"and knowing nobody gets my data if it's not me giving it to them"
As far as I know, the hardware is not open source, nor is the firmware.
So it is a nice step in the right direction, but we are not there yet.
Even if it's not perfect, it's like a million times better than everything else around.
Perfection will come. Maybe.
I love my iPhone/Apple Watch combination with perfect interop with my MacBook but I can see myself buying something like a Librem 5 in the future. The biggest drawback would be giving up my Apple Watch: it has been a game changer for me to be able to leave my cellphone at home, sort of disconnected but people can still get ahold of me while I don’t spend time staring at my phone instead of enjoying the world around me.
I would like more information about hooking a Librem 5 up to a monitor and Bluetooth keyboard. Even with a lower power phone, for me it is a compelling idea to have just one device.
I hope they keep developing because I really do want a linux phone, but with enough power to emulate Android somehow (just can't go around it for some things).
Again though, congratulations for making it this far. The Librem 5 will probably be the standard hacker-phone for a few years.
Even with a slower processor I have no problems believing it may be better for certain workloads because you won't have a load of background tasks running, that don't need to etc. Will probably be worse for games though.
So the same situation that desktop Linux was in, in the naughties?
Thinking about your Android emulator. That should be fairly easy? Android is already basically a VM running on Linux. I'm sure Google will be working hard to prevent this use case though.
They can't do much about the runtime. ART is part of AOSP so theoretically anyone can come along and just port it. It hasn't happened so far though, for reasons I don't quite understand.
What Google can do (and is doing) though is increase developers dependence on Play services, which they guard well.
Same. I don't know how much the "Pure OS" changes things, but I've built some STB/OTT devices using Android on the i.MX A53 platform, and performance sure felt like a Galaxy S3 from 2013 or so. Slow enough that you'll really notice, even if your just doing some light web browsing or Twitter reading.
That level of performance was totally fine for our needs on that device. But as someone's daily driver phone, there might need to be some carefully set expectations. Even low end $200 Android smartphones today are noticeably faster than this.
If I install emacs with org-mode on this, arguably I can already do more than pretty much any task manager offered on platforms running on a more powerful hardware.
Edit: argh, I think their lazy-loading breaks the anchor link browsing position. I will just paste the contents here:
Development is still ongoing, so most of the specs are not finalized yet. What is certain at this moment is:
CPU: NXP® i.MX 8M Quad or NXP® i.MX 8M Quad Mini
GPU: Vivante GC7000Lite
RAM: 3 GB minimum (subject to change)
Screen: 720×1440 high-DPI 5.7″ (glossy)
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth: Yes
GPS: Yes
NFC: No (subject to change)
FM Radio: No
Card slot: microSD
Loudspeaker: Yes
3.5mm jack: Yes
SIM cards: One
Camera: Front and back
Replaceable Battery: Yes (with tools)
Smart Card Reader: Yes (OpenPGP-compatible)
Everything else is To Be Determined. This applies to: dimensions, weight, supported modem frequencies, internal storage capacity, maximum SD card capacity, camera specs, other screen specs, battery life, SAR values, etc.
They should really try to figure this out before selling the product. If I, as a European, buy it and it doesn't support the standard European frequencies, then I've already had a bad experience.
Whilst it's great they're pushing the whole privacy aspect, they need to understand that viability in different markets is the next important aspect to landing sales.
I won't pre-order a phone that I can't be certain that I can use...
But for now, I cannot afford a phone like this. Not only because of its price for what you get. But also because I want my phone to "just work".
A phone without a PDF viewer or calendar app? :)
I like to know before I pre-order if it will work in my region.
It would be exciting to have an open source phone based on the risc-v processor. Until the hardware is open source, it will never be truly secure.
However, I'm more interested whether the WiFi stack is open source.
Can I make apps that look consistent with the rest of the phone's OS just by using GTK?
It ships with a custom Wayland compositor built with GNOME technology, but theoretically you could install GNOME. They have a custom widget library, but that builds on GTK.
