Spyke
lemmy.world

What’s not to like about a device sporting a 5 year old CPU paired with a 720p display and 4GB of RAM costing 2.2k usd?

33

One of my harder earned life lessons is it’s structurally impossible to run a company that develops and sells a product based on this kind of soft values and buying devices from them is almost always a recipe for disappointment. It doesn’t even have to be the fault of the company (though it often is)

8
  • entry-level Librem 5 sells for $1,299
  • made-in-the-USA model $1,999
  • Liberty Phone also made-in-the-USA with more memory & storage $2,199
8
feddit.de

All the electronics of the Liberty Phone are made in our USA facility, and the entire phone is assembled at that same facility.

I suppose that this is the reason for the high price. It's built all in one single factory in the US (I was too lazy to research if it's their factory). I hope that their target groups are real and that they can afford the phone.

6
kroldenreply
lemmy.ml

That is a lie. They are not fabbing their own SOC or any of the camera modules.

Also the SOC in this thing is ancient. Purism seems to be cashing in on the paranoid and gullible.

8

Yeah its kinda annoying. I guess I just have to assume it got posted when I get a timeout

1

As the article says, I'm not denying that Purism has contributed greatly to the fully OSS Linux mobile ecosystem. But it's not like they're the only one, and they're relying on a lot of other people's work as well.

But this is becoming more and more outrageous in terms of price/quality.

6
lemmyfi.com

Lmao. At this point buy any android phone and just put a custom ROM on it.

5

I think the appeal was supposed to be all drivers are open source. where as even with custom roms, you still have proprietary firmware blobs that must be updated by the manufacturer to prevent any exploits

1

Funnily enough, this is for running Linux not Android and the best devices for running mobile Linux are all either older models (used Oneplus 6t doesn't cost much) or pretty cheap (Pinephone pro).

1

And they continue pestering anyone who ever bought from them to "invest"

3

I'd love to use Linux on my smartphone, but unfortunately it isn't viable yet and I'll keep using Android instead :/

3
lemmy.umainfo.live

This feels like a very bad joke.

You could buy one of those embedded CPU/RAM motherboard, 3d print a tablet like case for it + design a screen for that case, install linux with a GUI supporting touchscreen and you created a much better product for the fraction of the cost.

How do they even find customers to buy this thing?

2
Communistreply
lemmy.ml

Or just buy a OnePlus 6 and put postmarketos on it.

0
codenulreply
lemmy.ml

Love my Oneplus 6T!! Currently running /e/OS on it.

1
Xeonreply
lemmy.ml

It even double posts for ya on Lemmy, how nice!

1

Lemmy.ml was / is having issues yesterday and today and i guess each "fail" attempt was actually posted

1

I don't see anyone addressing what should be the main concern: purism as a long history of internal toxicity and screws up. There were problem and their CTO left a long time ago, since then everything went downhill. Their communication is also one of the worse I've seen. They don't mind lying, it feels borderline scam sometimes.

Whatever the price and the alleged goal I would not get behind a shady organization.

Nothing is perfect but Purism has been way passed the limits for me a long time ago.

1

It's good they are improving their phone, but wtf are those pricing?

1

I like what Librem is trying to do, but their way of doing it is completely impractical. No phone is worth $2199. The PinePhone is a much better option, it's basically trying to do the same thing but it comes in at a practical price.

1

I'm not sure why anyone would buy a Linux phone from Purism these days. Buying one from Pine64 seems like a better option in every way.

1

I get it that they need to find a way to fund their R&D team.

I get that there is also some people willing to pay top-dollar for some specific features which can not be had on commodity phones Linux-based, fully assembled in the US, etc. Which is going to be impossible to fulfill at scale.

What I don't get is: why can't they offer something that makes this explicit? I for one have no interest in a $2k phone, but I would gladly give them $50 per month and in exchange I'd get the right to participate in some periodic (monthly, quarterly, yearly?) dutch-style auction when they had a new update to their phone. Perhaps a percentage of the money that I had given could be used to pay for the device, etc.

1

Bummer, I thought people on Lemmy might be excited. I agree its pricey but voting with your wallet isn't always cheap. (Typed from my Librem 5 :))

0

now, are they being greedy fucks, or is the price difference with other brands indicative of how much money other manufacturers make on data-mining you ?

-1

I think it's more just them learning that they cannot have mass production (seeing how they still have pre-order Librem 5's to ship) so they purposefully go for an overpriced model to just have a smaller number of orders.

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