Then come new hardware to librem 5 and liberty phone?

So I want to to ask if there any plans to for better hardware for librem 5 or the liberty phone. Because I want to buy but I think we have 2025 and 3 or 4 gb of ram and 32 or 128gb of storage not so much or the battery life good br better. Overall I really like the pursim phones but I wish pursim make a new phone with old housing but everything else better from screen to the hardware.
Thanks for reading my text.

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I don’t speak for Purism in any way but many manufacturers (not specifically Purism) will refuse to answer that question unless release of the better hardware is all but imminent - because otherwise they are just killing their sales from then until release occurs.

Looking here: Contact - Purism user documentation you might try the sales question contact.


128 GB storage is not shabby. I would guess that it would be easier to increase this though, as compared with changing other specifications.

I would have preferred the Librem 5 screen to be Full High Definition (1920x1080) but, as has been pointed out elsewhere, driving more pixels drains the battery faster. I don’t actually find fault with the screen resolution as it is (1440x720). So I am happy enough with that.

Whether RAM is an issue depends on what you want to do with the phone.

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No.

I would love a faster CPU, though, it’s becoming sluggish for me :sweat_smile:

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Why? Are you putting your device closer than 10cm in front of your eyes?

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I wouldn’t be so definitive there, but you definitively shouldn’t hold your breath for it either :smiley:

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I prefer to avoid speculation whenever possible.

It’s really more about the aspect ratio.

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Then the correct answer is “please contact Purism directly in order to ask for an official response”.

“No” is in a sense itself a speculative answer. Right?

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No, there are no announced plans by Purism from any publicly official communication channel for better hardware of the Librem 5 and/or Liberty Phone.

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(my emphasis)

True but you have added that qualifier. It is not in the OP.

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Sure, I concede, as there could be unannounced plans, but that is speculation.

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So 720p (1280 height instead of 1440) would be also okay for you? It’s the same ratio as 1080p (aka FHD).

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Arguing about screen resolution is maybe a diversion from what – in my opinion – is most important.

A marginally faster processor, more RAM, always selling with at least 64 GB eMMC because I use 128 GB eMMC and its been half full for a year, and a stronger software base that marginally moves forward towards matching the addictive-to-use billion dollar performance/battery optimizations in Android and iOS, are probably the only thing my phone needs right now, in my opinion.

Sent from my Librem 5

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Difficult to say without having the opportunity of using such a screen for a while. Adjusting the number of pixels (often referred to as the resolution) says nothing about the physical size of the screen i.e. hence also what the pixel density is. Some people want a bigger screen. Some people want a smaller screen. In either case not even considering the number of pixels. Some people would keep the size as it is. You definitely can’t please all of the people all of the time.

If I really had free choice, maybe FHD and a slightly larger screen, thereby also allowing a bigger battery. If there’s space in my pocket, it’s not big enough. :slight_smile:

But getting the software somewhere near current may be a higher priority than any hardware change - other than that if the software is becoming more bloated, that could feed into all of: RAM, storage, CPU.

We all understand that this is an entirely hypothetical discussion.

Fair enough but the OP did mention “screen” among other specifications. So apparently it is a consideration for the OP.

Another perspective could be … if Purism were going to refresh the hardware specifications, they would want in practice to refresh many things at once. So everything is on the table for this discussion of hypotheticals. However the OP implied that the physical size should not change (as an opinion).

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I just asked about your view, not anyone else. :slightly_smiling_face: I do not want to have a bigger device, since it’s already hard to use it with just one hand. It’s just that higher pixel count doesn’t mean better picture quality. Librem 5 has 720x360px by default with phoc @200% size. So we can double the resolution with just two clicks. I want to say, even on a bit larger screens 720p or similar is totally enough for physical reasons. And in fact, apps in native resolution are not very touch friendly.

And if I look at the smartphone market where people want 4k … resolutions that are completely out of any reason (except for VR via phone screen), but that’s a different story. Im using 4k nativ on desktop with 32" and I already can’t read things a meter away.

Even on a taller phone with 720p it’s very fine as long as you don’t get closer than 15cm while people usually don’t take it closer than 30cm. It’s just about physics. I don’t want to say that you should not want this, but to give some information that you have a better view about this topic.

To be serious: a higher resolution could make sense for games (more visible details). But first we need more power for such purpose. Even TuxCart is to heavy for L5 on native resolution.

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So that is also my main concern about the hardware of librem 5 or liberty phone and I now that 720p is not that because I own a display with 720p.

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Another way forward (or a parallel approach) could be to create and support lightweight, optimised software that takes minimal resources to run. I’m hopeful about the Tauri framework, especially once it gets direct flatpak support.

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Especially when you can use a micro sd card to seriously augment the amount of storage you have. I have a L5 with 32gb emmc and am using a 256gb sd with it. I have no space issues. RAM upgrades would be nice. 8gb minimum, especially to aid in the convergence angle of the phone. That said all of that works now and is not that limiting.

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That’s complicated though because

  • in order to offload highly integrated content onto the µSD card requires potentially fragile hacks that may also be beyond some users. Sure, I have my audio collection on the µSD card and that works completely fine because Lollypop doesn’t have definite expectations around where the audio directories are and doesn’t mind much if they disappear. But, let’s say, a different player that expects the collection to be in ~/Music so you end up with a bind mount or (less preferably) a symbolic link and even then funny things can happen e.g. around the timing of when the card becomes available or even whether the card becomes available (i.e. if you have temporarily removed it).
  • accessing the µSD card is very slow. (Well, mine is and it is a decent card e.g. it’s much faster when I shut down the Librem 5, remove the card, put it in a USB card reader on the desktop, and then retest the speed.) I don’t know whether that’s something that can be improved in the Librem 5 software.

I don’t myself have space issues with the vanilla Librem 5 and its 32 GB eMMC drive (but my audio collection alone is 18 GB so just as well it’s on the 512 GB µSD card).

Totally blueskying … imagine if the speed problem can be addressed so that the µSD card gives roughly similar performance as compared with the eMMC drive and there is an installer (rather than just blatting a disk image on the eMMC drive) and the installer gives the option to have the boot partition as one partition on the eMMC drive but the root partition lvm-style spread across the rest of the eMMC drive plus the µSD card. Then I would have an up to 543 GB root partition, and no hacks of any kind required. (Such a configuration would not be for everyone however.)

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