Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
I daily drive the Librem 5 and am typing this reply from the phone. The honest feedback (and tl;dr) is that it is a good device for those who value privacy over convenience.
The hardware kill switches are a nice touch, especially on the camera/microphone. I don’t have moments of suspicion that if I have a conversation about a toaster that I will suddenly start seeing ads about toasters everywhere.
It’s nice not to be bombarded with notifications to review their app, accept TOS that my data will be used to sell me stuff, irremovable bloatware, and some of the other annoyances we got used to experiencing.
As a basic communications device it works fine. Phone calls (VoLTE) and SMS text messaging works, depending if your carrier allows you to BYOD and provides the network info. SMS can sometimes get “clogged” in the modem when there is a very active group text; but for me usually resetting the modem using the hardware killswitch, a 15 second process, fixes it.
Of course the downside is a more limited app ecosystem compared to Android. You will have to search for convergent apps and flatpaks, but I have found everything I need through Flathub.
The camera does not take influencer quality photos, but if you need to take a quick picture of something and share it, then it works.
Battery life is definitely something to be desired, but I can make it through a work day with automatic suspend doing some light web browsing and sending some messages throughout the day.
Since I mostly use a computer for web browsing, emails, and word processing, I dock my phone and use it in desktop mode. It’s not blazing fast, but for my purposes it is more than fine. Its actually a cool feeling to sit at my desk, start typing an email, listening to music, and then undocking my phone and continue the email on the go from the same device.
It certainly shows the potential for mobile Linux for sure. There’s a project https://postmarketos.org where you can install their mobile Linux OS on Android phones if you want to give it a try on a spare phone or something. The wiki lists what phones the OS can be installed on and what hardware features are working for each device.
When the phone is not set to suspend, and mostly idle with a couple of apps running, and some occasional web browsing, its about 4 hours. Under similar conditions using suspend (meaning it will keep the modem powered and wake up the rest of the device wen receiving phone calls and SMS) then I can get through a 9 hour workday and have about 40% battery left.
I have been daily driving the phone for a couple of years so I’m sure the battery has degraded some, but I don’t know how much difference I would get with a new one. It can be easily replaced, so I may do that in the future.
Yup, same, I would love to switch to a Linux/FOSS phone, but it’s all crap specs. Like this librem 5 phone. 3GB RAM and 32GB storage‽ LMAO what year is it, 2014‽
For now I’m pretty much just stuck on Pixel, one of the few remaining brands that reliably (surprisingly) let you unlock the BL. It’s even worse now since I’ve had a taste of the foldy phone and I don’t think I want to go back and that’ll probably take 15 years before ever coming to a Linux/FOSS phone, considering where they’re at now.
They’ve missed the boat entirely for me and I’m doubtful they’ll ever catch up :/
This! Exactly this! But I guess all the off the shelf parts need proprietary driver which only are available for android. No parts manufacturers will do the extra work to make them work for Linux. Only of explicit ordered that way, but then it is custom and expensive. I fear, not many will buy an expensive midrange phone, with all the trade-off linux has for most people.
The software has improved a lot since I got the phone in 2022 (I pre ordered it in 2017)
I would be willing to use it as a daily driver if it had better battery life
As the other poster said, the camera is kind of crap, but I don’t take many pictures. At least you don’t have to manually set the exposure/balance/focus to take a picture now, though
The updater has been a little flakey and I’ve just fallen back to update via command line frequently
Fairly thick, but it feels quite sturdy to me. SD card slot and headphone jack are great. Charging speed is kind of slow
Anyone on this forum has direct experience with their products ? That can gave some honest feedback about the phone
I daily drive the Librem 5 and am typing this reply from the phone. The honest feedback (and tl;dr) is that it is a good device for those who value privacy over convenience.
The hardware kill switches are a nice touch, especially on the camera/microphone. I don’t have moments of suspicion that if I have a conversation about a toaster that I will suddenly start seeing ads about toasters everywhere.
It’s nice not to be bombarded with notifications to review their app, accept TOS that my data will be used to sell me stuff, irremovable bloatware, and some of the other annoyances we got used to experiencing.
As a basic communications device it works fine. Phone calls (VoLTE) and SMS text messaging works, depending if your carrier allows you to BYOD and provides the network info. SMS can sometimes get “clogged” in the modem when there is a very active group text; but for me usually resetting the modem using the hardware killswitch, a 15 second process, fixes it.
Of course the downside is a more limited app ecosystem compared to Android. You will have to search for convergent apps and flatpaks, but I have found everything I need through Flathub.
The camera does not take influencer quality photos, but if you need to take a quick picture of something and share it, then it works.
Battery life is definitely something to be desired, but I can make it through a work day with automatic suspend doing some light web browsing and sending some messages throughout the day.
Since I mostly use a computer for web browsing, emails, and word processing, I dock my phone and use it in desktop mode. It’s not blazing fast, but for my purposes it is more than fine. Its actually a cool feeling to sit at my desk, start typing an email, listening to music, and then undocking my phone and continue the email on the go from the same device.
Thank you ! This is a great review, I don’t know if I can live with the poor battery life, but looks like it’s a promising product from your review
It certainly shows the potential for mobile Linux for sure. There’s a project https://postmarketos.org where you can install their mobile Linux OS on Android phones if you want to give it a try on a spare phone or something. The wiki lists what phones the OS can be installed on and what hardware features are working for each device.
What kind of battery life do you actually get? I can barely scrape a fully day out of my phone right now so anything similar to that is fine by me!
When the phone is not set to suspend, and mostly idle with a couple of apps running, and some occasional web browsing, its about 4 hours. Under similar conditions using suspend (meaning it will keep the modem powered and wake up the rest of the device wen receiving phone calls and SMS) then I can get through a 9 hour workday and have about 40% battery left.
I have been daily driving the phone for a couple of years so I’m sure the battery has degraded some, but I don’t know how much difference I would get with a new one. It can be easily replaced, so I may do that in the future.
Lol I guess this sarcastic /s
That’s actually a selling feature.
The phone is extremely low end hardware and not pleasant to use.
They’ve done great work investing in the software but its still young and incomplete.
I would buy a new one if it had significantly more powerful hardware.
That’s sad, I want a phone that runs real Linux but the options I found are either outdated hardware or alpha quality.
Yup, same, I would love to switch to a Linux/FOSS phone, but it’s all crap specs. Like this librem 5 phone. 3GB RAM and 32GB storage‽ LMAO what year is it, 2014‽
For now I’m pretty much just stuck on Pixel, one of the few remaining brands that reliably (surprisingly) let you unlock the BL. It’s even worse now since I’ve had a taste of the foldy phone and I don’t think I want to go back and that’ll probably take 15 years before ever coming to a Linux/FOSS phone, considering where they’re at now.
They’ve missed the boat entirely for me and I’m doubtful they’ll ever catch up :/
This! Exactly this! But I guess all the off the shelf parts need proprietary driver which only are available for android. No parts manufacturers will do the extra work to make them work for Linux. Only of explicit ordered that way, but then it is custom and expensive. I fear, not many will buy an expensive midrange phone, with all the trade-off linux has for most people.
They just don’t want to. Now they can stop releasing security patches and users would buy new hardware.
lol.
Just search for Purism customer support experiences.
I’m honestly amazed there hasn’t been a fraud, or some other consumer protection type criminal investigation.
All that baggage, and their hardware is also laughably outdated and overpriced.
Which is unfortunate, because the concept is amazing and clearly there’s a sizable market for it.
Here is an example of just ONE flavor of Purism customer experiences:
There are other variations that you can read about on various forums.
deleted by creator
Bought a $2,000 laptop. Broke after about 10 days of light use.
The software has improved a lot since I got the phone in 2022 (I pre ordered it in 2017)
I would be willing to use it as a daily driver if it had better battery life
As the other poster said, the camera is kind of crap, but I don’t take many pictures. At least you don’t have to manually set the exposure/balance/focus to take a picture now, though
The updater has been a little flakey and I’ve just fallen back to update via command line frequently
Fairly thick, but it feels quite sturdy to me. SD card slot and headphone jack are great. Charging speed is kind of slow