Purism Finally Starts Shipping Its Privacy-Focused 'Librem 5' Smartphone (puri.sm) 46
"It's here! Purism announces shipment of the Librem 5," writes long-time Slashdot reader Ocean Consulting:
Librem 5 is a landmark mobile device with a dedicated platform, runs PureOS Linux, and is the first mobile phone to seek hardware certification from the Free Software Foundation. Initially a crowd sourced funding campaign, the phone embraces principles of free software and user privacy. IP native communication is supported via Matrix. Privacy features include hardware kill switches for camera, microphone, cellular, wifi, Bluetooth and GPS.
"The Librem 5 phone is built from the ground up to respect the privacy, security, and freedoms of society," reads the site's official announcement. "It is a revolutionary approach to solving the issues that people face today around data exploitation -- putting people in control of their own digital lives."
They're adopting an "iterative" shipping schedule -- publishing a detailed schedule defining specific batches and their features with corresponding shipping dates. "Each iteration improves upon the prior in a rapid rolling release throughout the entire first version of the phone... As slots in a particular early batch free up, we will open it up for others in a later batch to join in, according to the date of the order."
"The Librem 5 phone is built from the ground up to respect the privacy, security, and freedoms of society," reads the site's official announcement. "It is a revolutionary approach to solving the issues that people face today around data exploitation -- putting people in control of their own digital lives."
They're adopting an "iterative" shipping schedule -- publishing a detailed schedule defining specific batches and their features with corresponding shipping dates. "Each iteration improves upon the prior in a rapid rolling release throughout the entire first version of the phone... As slots in a particular early batch free up, we will open it up for others in a later batch to join in, according to the date of the order."
Yeah! (Score:2)
They'll need it.
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The difference is, with closed source, the NSAFBICIABBQ can go to the manufacturer, say "gimme!" and look for bugs while you cannot.
WIll love to have one (Score:2)
Re: WIll love to have one (Score:1)
Because Microsoft never spied on anybody?
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Telemetry is just what you do with the device, how long you use it, what programs you have installed, etc.
Which itself can prove incriminating, especially if you use a Windows PC to make something that competes with Xbox or another Microsoft division.
Which carriers? (Score:2)
Which carriers will support this phone? I don't see anything about that on their web page.
Re:Which carriers? (Score:5, Informative)
Look here for phone info
https://puri.sm/faq/supported-... [puri.sm]
and here for carriers
https://www.frequencycheck.com... [frequencycheck.com]
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How do I order one with the BM818-A1?
The coverage here is mostly band 13 & 66, neither of which the Gemalto PLS8 can even pick up. The phone on the preorder page wouldn't actually work as a phone here, though I get strong LTE on those bands.
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Only an American would ask that question.
In the rest of the world, you would simply buy the phone, add a Sim from your local provider and done.
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But the US has another problem, not everywhere can you use GSM.
How much of USA is Verizon 3G only? (Score:2)
All four "4G" networks in the United States are LTE by now, though Verizon and Sprint still run CDMA2000 on their 3G networks. The most likely places where someone in the United States would be without coverage in any GSM-family network (GSM, UMTS, LTE) would be places where only Verizon has 3G and no one has "4G." How much of the US is 3G-only and Verizon-only, where not even AT&T has coverage?
i will buy one (Score:2)
It's up there with the Openmoko in significance (Score:2)
...regardless of how many they actually ship. I preordered one back in 2017 and I'm anxious to get my hands on it!
So, anyone remember the Openmoko? It was an open-source Linux smartphone before anyone heard of Android. Then Android came along and ate its lunch, but the concept had already been proven.
I hope Purism makes an awesome product, but for everyone's sake, I hope some huge player sees this as a bellwether and starts taking privacy more seriously in their own offerings.
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I for one had an Openmoko. Very slow to startup, and basically all software stayed in beta for years, but the thing sort of worked. I think its GPS implementation is still the only one fully open source at this moment. (now, this GPS converges in ~5mn...)
I long abandoned it for Fairphones (I have FP models 1 and 2; now the model 3 is announced).
Fairphones can sport an open Android without google apps, or SailfishOS (Jolla), or a couple of other OSes requiring more and more geek skills; they are ethically bu
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sorry : "it still looks cool" :-)
Lifetime updates (Score:2)
A big claim on their website is Lifetime updates that actually extend your phone’s life, what I want to know is how that happens. You buy the phone and there is some ongoing subscription cost? Because they make a big deal about being able to replace the battery after years of use has depleted its ability to hold a charge so how do they fund the maintenance and development of continued updates for the device's unspecified "lifetime"? I get Apple's model, they charge the upfront price and that covers ma
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Obviously they can go under and stop providing anything. But if they plan to do another device then they're going to need to update the OS anyway. Most vendors could do driver updates as the SoC vendor does often make updated drivers available to them, but they don't want to do the testing that entails. Some percentage of Linux users are the type that are willing to help with that kind of thing, so it can done for free (plus overhead, of course.)
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Obviously they can go under and stop providing anything. But if they plan to do another device then they're going to need to update the OS anyway.
Yes to support the new device, what does that do for the old device? Even if you had updated hardware drivers and a high enough level of abstraction iOS 12 is going to run pretty shitty on an iPhone 4 for example, even as far back as iOS 12 stretches it's not just the same codebase with updated drivers running on all the hardware.
Most vendors could do driver updates as the SoC vendor does often make updated drivers available to them, but they don't want to do the testing that entails.
Right but in this case the drivers come from Purism (open GPU drivers for example) so how are they paying the developers to maintain these for presumably longer than than your aver
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"Most mobile hardware components only come with drivers that work only for one version of the Linux kernel."
Is that really true? If they keep selling the component (or core, even) they have to keep making drivers for it. I had one Android device, think it was SEMC Xperia play, which got updated to ICS by the community because the same SoC was used in devices that did get upgraded (as Sony promised the Play would be, but they lied, because they're scum) so it was possible to get updated drivers.
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A big claim on their website is Lifetime updates that actually extend your phone’s life, what I want to know is how that happens.
I suspect a big part of that is their open source friendly hardware choices, and avoidance of devices requiring closed blobs. That way, they are no longer at the mercy of hardware vendors which quickly abandon device support, and can use standard linux drivers indefinitely. As long as devices are in common use, those drivers will be maintained.
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I suspect a big part of that is their open source friendly hardware choices, and avoidance of devices requiring closed blobs. That way, they are no longer at the mercy of hardware vendors which quickly abandon device support, and can use standard linux drivers indefinitely.
But that's only drivers, even if you have drivers for 10 year old PC hardware running the latest OS on it is sluggish compared to the OSs of the time because of the new features that have been added.
As long as devices are in common use, those drivers will be maintained.
By who? You mean Purism will maintain them? This line of "they will be maintained" always reminds me of Homer Simpson's sanitation commissioner tagline when asked who will do the work "Someone else! Someone else!"
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Easy, three Triple-A's!
Complete with a little dig at Apple ... (Score:5, Funny)
We have no intention of doing vendor lock-in, and so the Librem 5 comes with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. The Courage Jack.
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- Android phones, with dodgy CPU's and a nasty, nasty OS.
- Apple phones, with dodgy CPU's, and probably a spyware riddled OS.
- This phone, with a dodgy CPU and a non-spying OS.
The choice for me at least is a no-brainer.
Re:Hrmmm... (Score:4, Informative)
- Android phones, with dodgy CPU's and a nasty, nasty OS.
You can load LineageOS onto all the ones worth buying. They've been de-googled. Using MicroG, you can even run many common apps without Play Services.
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They still have black box baseband though. One of the big changes here is that the baseband is decoupled from the rest of the hardware and sandboxed.
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They still have black box baseband though. One of the big changes here is that the baseband is decoupled from the rest of the hardware and sandboxed.
Yes, that is a difference, although in theory that's true of other devices as well. The baseband processor is a separate core as far as I'm aware. I don't much care where it lives.
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How open is this thing? (Score:3)
Does it have secret bootloaders or code running in the ARM TrustZone side of the i.MX SoC or other secret bits? What GPU does it have and how are they dealing with drivers for it?
Price ($699) and specs (Score:2)
Price: $699.00
The tech specs are as follows:
Display : 5.7 IPS TFT screen @ 720×1440
Processor: i.MX8M (Quad Core) max. 1.5GHz
Memory: 3GB
Storage : 32 GB eMMC internal storage
Wireless : 802.11abgn 2.4 Ghz / 5Ghz + Bluetooth 4
Baseband : Gemalto PLS8 3G/4G modem w/ single sim on replaceable M.2 card
GPS : Teseo LIV3F GNSS
Smartcard: Reader with 2FF card slot (SIM card size)
Sound : 1 earpiece speaker, 3.5mm headphone jack
External Storage: microSD storage expansion
Accelerometer: 9-axis IMU (gyro, accel, magneto
Makerphone 4G on Kickstarter (Score:2)
I ordered the 4G Makerphone for similar reasons:
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
Its only powered by an ESP32 microcontroller, so its primitive, but probably very secure. ;)
Runs Micropython, so I should be able to do funky stuff with it
Its only $180 (assembled :)
Its been delayed, but it is supposedly ready to ship any day now.
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Its only powered by an ESP32 microcontroller, so its primitive, but probably very secure.
Yeah... https://hackaday.com/2019/09/0... [hackaday.com]
Nice but limited use (Score:2)
I love this, but i probably won't buy it.
I jumped on the Ubuntu phone when it came out, and it worked well enough (after a few much needed updates), but it was barely usable.
You got the very bare basic of apps with much more limited functionality, lots of apps were not even available at all.
So I ended up with a very cool phone that i could barely use.
People complain all the time that application x, y & z is not available on the linux desktop. Most of the time linux desktop has a great alternative availa