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Librem 5 Mass Production Phone Has Begun Shipping

514 points| nunodonato | 5 years ago |puri.sm

194 comments

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[+] TACIXAT|5 years ago|reply
I hope I get to update my address before they ship it. I've moved a solid 3 times since backing this.
[+] malikolivier|5 years ago|reply
I moved twice since I originally backed it.

Each time, I was able to update the shipping address on my account: https://shop.puri.sm/my-account/edit-address/

For good measure, I just checked and the currently set shipping address in indeed my current and latest address!

[+] craftkiller|5 years ago|reply
They have to contact you to ask you which modem you want, so that would be a good time to bring up an address change.
[+] tristan957|5 years ago|reply
You should probably reach out to support to be sure.
[+] prophesi|5 years ago|reply
You can log in to your account here https://shop.puri.sm/my-account/ and go to the Addresses tab to edit your current shipping address. I've had to do the same, as a backer since June '19.
[+] Rooster61|5 years ago|reply
Been waiting to see this. Still holding off on buying one though until I see better battery numbers and a few more actual phones in customer hands. Very excited about this product, despite a lot of the bad press it had earlier on (of which some seemed justified considering the timeframe).

Anybody got their hands on one and can speak for the current state of usability?

[+] diegoperini|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if they ship to Turkey and my sim card will work. I'd love to have one of these.
[+] Valkhyr|5 years ago|reply
Looking forward to getting mine.

While I don't see this replacing my Android as a daily-driver anytime soon (and possibly never), I am very excited to have an unrestricted computer in my pocket :-)

Especially once the pandemic gets under control and I visit coffee shops or hang out with friends again, this will be great for some programming/study on the go :-) Maybe this will finally give me the kick to learn about GTK application development.

[+] brbsix|5 years ago|reply
Given their extensive history posting similar promotional material every time that they run out of cash, it would be wise to remain skeptical of this announcement.

For the unacquainted, they've made outrageously false claims like this more times than I can count. I don't have the time or interest to outline all the lies but here's when it "began shipping" back in 9/2019.[0][1] As to the one person in the forums who claims to have received it, and the other on reddit who claims to have a tracking number, we've seen that before as well.

[0]: http://archive.today/2019.09.06-222312/https://puri.sm/posts...

[1]: "The Librem 5 smartphone. Now Shipping" 9/25/2019 https://youtu.be/AuT2w6BkT-k http://archive.today/S7lCT

[+] dleslie|5 years ago|reply
I've been trying to use the PinePhone as a daily driver and it simply isn't there yet: camera is slow to the point of unusable and sometimes it hard crashes when making calls.

Here's hoping that Purism has done a good job of cleaning up some of the issues in Phosh.

[+] ben-schaaf|5 years ago|reply
> camera is slow to the point of unusable

If you're not using "Megapixels" you should be. The camera is still quite slow (though I've been working on improving that) but it's pretty usable - at least for taking pictures.

[+] The_Colonel|5 years ago|reply
> camera is slow to the point of unusable

Camera in Librem 5 doesn't work at all so there's that.

[+] mikewave|5 years ago|reply
This looks really cool, it's nice to see an open-source product like this come to fruition. I think it would make an excellent phone for people who aren't heavily invested in the app / social network ecosystem, or as a work phone.

Does anyone know whether there's some expectation that at some point we'd see first-party apps for common social networks on PureOS? Like, are they going after it at all, or is it intended as a web-first play?

[+] myself248|5 years ago|reply
Wooooo!

I'm in this batch and I was just looking at a Pinephone story thinking I should check in on Purism.

This is quite an ambitious project and I'm expecting it to be a bit rough around the edges. But if I can actually ditch the old Samsung and be purely open-source, that's so, so worth it.

[+] reducesuffering|5 years ago|reply
For someone on the fence, how concerned should they be about app capabilities? So general phone use for things like social media and banking are going through the web apps in a browser. Many of these like Instagram and Reddit are intentionally handicapped outside of a native app.
[+] orthecreedence|5 years ago|reply
I was looking into this earlier today. Apparently things like https://anbox.io/ might provide a solution. I'm not sure how well they work in the absense of things like Google Play services, but that might be a solved problem with those apps being packaged for install by OSs like Lineage.

I too would love an open source smartphone, but couldn't see myself fully jumping on board without at least some pathway to support existing apps (even if they take a few extra steps to use).

[+] PopeRigby|5 years ago|reply
There's a cool GTK app called Giara that works well on mobile Linux.
[+] OneLeggedCat|5 years ago|reply
This still won't even do MMS, and battery life is terrible. Nonetheless I truly hope it succeeds.
[+] Mediterraneo10|5 years ago|reply
Lack of MMS is a shortcoming that really affects only North America. MMS is not widely used elsewhere. Really, getting Whatsapp to work through an Android emulation layer like Anbox is the higher priority for much of the world now.
[+] m463|5 years ago|reply
Who cares about MMS? Isn't that like using http in this day and age? Just use a secure app.
[+] amelius|5 years ago|reply
Curious, since this is open source: is it possible to try out the software on a desktop machine first?
[+] pabs3|5 years ago|reply
The software is just another Debian derivative, so anything that applies to Debian, probably applies to Purism PureOS and devices that are running it.
[+] LockAndLol|5 years ago|reply
What I'd like to know is how much non-USains will be paying in customs.

I remember backing it when it cost 700$ or something, looking up the customs for UK and gasping. It was about 150£. Don't know what it's going to be for Australia or the EU.

There was also a thread not long ago about Brazil and India having sky-high customs that nearly doubled the price of imported electronic goods.

[+] wheybags|5 years ago|reply
I bought a librem 13 years ago and got fucked on customs. ~500 Euros iirc. I completely forgot that import tax was a thing because I'd never had to pay it before, since I bought stuff from the EU, or that was too cheap to matter. I remember reading something about them partnering with someone in Germany to alleviate this, but I didn't find anything concrete with a quick search just noe.
[+] seba_dos1|5 years ago|reply
I paid 350 zł (about $90) when I was receiving my Librem 5 Birch in Poland. Most of that was VAT and I even got that written off.
[+] elric|5 years ago|reply
YMMV but generally speaking you pay whatever the normal VAT rate would be + some import rate (~5-10% generally) + some handling fee. Usually around 30% is a safeish estimate. It obviously depends on where you live, what import rates and VAT rates you have and so on.
[+] ashishb|5 years ago|reply
Why aren't HNers more excited about their laptop? I only see the the Liberem phone related posts on the front page every few months.
[+] pengaru|5 years ago|reply
Their laptops are overpriced closed mediocrity with a not so great reputation when it comes to reliability.

I'm still rocking used Intel ThinkPads, can run ME-cleaner and install coreboot myself, and rip out the internal wifi card in favor of a USB wifi dongle I can unplug for HW kill switch equivalence. They cost a few hundred bucks, support 16G RAM, and have epic keyboards+reliability.

The mntmn reform 2 [0] looks like an OPEN laptop effort far more worth supporting than anything Purism does in this space IMHO. Purism doesn't produce anything remotely resembling open hardware AFAIK.

[0] https://mntre.com/reform/

[+] emptysongglass|5 years ago|reply
Their laptops are terrible. I've used 3 of them and they all had major quality control issues. Finally, they just gave up and offered me a full refund after 2 years of being unable to offer me a laptop that wouldn't fall apart in my hands.
[+] fsflover|5 years ago|reply
Happy owner of Librem 15v3 here. Their quality was not perfect from the beginning, which negatively influenced their reputation. However AFAIK they solved practically all problems with the hardware. Also Librem 14 looks amazing!
[+] samstave|5 years ago|reply
Please update the blog entry and your site - it took many clicks to get to specs and price - and you have two separate write-ups on specs, and price on only one page.
[+] muyuu|5 years ago|reply
is there any up-to-date comparison between Librem, Jolla/Sailfish, PinePhone, (...)?
[+] linmob|5 years ago|reply
Here is a post comparing the specs of Librem 5 and PinePhone: https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p... (with a link to a comparison of 12 phones).

Most notably, Librem 5 does not have a GPU designed in 2008, DDR4 Ram and likely has a faster eMMC, which is not too fast on the PinePhone either. However, the main issue with the PinePhone imho is that it does not have a larger battery that would help avoiding all the daily problems with deep sleep.

I am going to compare the two phones once I receive my October 2017 Librem 5 preorder on my blog (https://linmob.net) and my video channels.

[+] ncmncm|5 years ago|reply
Librem 5 is fatter and heavier, PinePhone is slimmer but with a smaller battery. You can buy, what, 3 PPs for the price of a Librem 5, with enough left over for 3 or 4 backup batteries, or one PP and dozens.

I can't tell you what the Librem 5 is really like, because they haven't shipped mine yet, but the PP is very, very nice.

[+] ianmobbs|5 years ago|reply
I've been following Purism for a month or so, and I love the idea of the Librem 5, but is the phone really going to be worth $2,000?
[+] 11thEarlOfMar|5 years ago|reply
I'm thinking about taking a sabbatical next year, 15 countries in 7 months. How well does Librem travel?