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You Can Help Purism Build the Secure Open Source Linux-based Librem 5 Smartphone (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli writes: Thankfully, consumers are starting to wake up and become more aware of security and privacy, and some companies, such as Purism, are designing products to safeguard users. The company's laptops, for instance, run an open source Linux-based operating system, called "PureOS" with a focus on privacy. These machines even have hardware "kill switches" so you can physically disconnect a webcam or Wi-Fi card. Today, Purism announces that it is taking those same design philosophies and using them to build a new $599 smartphone called Librem 5. The planned phone will use the GNOME desktop environment and PureOS by default, but users can install different distros too. Sound good? Well you can help the company build it through crowdfunding. "Purism, the social purpose corporation which designs and produces popular privacy conscious hardware and software, has revealed its plans to build the world's first encrypted, open platform smartphone that will empower users to protect their digital identity in an increasingly unsafe mobile world. After 18 months of R&D to test hardware specifications and engage with one of the largest phone fabricators, Purism is opening a self-hosted crowdfunding campaign to gauge demand for the initial fabrication order and add the features most important to users," says Purism.
I won't crowdfund it unless it has a removable battery. And it needs to work on Verizon. A plug-in keyboard would be nice, too.
I would have bought an OpenMoko phone too, if they'd you know, supported America. Another Euro-networks-only Linux phone isn't gonna help us at all over here though.
I like this idea enough I may well go ahead and support it. I have been saying for a long time that Gnome 3 would be great on a tablet\phone. The interface is just about perfect for it. Past that, Google has spent the last few years falling out of my good graces. An iPhone is not an option. That said, this would probably be such a niche device as to fail. But I'm still going to back the project.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
>> On the surface, this offering sounds compelling. But X is a total deal breaker for me. I refuse to use any (thing I value) that uses X (as a default option).
Your day job wouldn't happen to be "Republican Member of Congress", would it?
(How about a hardware keyboard?)
Anyone? Bueller?
[crickets]
More important than features is the distinct possibility that any truly "secure" phone won't be allowed on US carrier's networks either through carrier restrictions or by US legal decision. Can't allow the plebs to talk among themselves without the ability to eavesdrop and install whatever spyware US TLAs roll out. For the children, of course.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
LOL.
Oh, the humanity. (and I don't mean the desktop theme)
It is going to be a total disaster out of the box.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Except that in the US, Verizon has the widest coverage. Most of the current phones are 4G or 3G, but the question of CDMA comes in when one is in a place that does not have 3G/4G coverage, and the phone has to fall back to 2G. That's when to access the Verizon 2G network, a phone has to be CDMA compatible. For which, they need to have Qualcomm parts.
Given the philosophy of Librem/Purism, where all the source code presumably has to be open, it's a non-starter for Qualcomm. Even if this phone uses Qualcomm chipsets, there's no way Qualcomm will agree to letting its IP be out there for everyone to copy. Otherwise, people in countries like China will copy them left & right, & Qualcomm will have no recourse.
Precisely! They could have picked KDE's mobile version, or even Ubuntu's Unity - which was lousy for laptops, but would be fine for phones.
I won't crowdfund it unless it has a removable battery. And it needs to work on Verizon. A plug-in keyboard would be nice, too.
Yes, one million times this - please make the hardware repairable, with components easily replaceable, especially the battery!!!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
None of the Purism hardware has been.
It's all a bunch of cheap gimmicks that don't live up to the hype.
I mean for fuck's sake, they used an Intel chip with ME in their Purism laptop.
AND it took them what, two or three years to get Coreboot on it to replace the AMI Bios it came with stock because, as it turned out after pitching otherwise, it couldn't run libreboot on it because Intel ME, as had been known for a few years by that time, wasn't libre, and any device requiring it would never be supported by Libreboot, short of Intel providing a signing key for 3rd parties to develop their own Intel ME firmware images.
The fact that slashdot still posts these slashvertisements for Purism products is personally offensive to me, especially without documenting these facts in the editorial.
If you want a *NIX 'phone, get an iPhone...
Either you're sarcastic, or you're trolling hard. iPhones are the exact opposite of open SW or HW.
At least with most Android phones, you can unlock them, sideload apps, or even install a different OS.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
You didn't list CDMA2000. In many rural parts of the United States, only Verizon's CDMA2000 signal is usable, if unixisc's comment is to be believed.