I agree on almost everything but I have a certainty:
only free hardware gives me the certainty of respect for my privacy and the consequent general security.
Regards
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Not sure about the fairphone, but I flashed and old Sony Z5 with /e/ and it is snappy as ever.
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I used /e/ for about 2 months. Battery life was just horrible. I was getting 3 days on the stock android rom, and about a day and a half on /e/.
Outside of this it was a fine ROM, and one could use it with very little inconvenience as a result of google not being present.
Of course on regular android I find that just trying to use privacy focused apps where possible, and using NetGaurd to block apps from using the internet, accomplishes a lot of the same goals, with even less inconvenience.
Iāve tried using Netguard in the past and that alone would kill my battery in a rather short amount of time. I donāt know if I had some setting set wrong but I could not use the phone with that app. My next project is Ubuntu touch. I have a Sony X enroute. I had the Librem on order since day 1 but with all the delays I canceled my order but still keep an eye out here to maybe come back one day.
Huh.
Iām amazed that nobody got super hyped on the Volla. Canāt describe how happy I was when I read about it. After I demanded a refund on the Librem 5 because it promised to be entirely useless, I thought that Linux Phones have died for good.
The Volla is an actual usable phone with decent Hardware. What good are stupid killswitches on a phone that can barely make a call, has no camera and burns his battery in a nuclear heatblast within the hour? Yeah, I guess you can kill the few parts that are actually working within the very short time that the phone is actually supplied with energy.
I like conspiracies and paranoia as the next guy, but even for me its already a universal achievement to have a working, usable phone for a pretty low price with a real linux OS handling my calls and data-connections.
Iām very surprised by the amount and force of criticism of Purism products on their own forum. Why are you here if you think the Librem 5 will be useless, the killswitches are stupid and the battery burns in an hour in a nuclear heatblast?
I learned about the Volla phone today and itās certainly something to be hyped about. But if you love the Volla and hate the Librem, please go post good things about the Volla on the appropriate forum instead of trashing the Librem here.
Iām very happy that there are several companies trying to make privacy-focused smartphones. They are in different places on the privacy vs convenience scale, and thatās okay. The consumer can make their choice.
Iām looking forward to getting a Librem 5 and Iām perfectly aware that itās going to be very different from the phones Iām used to, and potentially have more problems and take more time in maintenance. And Iām okay with that, because Purism does everything to protect the privacy of its users and I want to support that. You donāt have to agree but please do not post here if itās only to criticize Purism products in a non-constructive way.
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Yes, I threw in for an L5 knowing full well that I was supporting privacy and that the phone itself was a gamble. I can live with it if the phone just doesnāt work out. Still, I think the odds are pretty good that the phone itself will give years of good use. I think the odds are a bit longer whether or not Purism, Pine64, etc. initiate a new culture of privacy, but Iām happy to put my money where my mouth is.
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If you just want a normal smartphone with current specs that runs Linux, then Volla Phone probably is for you, but recognize that the Librem 5 (and the PinePhone as well) are trying to do something different and we want to support that.
We already have a number of conventional phones that can run Linux, like the Fairphone 2 (Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish OS), Nexus 5 (Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish OS), Planet Computers Gemini (Debian, Kali) and Cosmo (Debian), and Xperia A2 and 10 (Sailfish OS), so that probably explains why there hasnāt been that much buzz about the Volla Phone. The Volla Phone is interesting because it will have an AOSP derivative preinstalled, but the /e/ Foundation is also selling the Fairphone 3 with an AOSP derivative preinstalled and /e/ has its own curated app store.
The Volla Phone may be interesting for Europeans because it is made in Germany (by Gigaset, which is part of Siemens), but the ShiftPhone is also made in Germany and it sells upgradeable phones, which are more environmental. I think that Fairphone 3 is a far more interesting phone, and it will probably also get Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish OS ports in the future, just like the Fairphone 2 did. Volla Phone promises to sell with Ubuntu Touch by UBports preinstalled, so that is a point in its favor over the Fairphone 3, but Fairphone is a custom design, designed for fixability. I think the Volla Phone will get much more interesting if it has enough orders to start doing a port to Nemo Mobile, because that will involve some serious development work to make that work.
In other words, the Volla Phone is fine and worth supporting, if it is what you want, but it isnāt breaking much new ground at this point.
Yes, there is serious dev work that is required to get decent battery life and to support the cameras, but we preordered the Librem 5, because we want to finance that dev work.
By the way, you are misrepresenting the current state of the development. Cellular phone calls have worked since October 2019, and the Dogwood batch with the larger 3500 mAh battery should get around 3-4 hours of battery life while in use or 10-12 hours in standby mode.
Purism still needs to solve the critical issue of putting everything to sleep and the BM818 being able to wake up the entire system when it receives a phone call, since that will allow the Librem 5 to become a usable phone that you only need to charge up at night.
It isnāt clear when this issue will be solved on the Librem 5, but it is also uncertain that Volla Phone will ship in Nov. 2020 since it currently only has 204 preorders (ā¬64k). I am not expecting the UBports community to do much work on the Volla Phone port, due to its current focus on the PinePhone and PineTab, and Vollaās staff will have to divide their attention between Volla OS and Ubuntu Touch, so the software situation might not be as good as you think.
Now let me tell you why I am not excited about Volla Phone. Its MediaTek SoC cannot run on mainline Linux and requires a bunch of binary blobs in the Linux file system. MediaTek will only produce the SoC for 1-2 years and stop supporting it after 2-3 years, and after that, the Volla Phone wonāt get new firmware or driver updates from MekiaTek. Because MediaTek doesnāt share much information with the community about its SoCās, we canāt create free/open source drivers for mainline Linux that can be supported forever by the community.
In my opinion, Volla should have selected a Snapdragon SoC, like the Fairphone 3 did, because Qualcomm shares enough info/code with the community, so that we get good mainline Linux drivers for Snapdragons within 2-3 years of them being released, and the community can keep supporting the chips in the long term to avoid planned obsolescence.
Because the Librem 5 (and PinePhone) uses separated chips (CPU/GPU, cellular modem, WiFi/BT, GNSS, USB PD controller) and many of those chips are built in older process nodes (40-28 nm), they are going to be much less energy-efficient than a modern integrated SoC with a newer process node (14-7 nm).
On the other hand, we get the benefit of using chips that are supported for a long time. NXP promises to manufacture the i.MX 8M Quad till Jan 2028 and the i.MX 8M Plus for 15 years, which means that we can count on at least a decade of firmware updates. NXP commits directly to the i.MX 8M drivers in mainline Linux, so we should also be getting a decade of driver updates. Other chips like the BM818, RS9116, etc. should also have long production lives and also get firmware updates from the manufacturers (plus FOSS driver updates from Redpine Signals for the RS9116).
Because all the drivers in the Librem 5 (and the PinePhone) are free/open source, the community can support the hardware forever. For example, the mainline Linux kernel still supports the 80486 released in 1989.
Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish OS (the two Linux ports that are most likely on the Volla Phone) are based on a bunch of siloed code (and Sailfish OS uses proprietary code in its interface) which is hard to maintain. In contrast, the Librem 5 will use the GTK/GNOME ecosystem and adapted desktop GTK apps that already have maintainers, and Purism is upstreaming most of its code changes to existing projects (Linux kernel, wlroots, GTK, GNOME, GTK apps) and getting most of new projects upstreamed to GNOME (libhandy, Chatty, Calls), so that it can rely on the community to help maintain the code. For that reason, Purismās promise of lifetime support is believable and we really will have a Linux phone that avoids planned obsolescence.
The Volla Phone needs backers and it is a fine project, but have a little respect for what other projects are trying to do, and understand that their goals may be different.
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When I started this thread, I thought there might really be a competative option to the Librem 5. Thank you amosbatto for clarifying the related issues so well as you have done. For what is important to me (the privacy and freedom issues), there really isnāt any competative offering in the market. The Librem 5 really stands alone in its own category. The others appear to be shortcuts to similar-appearing products that canāt deliver what the Librem 5 is offering.
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Seems pretty expensive for a phone that only runs 2 operating systems. PinePhone is a much better deal.
āBetterā is relative to your requirements and your priorities. Honestly, I myself donāt want to run half a dozen operating systems. I want to run one operating system that a) works b) is open source (auditable) c) can run whatever application software I choose to put on it.
Any of the emerging options (Librem 5, PinePhone, Volla, ā¦) will be better medium term than the locked box that I currently use (not by choice - only until my L5 arrives).
From what Iāve read of the Librem 5 and the PinePhone, at the current time thereās a fair bit that doesnāt work yet - so a certain amount of patience will be needed. Rome wasnāt built in a day.
As the Volla is not yet even shipping an early release AFAIK, we probably donāt know yet what works and what doesnāt work.
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I read the volla kickstarter . Looks like a cool device. However doesnt say what modem is used , shipping with EU power supply which probably means EU spec modem , which mean might not work to well with US cellular bands . Didnt see anything about a choice of modem .
I mean Librem 5 got everyone in a headlock afaic They allow you to choose which modem . Hardware kill switches. m.2 modem for your freedom of choosing a new modem should more US options become available .
I dunno . Volla looked cool . L5 looks cooler. battery and heat will be dealt with as kernel development deals with frequency scaling and idling. I am not planning on going anywhere. Purism is where its at I think . As the product matures it will only get better imho .
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