Purism Librem 5 - Fully Open Source Phone - Crowdfunding Campaign

[jcgruenhage]

Purism started a crowdfunding campaign for their new security and privacy focused phone, the Librem 5.

It will be completely open source, and use federated, encrypted communications by default.


Parts of the engadget article on the topic:

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Purism's laptops, which focus on security and privacy, have been doing so well that the company now intends to venture into another type of electronics. The San Francisco-based "freedom-respecting computer manufacturer" is planning to build what it calls the "world's first encrypted, open platform smartphone." It's named the Librem 5, and Purism aims to give it the power to make encrypted calls that hide your phone number, send encrypted texts and emails and set up VPN for web browsing.

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kill switches [...] which you'll be able to use to quickly switch off its camera, mic, WiFi, Bluetooth and even its baseband

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As you can see, a lot of those features aren't meant for most smartphone users who just need their devices to work. But that's not entirely surprising: Purism has always catered to those who prioritize their privacy and security. This particular device, for instance, is for those worried about the personal info they give up when they connect to public WiFi or when they install apps, especially those that use location services.

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That said, it's interesting to see how Librem 5 would do, considering the Librem 13 and 15 laptops have seen a 35 percent monthly growth over the past year. The company expects to spend 18 months on testing hardware specifications and the like and has launched a crowdfunding campaign to gauge demand for the first wave of devices and to raise $1.5 million for the project. While Librem 5 is still in its very early stages, Purism already has a price for it: the company expects to sell them for $599, cheaper than the other security-focused phones we've seen thus far.

 

I think this is pretty interesting, since there hasn't been much around phones that run pure open source software since the Nokia N900 almost ten years ago.

Take a look at their campaign for more info: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

[Sauron]

Why don't they start with a ROM of their "secure" os for some commonly available phone? Perhaps some low level features of the complete phone would be missing, but I think it would be more than enough for a proof of concept... then, if people like it and care, they could start a larger kickstarter to make their own phone. Presented like this it just seems like either a money grab, or a hopeless and misguided dream by incompetent people.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, thom derksen said:

I believe they did that already: https://pureos.net/

Oh dear... did they really just take Debian with GNOME3 and call it a mobile os? I mean, sure, it's more touch friendly than others, but it's meant for convertible devices, not for phones... how in the world are you going to use libreoffice on a 5" touchscreen? Or Krita?

[rattacko123]

There is a reason why ubuntu phone failed

[Sauron]

10 minutes ago, rattacko123 said:

There is a reason why ubuntu phone failed

Well, honestly that never properly launched to begin with. Ubuntu phone failed for different reasons, they just didn't have the funds to keep it going and it would have taken a very long time to have a finished product. At least they were developing a smartphone oriented interface with proper mobile apps though instead of just porting their stuff to arm.

[jcgruenhage]

First of all, this is not advertisement, I am not related to purism at all. I'd say this is as much tech news as the other content here. Second, they already did successful campaigns for their laptops, which are now in stock in their shop, so they are not newcomers to hardware. Most of the hardware decisions for the phone have already been done too, they have already talked to chip manufacturers, and most of the work that is still to be done, is exactly what you guys complain about: Touch optimized software.

 

No one expects to be running LibreOffice on a 5" device, or some other desktop software, but for me this is very exciting, because the more touch devices with GNU+Linux (not crippled Linux like Android (more on that further down)) ship, the more development we will see in the community around such software.

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 I mean, saying "We will not track you" does not prove anything. 

Which is why all their software is open source, so anybody can go look for themselves if their software is doing what they claim it is doing.
 

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Android based on Linux 

Oh, wow. The Linux Kernel used in Android is heavily modified, and Google has so far failed in bringing that to an up to date state (current is Kernel 4.12, android uses at most 3.18 which is already 2 and a half years old, depending on the Android version even lower), with interesting features disabled and closed source blobs all over the place.
 

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We know an app that says it encrypts and secures your messages, so we put it on the phone as bloatware. 

Not exactly.. Again, this is open source stuff, so we know that the stuff is encrypted. And calling a dialer and messaging app bloatware.. If you'd like to have a phone you can't use to call people and text with people... sure, your choice. To give that matrix integration (which is really cool btw) is more of a plus, than a minus, and you can just as easily uninstall that if you don't want it.

[NumLock21]

Want to make phone. E-begs for other peoples money, rather than taking out of own pocket. 

There is already a secure phone made by  Boeing. Yes Boeing the mofos who made those 747 jumbo jets.

[RagnarokDel]

So a phone with less apps then Windows Phones?

[Drak3]

37 minutes ago, jcgruenhage said:

Oh, wow. The Linux Kernel used in Android is heavily modified, and Google has so far failed in bringing that to an up to date state (current is Kernel 4.12, android uses at most 3.18 which is already 2 and a half years old, depending on the Android version even lower), with interesting features disabled and closed source blobs all over the place.

The Linux kernal on Android can be changed by any user. And it has. Android is also a completely open source project, and there are AOSP ROMs that don't include Google Services (the only component of "stock" Android that is closed source, and it is removeable).

 

41 minutes ago, jcgruenhage said:

Which is why all their software is open source, so anybody can go look for themselves if their software is doing what they claim it is doing.

 Doesn't mean jack shit to those that can't read source code, which is a very large majority of people. And even then, it can still take a good while before something is discovered.

[Drak3]

Just now, RagnarokDel said:

So a phone with less apps then Windows Phones?

That implies this thing will have any apps to begin with

[PlayStation 2]

What could possibly go wrong. 

[Jito463]

1 hour ago, RagnarokDel said:

So a phone with less apps then Windows Phones?

In theory, any Linux program should be able to run on this phone, assuming that the hardware is sufficient for the requirements of it.

 

Having said that, I've been burned once before in crowd funding hardware (sometimes with software also, but I'll still support something if I trust the developers), so I'll wait and see what the results are before I even consider it.  It is interesting, though.

[jcgruenhage]

3 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

Want to make phone. E-begs for other peoples money, rather than taking out of own pocket. 

There is already a secure phone made by  Boeing. Yes Boeing the mofos who made those 747 jumbo jets.

Ah, yes, let's take a phone that runs android plus a bunch of proprietary tracking software, produced by blackberry, branded by boeing and call it secure.

3 hours ago, Drak3 said:

The Linux kernal on Android can be changed by any user. And it has. Android is also a completely open source project, and there are AOSP ROMs that don't include Google Services (the only component of "stock" Android that is closed source, and it is removeable).

 

 Doesn't mean jack shit to those that can't read source code, which is a very large majority of people. And even then, it can still take a good while before something is discovered.

Which doesn't mean you can use an uncrippled, current kernel with android (if you think it's possible, I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this one).

Also, it does mean shit to other people, because there is a thing called independent reviews, where people like NCC deeply look through software and certify it. Also, if there is a community around a product that does code review, that's worthless? And yes, that doesn't fix everything, but at least it is possible to look through the code.

2 hours ago, Jito463 said:

In theory, any Linux program should be able to run on this phone, assuming that the hardware is sufficient for the requirements of it.

 

Having said that, I've been burned once before in crowd funding hardware (sometimes with software also, but I'll still support something if I trust the developers), so I'll wait and see what the results are before I even consider it.  It is interesting, though.

Well, there is a slight problem with that (which is why I might not back it after all).. They are not sure which SoC they'll use yet, and it might be a 32 bit CPU. Which would suck majorly, because some parts of the linux community have already started to abandon 32 bit CPUs.

 

 

In total, nice to see how overly negative (and in some points even clueless) this community can be  

[Jito463]

7 minutes ago, jcgruenhage said:

Well, there is a slight problem with that (which is why I might not back it after all).. They are not sure which SoC they'll use yet, and it might be a 32 bit CPU.

Hmm, that's not good.  I wasn't planning on backing them anyway, but this just certifies it.  I can accept a mobile phone running 32-bit, so long as it performs well (after all, it's not like we can do much about it), but considering they're effectively using a modified desktop OS, it just wouldn't make sense to limit it to 32-bit.

[jcgruenhage]

It depends on whether the i.MX8 chips will be available in the right quantities at the right price soon enough. If so, the phones will be 64bit ARMv8, if not, 32bit ARMv7. If they don't make sure it'll be the i.MX8 CPU and some other specs before the end of the campaign (which they probably won't be able to), I won't back it.

As the community of OSS fanatics is not that small, it will probably (hopefully, even) get it's 1.5 million dollars. They have already got 6% of the money already after all.

[LogicalDrm]

15 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

There is already a secure phone made by  Boeing. Yes Boeing the mofos who made those 747 jumbo jets.

 

Not to mention successor of Jolla making their own. With already working mobile OS.

 

15 hours ago, RagnarokDel said:

So a phone with less apps then Windows Phones?

 

They could do it with tie-in to Android like what Sailfish does.