I can’t believe it mentions the Librem 5 and absolutely nothing about its sordid history of scamming customers. Friends don’t let friends purchase a Librem 5.
They had an ambitious project of designing a phone from scratch and ran into complications when covid hit just like other manufacturers, causing further delays. They eventually shipped the phone, and it does as advertised.
You can order today and it will arrive in a few weeks. It’s the best GNU/Linux phone available today, can easily flash multiple distributions on it.
Its amazing the complaints you get around crowdfunding. Its a gamble to begin with and anything that actually manages to refund in the end if it goes south is a success not a failure. Anything that actually delivers even if late is a massive success. Like if you judged every company by how well it met its internal timelines they would all be shit. crowdfunding is just more transparent.
They intentionally, systemically withheld refunds from customers who’d been waiting years over schedule for a phone, and I’m sorry, I didn’t realize COVID-19 was responsible for them scamming their backers in 2019.
Fuck the fuck off with this disgraceful apologia. Either you know better and are preying on people who are less familiar, or you should know better for how trivial it is to find this information.
I suspect they spent the money customers gave them on trying to deliver the phones and refunds were difficult to provide.
People who go into a crowdfunding campaign expecting either a product or a refund with no risk for just one or neither, aren’t the right audience for and shouldn’t be participating in crowdfunding.
The delays and refund denials were not ideal, and perhaps they could have handled that better, but picking between complete insolvency delivering no product to anyone vs delivering the product to people who crowdfunded and pre-ordered, is the lesser of the two “evils” if people want to call it that, especially given the reality of the situation headed into COVID-19.
People who go into a crowdfunding campaign expecting either a product or a refund with no risk for just one or neither, aren’t the right audience for and shouldn’t be participating in crowdfunding.
Okay, even if you assume this caveat emptor bullshit excuse to be the case: these refunds were not nearly limited to crowdfunding campaign backers. These were people who saw Purism advertising a finished product that they could preorder/order. This is the same position as if I’d go to Fairphone’s website, order a Fairphone 6, never receive it, request a refund, and either get denied repeatedly or ghosted indefinitely.
You can’t “buyer beware” a legally established American company advertising a product. That’s just called a scam. And that’s already generously ignoring the crowdfunding backers they scammed by giving zero transparency to.
Some more context would be helpful (to let people make up their own minds). I’ve looked into PinePhone and Jolla, but I’ve only heard about the other brands listed.
Sorry, I should’ve given something. I linked to a small taste of it below after you wrote this, but it runs deeper than that. Delay after delay for years (even pre-COVID), people e.g. having to contact their AG to get a refund on a phone they’ve been waiting literal years for (this one didn’t contact their AG; they just waited two years for a product they never received and an additional four for a refund), hardware that’s functionally equivalent to a phone from c. 2013 (plus abysmal battery life), etc. The refund stories are absolutely rampant; this is not a one-off. Honest businesses do not do anything even close to this.
Overall not a business you want to let hold nearly $1000 hostage.
Android isn’t Google.
What?? Do you have an android phone? Google is so deeply integrated that you can’t even disable uninstall it.
I do have an android phone.
There is no google on it by default. Have you ever installed android before? By default, it’s without gapps. You have to download an extra package even to get the google crap on it.
Pretty much all phones comes pre-installed with Android and completely tie to google with no easy way to get rid of it. Android is essentially develop by Google, open source or not, I’m not gonna waste time on rhetorical arguments on this.
Pretty much all laptops come pre-installed with Windows, but it’s best practice to wipe and reinstall the OS immediately after you buy it
Same applies to cell phones.
Definitely not as simple to wipe out a phone as it is for a computer, and anyway most phones like Samsung are hard locked. I’m probably more geek than 95% of the population but never could do it.
Every phone comes that way stock from the factory. You know that, but weirdly are ignoring that fact to be smug for some reason.
Comes what way? Without an OS?
Which phone is that?
Pixel 3 running iode OS. You can install yourself or buy here
https://shop.iode.tech/product/bundles/phone-bundles/google-pixel-3-bundle
huh, never heard of that one, I’ll add it to the list, always good to have backup options.
In reply to to other points further up:
Android isn’t Google.
Yes it is, both the Wikipedia and the official website both state this.
I don’t mean to get in to a slap fight but it’s not really a subjective issue, android is still owned/run by google.
Though they didn’t create it iirc, it was bought while it was still quite young.
Have you ever installed android before? By default, it’s without gapps.
Also not true, the official android comes with GMS and the Play suite (services, store etc).
Though there are places where some of the Play suite apps are not allowed to be bundled (iirc china does this), the default is still to include them.
Given that you’re mentioning lineageOS then i’m assuming you mean the AOSP which afaict does indeed come without the GMS + normal google bs.
While both are “official”, I can’t think of any reasonable metric where the AOSP (and it’s forks/derivatives) would be considered the the default.
You are talking about custom roms. For 99.999% not the reality and therefore not helpful.
It’s ironic that arguably the best way to de-Google a phone is to get a Pixel and use GrapheneOS.
You’re still using a platform upon which Google has an enormous influence, including making life much more difficult for projects like GrapheneOS. And I think it’s only a matter of timer before they’ll take more aggressive measures.
Btw, I am not saying one should or shouldn’t use a Pixel with GrapheneOS.
Until the Motorola deal sees fruition, Pixels are the only way to use GrapheneOS. I don’t think that using GrapheneOS makes the project more difficult.
everyone mentioning Motorola here. something to keep in mind if you love in the US.
Motorola exports chip manufacturing to China. The FCC just blocked products that use technology that sourced from China.
you might be waiting to buy one domestically.
I still weep at the loss of HTC as a viable phone maker.
if you love in the US
<3
if you love in the US
We love many things 🏴☠️ 🍻
There seems to be a trend for larger phones that I’m just not on board with. It’s one of the reasons I’ve stuck with apple - the iPhone 13 mini is really as big as I’d ever want a phone. If I could find something private, and not requiring me learning a whole new set of skills to use, then I’d jump ship in a heartbeat, but there really doesn’t seem to be that much on offer
I’m willing to learn totally new things and let go of some niceties even if I’m ever again able to buy iPhone 13 mini sized phone for under 600 euros.
Fun fact is that apple mocked Google (Android) for their phones being too big. Only later to go full on big phones.
I want a phone the size of the iPhone 4s.
There seems to be a trend for larger phones that I’m just not on board with
I have a Moto Razr 50ultra flip phone. Excellent pocketability, a lot of tasks can be perormed on the small outside screen, flip open for content consumption etc To me its a geeat design
When Motorola puts out a Graphene phone, I’ll buy one. It’ll be important to break the effective Google play and iOS app store monopolies
Same but for Samsung. I like my foldables too much. The Fold 7 is the greatest phone I’ve ever owned.
New Rule: non-apple, non-Google, non-Samsung
Never have I seen so much fucking bloatware in my life. None of it uninstallable.
Not one-time while owning a Samsung did I ever feel I actually owned the device I paid $800 for.
New “urgent” update in the middle of video job interview at 11 AM? To install Candy Crush? Are you kidding me? Oh wait - you also removed all of my default apps like SMS, and my browser because…??? Who would ever want that?
They’re worse than Microsoft - they don’t even offer a “Not now” dark pattern.
Never have I seen so much fucking bloatware in my life
Never owned a Xiaomi phone then I guess
Motorola also has foldables so maybe one day in the future they’ll ship one with grapheneOS if this launch works out.
First batch new Jolla phone coming in the summer. I have high hopes.
I am planning to get the Jolla phone this summer, Google de facto banning F-Droid is a deal breaker. Just need save up the €800 needed for the 12GB RAM / 256 GB storage variant in September.
I have Jolla C and older rooted Xperia X with sailfish. I was looking for old pictures a few months ago and desided to see if those still work. They had been laying in the carage. Both are up and running (my sons play games on them now). Jolla C was released 2016.
I have not been following them lately but I think I would consider buying one if I did not have a phone provided by employer…
I ordered a Jolla phone, should come in September, will do a review then!
Not sure this honors the spirit of the question, but I think GrapheneOS may be something you’re looking for.
Motorola will be launching a GrapheneOS phone soon.
I just want my headphone jack back
And I want a freaking small notification LED back that tells me what’s going on without any annoying sounds or having to turn on the display and wasting battery charge every few minutes.
Best we can do is flashing your camera led blinding everyone in the room
and a MicroSD slot
Yes but it’s not affordable enough.
Nor global
I was considering a fair phone, but that announcement has me waiting.
I wish fairphone would do the hardware and graphene the software but they do not seem to get along. That would be the ideal duo.
I use GrapheneOS and I believe in their goals, but honestly, the people behind the OS doesn’t seem to get along with anyone else in the whole world.
It’s just blind perfectionism. Don’t put security features as the first priority above all else? Hunting season is open.
It’s difficult to argue against their basic policy, especially these days, seeing what AI pentesting can do.
But at the end of the day, mom and dad are gonna have to use their phones and they do not care about or understand security in the slightest, so how are they supposed to make use of those devices?
I think a little more positive marketing wouldn’t hurt, but the Graphene people love to call out what everybody else is doing wrong.
Curious how the Linux phone movement is going. Ubuntu touch seemed pretty cool
As a non-IT Person: for me 2 months ago it was not really ready for dailyusage on fairphone 3. I installed it as a test to see if i can use it as a second phone.
Most things generally work. I had problems with websites not being loaded properly. The problem might be me or the FP3.
However i am looking forward to jolla (using sailfishOS right?)
