[logicprog]

I want to like Librem's smartphone, I really do. I like having control over my software, and I like being able to really understand how it works and tinker with it and stuff. But I have this sinking feeling that the Librem 5 is just vaporware, or worse, that it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps. On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem. On the former, the thing is that the affordences for bad UI design are a LOT tighter on mobile devices and it's taken a long time for desktop Linux to get their game together. Plus, all of Librem's other stuff is over priced and a bit cheap looking, and I'm not sure I want a phone like that.

[danShumway]

It's Linux -- if it's missing something, I can just build it. And I don't have to write my code in something horrible like Java, or boot up an emulator to test things, or submit my code to an app store, or figure out how to root it so I can remove all the bundled spyware. If I write a command line utility, I don't need to have a separate codebase between my computer and my phone. It's what I have always wanted my smartphone to be -- just a computer that I completely control, with access to a phone network.

It might be terrible. I'm kind of on the fence about it. The hardware needs to be reliable, the drivers need to be reliable, it needs to be compatible with common carriers. There a few other things. But the software on this device just needs to be passable. I don't need it to be particularly good.

When thinking about the Librem phone, mentally move it out of the iPhone category and into the Raspberry Pi category. Even if it comes out and gets terrible reviews and the software is all half-baked, even if it can't replace my normal phone for most things, I still might be tempted to buy one even just as a secondary device.

[dangus]

Besides the hardware kill switches and replaceable battery, I think this experience is going to compare poorly to LineageOS, which has a lot of the same software freedom and privacy advantages with a much more refined and complete operating system.

This phone is months from shipping and we haven’t even been shown multi touch have we? Is that even a feature being promised?

Ultimately the difference between this and the Raspberry Pin is tangible - $614 to be exact. I know that Purism isn’t out to sell a mainstream phone, but my doubts are seriously strong that they’ll sell enough of these to justify the effort.

I can build anything that’s missing in Linux as long as someone invents the fountain of youth so that I can spent a few thousand engineering years on implementation.

[Mediterraneo10]

I look forward to leaving LineageOS behind. First of all, Lineage builds for particular phones are abandoned frequently, because they are made by a single maintainer as a hobby and he can get bored and leave. The fact that the Android development environment is so arcane, and the hardware usually closed in various ways, makes it hard for anyone else to pick the project up.

Secondly, there are a lot of things that one can do in an ordinary desktop-Linux environment that are much more complicated in the Android world. On my old Nokia N900, I frequently wrote Python scripts that interacted with the system D-bus to automate things, and I did not have to install a big development environment or download someone else’s solution.

[danShumway]

I use LineageOS right now. It's great, and I'm glad it exists, but it still requires me to write the majority of my apps in Java and to test them in an emulator, and it still requires me to use the Android OS for everything.

I know I can theoretically compile my own ROM or something to customize the desktop environment, but... bleh. It's time-consuming for me to build things on Linux, but it is more time consuming for me to build things on Android. Android development is just a pain all around.

This on the other hand, isn't just a >$600 phone. It's a >$600 grimoire[0]. Expensive, and cumbersome, but nearly all magic is. There's an almost subconscious brand (for lack of a better word) that devices of this nature fit into. They're trading user-experience for dev-experience, which is not something LineageOS or Android is optimized for.

As to the rest of your criticism, all of your other points seem completely fair. I'm not sure what I would put the odds at of the device succeeding (note, succeeding means finding a stable niche, not beating any other device). And while I can forgive a lot of flaws in software, for the price they're asking the hardware/drivers need to work well.

I'm very much in the "wait and see" camp. But I do see a lot of potential.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19253038

[EvangelicalPig]

There is Anbox[0] for running Android applications under Linux, and I've heard some people claim it's "less clunky" then an AVD. I haven't yet tried it myself but will soon.

I don't disagree that there are some suboptimal things about Android but to bootstrap a new mobile OS platform from almost nothing, and being on-par not even matching Android especially with regards to security (sandboxing, a proper permission model) seems like it would require a dedicated team several years of development time, which Purism doesn't have.

[0]: https://anbox.io/

[dangus]

I do agree and fully realize that being successful means finding a stable niche. I don’t expect something like this to take down Apple or anything crazy like that.

I just don’t see that happening because I think the demos sort of show this for themselves. It may be fun to develop for but it doesn’t look enjoyable or practical to use. Wait and see we shall!

[RandomBacon]

> I think the demos sort of show this for themselves.

I agree; I think it will be successful.

> it doesn’t look enjoyable or practical to use

You can say that about any phone (an iPhone, flagship Samsung, etc) that is not in a case. I bet it will be enjoyable and practical once they put it in a case.

[dangus]

Huh?

[Mediterraneo10]

A lot of Nokia N900 users were very happy with a “barebones list of apps” and the only reason that they had to eventually abandon that phone was because the closed hardware required a specific kernel version and certain other libraries could not be upgraded for interoperability and security’s sake.

If the Librem offers a more upgradable device, then that is already enough for the hacker community. Most of my time is either spent in a web browser, Emacs, or sending SMS. Also, many Android users who eschew Google apps and install LineageOS with F-droid as their app source, would probably find Librem a comfortable enviroment.

[dangus]

I totally understand that these phones are very much intended for highly tech literate people with specific priorities, but Librem will not see success selling a $650 phone that can essentially only barely use a texting app, a web browser that already exists, and stumble its way through Gnome like these videos are doing.

I also need to challenge you to look up a video of LineageOS and compare it to these videos. LineageOS would be like going forward 20 years into the future compared to this. This is a very rough tech demo at best, and this thing is supposed to ship this year.

LineageOS is giving you 95% of the privacy and freedom benefits while giving you a nearly infinitely better software library and UI along with it.

As a $100 tech toy phone I can see success but not $650. That’s iPhone money.

[RandomBacon]

All the other Librems are Linux devices too, and thus have the same limitations. They've seen success selling those Linux laptops.

> 95% of the privacy and freedom

This phone is for the people who want the other 5%. It's not trying to compete with the iPhone.

> stumble its way through Gnome like these videos are doing.

Odd. I didn't see that at all in those videos.

[dangus]

The difference is that Librem laptops can run any OS like a standard PC. Many users perhaps don’t even use PureOS and put something else on.

It’s this software or nothing, essentially. I realize it’s open and that we could theoretically make our own, but phones are still an incredible beast to tame at this point.

This is going to work with basically zero carrier features and won’t even activate on important cellular networks like Verizon.

I don’t expect it to compete with the iPhone, but I have doubts that it will be a stable business for Purism. I guess we will find out.

I do see the stumbling. Have they shown us multi-touch at any point? Did you notice how this is a phone that depends on a control key to copy and paste text?

Every single finger touch screen UX convention that Apple sent down to us from the heavens in 2007 has been bafflingly ignored in this effort.

It’s a great start but this is a phone they’re shipping this year and they can’t even tell us many of the specs.

[seba_dos1]

> The difference is that Librem laptops can run any OS like a standard PC.

So does the phone.

> This is going to work with basically zero carrier features

This applies to any phone not bought via the carrier. I haven't bought a phone any different way for 20 years.

> and won’t even activate on important cellular networks like Verizon

That's pretty much a US only problem, and it's because of Verizon, not those phones.

[RandomBacon]

I believe "Perfection is the enemy of shipping" is something that is mentioned here on HN quite a bit.

Let's get the big stuff out of the way first and then continue working with Gnome to introduce a long press, etc.

I'm no expert, but this device is a full-fledged computer, not something with a locked-down bootloader. I imagine people smarter than me could install whatever OS they want to on this device.

[dangus]

Locked bootloaders and proprietary components is what holds us back with alternative projects. In that sense Purism is giving us gold here.

I’m nervous though because hardware projects can fail so easily. Shipping and iterating on hardware isn’t the same as shipping software. In my opinion it just has to feel a little more “done” than this.

[iamnothere]

Really? "Many users" buy a laptop from a niche manufacturer who puts their libre OS front and center and then they just "put something else on"?

I mean, if "something else" is another Linux/BSD, sure, I'll believe that. I imagine that people can also do the same with the Librem phone though!

[beatgammit]

I'm also stoked about the PinePhone. The PinePhone goals are a little more modest, and so is the price. If the Librem 5 fails to be interesting, at least it'll have a competitor at a much lower price. I'm holding off preordering either, but I may order one or the other next year once the bugs and whatnot have been ironed out.

I'm stoked to have a phone that I can tinker with like I do my Linux desktop.

[RandomBacon]

It doesn't look like vaporware to me. The videos and updates seem legit.

> it'll get released with a half baked UI and a barebones list of apps.

Have you even looked into the project?

It's running Gnome, on Linux, all the regular apps are there.

Check out the videos in this link, it's not half-baked:

https://puri.sm/posts/runs-on-the-librem-5-smartphone-week-3...

[the_pwner224]

I have been following this for a while and am likely to buy it if/when it is released. Even though that will require me to change to a much more expensive cell carrier.

The software seems good. After all, it is just GNU/Linux/GNOME - all you need to do is get a C compiler and hardware drivers and then it just works. An older video did show major stutter during scrolling but that can probably be mitigated.

What's concerning is the hardware side of things. I don't think many people expected it to actually ship on the original planned release date, but the delay has been getting quite large. All the stuff on their blog is about software running on the dev kit; we have no idea what progress is like on the hardware. Turning it from that bare PCB into a phone is a lot of work.

Their marketing guy also released a video a month or two ago comparing the Librem boot time to that of an old Android phone, complete with OEM crapware. If they have nothing better to do than make such stupid comparisons, then it is hard to believe it isn't vaporware.

[RandomBacon]

I highly recommend looking into an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator).

There are inexpensive pre-paid plans that use the major cell network towers, and you get the same speeds. I recommend Straight Talk; their plans are very cheap for the data you get, but there might be other cheaper services.

I agree it's taking them a while, but I've never built a phone before, so I am cutting them slack.

I find it easy to believe that it is not vaporware. They have videos of working devices, something that can be replicated in mass, not renders etc. They've shipped dev boards.

[logicprog]

I've been following them for only a few months, sure, but I've seen that link and others, and watched many of their videos. It's extremely concerning that they use a stylus, they clearly don't have multitouch support, copy/paste is based on a control key, screen tearing is significant and some of the UIs aren't scaled properly, I haven't seen them do text selection and the keyboard didn't give feedback. That's just a few issues.

Also, the videos are legit for the software, but they are all running on the Dev Kit, not the actual phone hardware, which we haven't seen and have no idea what the progress on is like. So the hardware kinda does look like vaporware. In the link you have, for instance, the best they can do is take a fake circuit board image and fade it into a fake phone image. That's not encouraging.

[alexkavon]

> On that latter one, I really don't see how they'll fix the problem.

I don't understand what the problem is exactly. There already exist phones that have the latest apps. I don't think Librem is trying to be a market leader, just build a device that's more open, so to say. The demographic isn't Google or Apple users, it's those who wish more control. They're not going to fix the app gap problem because it's not a real problem, it's a meaningless metric for phone advertisements. These videos are to demonstrate that they are working on filling the mobile usability gaps as well as building a phone that can run Linux software, not just mobile UI software.

[comex]

I agree with most of your post, but lacking apps is definitely a real problem.

As someone who preordered the Librem 5, I know I'm not going to get an operating system with the polish of iOS or Android. I'm willing to live with that; the phone is attractive for other reasons, both practical (easy to hack) and ideological (freedom!). Heck, even if the final product turns out so poorly that I end up never using it at all, I won't be too upset: even if my $600 didn't end up benefiting me personally, at least it went toward a serious attempt at achieving a worthy cause (an open phone).

Still, I would like to try actually using the phone as a daily driver, and for that to be viable, I'll need to be able to access the services I depend on. Luckily, I don't use that many services, and many of the ones I do use mostly have web versions; as much as I hate the experience of using webapps, I should be able to get by with them. But I can think of several that I'll have trouble accessing at all:

- 1Password

- iMessage (I guess I could try to set up the Matrix bridge.)

- Slack? Discord? (Both have desktop web versions, but not sure if they have usable mobile web versions. That said, I have bitlbee set up to connect to Discord already and I know there are bridges for Slack.)

I'm lucky that none of these seem to be hard blockers for me... but other people may not be so lucky.

And, well, if things work but are a poor experience, at some point I'll probably get fed up with it and switch back to my iPhone. Some people are more ideologically committed than I, but many are less. Though I'm not counting on it, I would love if Librem's OS gained momentum and became a sustainable ongoing project, rather than dying off as a prototype like so many prior attempts (webOS, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, etc.). For that to happen, it will need users.

[TylerE]

I'm getting a lot of Ouya vibes from this project. Good UI/UX is hard, and "open platform" might get some kickstarter monies, but it isn't really something 99.9% of people care about.

[Apocryphon]

At the very least, they won't be trying to chase the fickle gamer market. It seems like Librem 5 is trying to cater to hackers, who would be the most tolerant of deficiencies in the UX.

[TylerE]

That's a pretty small market, and they're on the wrong end of the economy-of-scale curve to begin with.