delivery. And there are no efforts visible to create more transparency here. I think, that is the least thing to do.
We’re past the “employees and reviewers”-only point. That was essentially the Aspen batch, which had critical problems. All the test batches have been small, so you did have to be an early - or very-very early, backer to get at phone.
The Dogwood batch had stability issues, which Purism informed backers about before shipping. Some of us opted to wait for Evergreen because of this; I didn’t. I have a Dogwood device, so can tell you it was definitely sent to people outside of Purism, but I also backed the project pretty early.
Stability has improved a lot since August, and now seems to be mostly a non-issue.
It has (in addition to several peripherals not working for lack of drivers).
Dogwood sports an “auto touch” feature, where random touches help you try out the UI. Mine seems to like playing Chess on its own, but absolutely anything can happen really.
You don’t even have to hold it, it can keep itself busy while on the desk. I think of it as an ongoing, automated stress test (It does make intentional use of the phone a little difficult, though.)
My intuition is that this is caused by the CPU being closer to the screen than in Chestnut, leading to EMC problems (“radio interference”).
I think there could also be other hw related problems, like battery drain while turned off, and the as yet unexplained higher power draw compared to Chestnut.
I’m still satisfied with my Dogwood, despite still relying on other devices for basic needs. So if you bought the Librem 5 to actually use it, you could consider yourself lucky that others got the pre-production batches.
I believe procurement is an issue for a project this size.
When you build hundreds of something, you can use the normal hobbyist suppliers. When you build millions, you can use the industrial suppliers.
You would think building tens of thousands would make procurement easy, but… When you’re in-between, you’re too big for the hobbyist path and too small for the industrial path.
Maybe, maybe not. My understanding is that it is not uncommon for Chinese producers to have procurement of their own. So supplies may arrive through a different route to the American assembly line.
Yes, Dogwood is essentially the only test batch that is similar to Evergreen. There may still be wrinkles left to iron out.
It took close to three years to get my Dogwood, so I know how frustrating it is to wait without knowing what is going on, but Purism have in fact delivered on their promises from 2017.
Please, give them some slack instead of demanding detailed shipping dates for a product that hasn’t even hit the shelves yet.
i can confirm this. i changed my mind relatively recently for part of my order and i was able to exchange 3-L5-China for one coupon code order for the L5-USA.
for those of you who simply want a collectors L5-USA-v1(evergreen) phone then you can do what i described above and during checkout simply fill in the coupon-code in the designated field during the checkout process.
if you do this then you will have the value of the relocated-products deducted from the base value of the L5-USA.
i reached ‘f-it’ very-late in the game and i had to pay a difference of a few bucks more to make up for this ‘gimmick’ but it worked and there is a new order at the top of the list saying L5-USA
this one is probably going to the museum along with my blunder
Considering how much people pay to collect rare cars, collecting rare Linux phones is a cheap hobby. I would love to find a Motorola A760, which was the first Linux phone, but nobody considers them valuable enough to even bother selling them.
It doesn’t look very encouraging, I imagined that the hardware was more mature than that now.
I’ve read a couple of tickets about power consumption on the git, it seems to be manageable on the software side.
But for the touch screen it worries me more, especially if it is an EMC problem.
But I doubt this is the case, as they would not be as confident that they would be able to ship the first Evergreens at the end of the month.
Maybe it has something to do with this ticket, which seems to be resolved :
I think there’s plenty of slack given here… that doesn’t change the fact that any manufacture worth their salt can easily predict their capacity. This is what’s missing, and should be easily provided. Even if it’s a range - 100-500 per week, whatever the number is doesn’t matter - it’s about being open with the people that are funding the development.
It does seem EMI related rather than heat, for a basic overview of the how and why here’s a simple article:
If it gets worse over time it could be delamination of the touch layers, leading to an increase in resistance - but that tends to present as missing rather than phantom touches.
I remember reading one of the posts about schematics, the OP mentioned some pins (of one IC) were left floating - that’s a classic way to produce unintended internal antenna. I need to have a look to see which IC. It would be classic EMI though, it’s the dark art of testing.
I’d like to amend my previous report, because things are much, much better after a recent update.
Thank you for the link to that issue. Updating the phone has indeed improved touch substantially, so most of it could be fixed through software/settings.
I still get occasional phantom touches, so some kind of trouble remains, but it is no longer a major usability concern.
A classic It also depends on the specs of the open pin, and whether it is configured as input or output (if programmable). So the schematic only provides part of the voodoo.
I think this is the key difference between those of us who some here seem to think of as corporate stooges for Purism, and the people who want to go to court to get a refund. I baked-in to my decision process the entirely plausible chance of complete failure on the part of Purism to deliver. It would suck, and I would be sorry to lose $600, but I am mentally prepared for that eventuality, and I didn’t use rent money.
That said, I do think that Purism’s marketing oversells their products, especially the L5. I don’t like the Pinephone product as much as the L5, but I think Pine’s marketing is spot-on for what they sell.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. My attitude about this phone was the same, I knew the risks and still threw my hat in to see them succeed because it was worth it to me to see a company take on the tech giants and deliver technology with a conscience.
My understanding is that you cannot come out on the market with an electronic device that lack the certification.
So what they seem to be doing right now is to ship samples to the “early backers”, which are by their definition people who qualified for a sample device, i.e. Aspen-Dogwood, so a non-certified device, so they get a non-certified Evergreen.
After they get the FCC and CE certifications, only then they are allowed to put the Evergreen on the market, so only then the real Librem 5 mass production shipping starts.
More, nowhere on Librem 5 product page/shop page, you can read that the phone lacks the certification and that it is not ready to be put on the market!
So, in these last days I really come to distrust @Kyle_Rankin, and Todd for misleadings like this. And I appreciate other Purism employees who choose to present the real status of the phone, here on forum and elsewhere…
The argument “I don’t see it, therefore it doesn’t exist” doesn’t hold any water. Allow me to open your eyes.
Heh, they have at least one product submitted, though there is a condition that a device has to be ready for manufacture before it is submitted. Maybe everything they make is “beta hardware”?
The wireless cards inside the Librem 5 are certified and Kyle said (somewhere) because the cards are removable they don’t know if they need the whole device certified. But just to make sure they are also in the process to also certify the entire device.
Anyway, in the shipping emails, they ask if you want to delay shipping until the certification is complete.
The Librem 5 probably already has the CE marking, because it basically self-certified. The manufacturer simply has to submit a document saying that their product confirms with the relevant regulations of the EU, but no body has to test the device to verify that they followed those regulations. If they are caught having not followed the regulations, however, it is a criminal offense.
The CE mark on a product indicates that the manufacturer or importer of that product affirms its compliance with the relevant EU legislation and the product may be sold anywhere in the European Economic Area (EEA). It is a criminal offence to affix a CE mark to a product that is not compliant or offer it for sale.[5]
For example, most electrical products must comply with the Low Voltage Directive and the EMC Directive, among others; toys must comply with the Toy Safety Directive. (The Low Voltage Directive is about electrical safety; EMC or Electromagnetic Compatibility[6] means the device will work as intended without interfering with, or being affected by, the use or function of any other device.) The CE mark indicates compliance with as many Directives as apply at the time of the declaration of compliance (see below). In the case of electrical products, several later Directives such as the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) are relevant in addition to the Low Voltage Directive and EMC Directive. The exact significance of the CE mark therefore depends on when it was applied to a specific unit.
The marking does not indicate EEA manufacture or that the EU or another authority has approved a product as safe or conformant.[7]
Obtaining FCC certification should be a fast process as long as the Librem 5 isn’t doing anything wrong. For a device using RF components that are already FCC certified, it usually takes 3-5 weeks for a testing company to test the device and then it submits its test results to one of the authorized certifying companies, which takes another 1-2 weeks. Considering that Purism posted photos of an Evergreen prototype on Aug. 28, 2020 with the longer case (and presumably with longer antennas for better RF reception), I expected Purism to already have the FCC certification by now. However, Purism only posted about its larger 4500 mAh on Nov 12, so it could be that it only recently got a prototype with the larger battery that it could send in for FCC testing. If Purism sent in a device for FCC testing in the first week of November, it should have the FCC certification by the middle of December, as long as the testing doesn’t find anything wrong.
Still, the lack of FCC certification does explain why Purism is only sending out a small number of Evergreens to the early backers and why Purism is using JIT manufacturing so that it can adjust the design in case the testing finds something wrong in the design.
As for why Purism only let the early backers know in an email and didn’t announce it in their Shipping FAQ on Nov 3 or shipping announcement on Nov 18, I assume that Purism is trying to generate new Librem 5 orders with the news that Evergreen is shipping. We know that the development of the Librem 5 went way over budget, so I’m not going to be too hard on the company for trying to boost the phone sales now. For people who are thinking of ordering today, this isn’t very important info, because the phone will have FCC certification by the time they get it and it is unlikely to have any influence over how long it takes to get the phone. Only if they want to check the SAR level of the phone do I think that people ordering today should care, and if they care about that, then they will have already checked the FCC website and seen that Purism hasn’t yet submitted its application. Far more relevant info for people ordering today is the current battery life, progress on the cameras and smart card reader in the kernel, which apps have been adapted for the Librem 5, which software has been adapted to use the sensors, UI improvements in Phosh, etc.
The issue as @eugenr pointed out is the erosion of trust when Purism isn’t up front about these issues.
The explanation is pretty simple: the Shipping FAQ was strictly focused on trying to answer “when do I get my phone?” and wasn’t intended to address the current state of the hardware or software when it shipped (beyond the fact that it wasn’t the subject of the post, also because that was still a week or two out and so much of this status changes week on week). The shipping announcement was a press release written for and intended to be for press outlets.
The current status of the hardware (such as camera drivers) and certification are subject to change soon, and some people care more than others about it, so we reasoned that the best thing to do was to make people aware of the current state of things before we shipped a device to them, so they could let us know if they wanted us to wait to ship until we completed certification, or camera drivers, etc. Informing people this way allows us to update the shipping notification email easily as each of these things change.
Huh? No, there are no delays. However if someone tells us they’d rather wait to receive their phone until after certification (it sounds like some folks in this thread are in that camp) that’s fine, we can hold off on shipping their phone until then. The people who don’t care about that don’t have to wait.
I was informally informed that I am not an early backer and my phone should be shipping by late Dec. or early Jan.
You’ll have that certification by then won’t you?
(It does make intentional use of the phone a little difficult, though.)
