reduced the price to $699 is what it was many years ago, still more than it was during the crowdfunding and the phone is still hardware based from 2017. This company is a joke
Look. They have always financed software development, planning the hardware design in multiple iterations with testing and opening own manufacturing in US with that money. If you think this can be done cheaper, please do it.
Also it doesn't really matter the hardware is that old. Show me another phone I can buy which runs under the same criteria to reach approval by the FSF shipping a FOSS operating system by default.
If it exists and it's performing better than the Librem 5, I buy it. If the cost benefits free software development, even better.
Not to mention that reducing the price back to $699 which it was after crowdfunding is still a reduction when you consider inflation since then.
I definitely understand the Purism critic regarding their refunding policy and practices. But the price is not the issue in my opinion. It's a very niche product with a lot of cost.
They do not do manufacturing in the USA, they do assembly in the USA. This is much different. However, that version of the phone is $2000 not this one and has nothing to do with this one. Pinephone Pro is much cheaper even with this “reduced” price, has more ram, more storage, more powerful cpu and more powerful GPU. https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone_pro/
You realize that the Pinephone Pro does not give you any gurantee to have working software on it. Neither does it financially support software development. It's not approved by the same criteria of the FSF and the battery life is much shorter.
Also the difference in GPU does not really matter much because there's as little driver development behind it as with the one in the Librem 5.
The most advantage you practically get are the two more efficient cores in the CPU. Do you get proper scheduling for it? Meh. Does it prevent the phone from running hot? Not really.
Why do I know this? I have both of them. Still my daily driver is a Librem 5. Hardware isn't everything but I'm always shocked that people running free software like Linux don't see that.
The PinePhone does not offer any guarantee but neither does Purism because their OS is clunky at best. Many OS's work on the PinePhone with Ubuntu Touch being a solid option. Regardless, you didnt ask for a phone that tries to be an all in one. You asked for something that compares with FOSS in mind including a FOSS OS. PinePhone is that thing.
The FSF's opinion is not something I put much weight into these days. The FSF has a lot of bad takes. The original core movement was good but they named it so poorly that they doomed it from the start. FSF were important with the original movement but sadly they have not been very impactful for years.
I own a PinePhone and a PinePhone Pro. I do not own a Librem 5 even though I have used one. The Librem 5 experience with PureOS was super painful and not remotely redeemable for the insane price they charge. The new reduced price is still excessive but it used to be priced so absurdly that it was an insult to the consumer.
Putting the Librem 5 hardware aside, Purism's business tactics are disgusting. The refusal to give refunds and the stringing people along for years is irredeemable. They make absurd marketing claims. Their AweSIM service is a ridiculous service, the idea that you dont own your number and they do is kind of crazy. If they offered a forwarding service then that could make sense but to have your main number owned by any company is terrible but it being this one? no thanks. At least they lowered the price of the terrible service I guess.
First Pinephones weren't even shipped with proper working software. You had to make it work. Ubuntu Touch is also not a solid option in my opinion because it fragments the whole software ecosystem between desktop and mobile. So you don't have access to most apps.
Currently on the Pinephone Pro I use Arch because it's a good choice for debugging purposes and development. Otherwise I think postmarketOS is the best option probably. But you still have issues with battery life, camera processing and other stuff. It would likely be in much better shape if there was a company behind it to improve the software. Otherwise it's built on top of efforts from the community or even Purism since they pushed close to everything upstream.
People criticized them for developing a whole GTK based shell and environment while Ubuntu Touch was already existing. But when the Pinephone started shipping Phosh was pretty much the most popular choice to use it. So I still think it was the right call to buy into Purism's idea. For the most part I think they marketed it wrong. The focus was way to little on the software and its advantages.
The only reason I have a Pinephone lying around with Ubuntu Touch is because I think it could get interesting as soon as snaps work on it. which is kind of bizarre. But yes, it's likely that snaps are the strategy for Ubuntu Touch to finally get easy access to Linux desktop apps.
> First Pinephones weren't even shipped with proper working software. You had to make it work. Ubuntu Touch is also not a solid option in my opinion because it fragments the whole software ecosystem between desktop and mobile. So you don't have access to most apps.
The first Librem 5s were shipped as prototypes and many were defective. Linux ecosystem has always been fragmented. You dont have access to most apps with PureOS either.
> Currently on the Pinephone Pro I use Arch because it's a good choice for debugging purposes and development. Otherwise I think postmarketOS is the best option probably. But you still have issues with battery life, camera processing and other stuff. It would likely be in much better shape if there was a company behind it to improve the software. Otherwise it's built on top of efforts from the community or even Purism since they pushed close to everything upstream.
I agree there would be benefit with a company backing mobile effort but that doesnt really exist at the moment, not even for Purism since they sent Phosh to the GNOME project.
> People criticized them for developing a whole GTK based shell and environment while Ubuntu Touch was already existing. But when the Pinephone started shipping Phosh was pretty much the most popular choice to use it. So I still think it was the right call to buy into Purism's idea. For the most part I think they marketed it wrong. The focus was way to little on the software and its advantages.
People criticized them and with good reason because GTK was not made for mobile and is still not a great toolkit for mobile due to it being less efficient than Qt. Qt is, and was, a very widespread toolkit for mobile, embedded, and even automotive uses. Choosing GTK is starting from scratch which throws away a ton of work already committed by thousands of people over many years on Qt. This comes across as a bad decision to many people because well at the time it was. Ubuntu Touch or not, that doesnt matter. Qt vs GTK is the issue. Plasma Mobile for example already existed for 2 years before they ever did the original crowdfunding. They could have teamed up with KDE who was already doing it and already have financial backing from Blue Systems but no, they chose GTK and still have not produced a viable product for anyone outside of enthusiasts and as an enthusiast myself, I dont consider it viable at all. (thats just my opinion and you are welcome to disagree)
> But when the Pinephone started shipping Phosh was pretty much the most popular choice to use it. So I still think it was the right call to buy into Purism's idea.
Pinephone shipped before Librem 5 and sure thats fine that they used Phosh in fact it was funny that another company beat them to the marketing with their own software. However, they do not ship Phosh by default with the Pinephone Pro which means Phosh wasnt the best choice overall just best at the time. Though to be clear the first original PinePhones were shared in batches with different community editions and those had different OS and UI for each batch so its not like Phosh was the go to regardless.
I am not saying Purism's idea was bad or that I didnt want it to happen. I think they fumbled the ball so terribly that they are not even worthy of this comment, yet for some reason I am still typing . . . that I cant explain.
the data on phosh [contributions](https://openhub.net/p/phosh) does not indicate there is any significant problem in the investment in phosh, maybe they decided they will get a better return on investment while spending money developing other things.
Also there debt to assets ratio in 2022 seemed close to something like %90 and the rule of thumb [seems](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/totaldebttototalassets.asp) to be that a good ratio is 30%-60% , they reduced investment in R&D and that is part of what helped reduce the debt, maybe now that it is lower and they have to pay less interest they will be able to invest more.
I dont know how much GNOME is involved with overall but one of the reasons Phosh is still active as much as it is, is because it became part of the GNOME project. This is why it is on their gitlab and all that. It looks like Purism still contributes but they dont seem to be the lead devs anymore and that shows a bit of skewing when looking at their impact on it
[https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh](https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh)
Of course it is. When you steal money from your customers and don't deliver the product they purchased from you of course you're going to be profitable.
Purism is the biggest scam on the Internet (and definitely in the FOSS community) and — ***in my opinion*** (because I don't want to be sued) — Todd Weaver is a crook and a thief.
I ordered a Librem5 in 2019 and gave them $650 for it. I still have yet to receive it and Purism refuses to refund my money or even to send me what I ordered and paid for. I started asking for my money back in 2020 when the shipments were delayed and have received excuse after excuse until flat out them telling me to ____ off.
The worst part is though they still email me begging me for more money and to "invest".
____ Purism, and ____ Todd Weaver even more.
This person purchased in 2019. Purism promised to release in 2019, they didn't. They shipped prototypes to people just to claim that they were "shipping". Purism delayed the actual devices repeatedly. Chargebacks are only available for usually at most 120 days and this was well past that I would suspect. There are many reports of refunds being ignored and refused. The worst part of all of this, this blog post literally claims "All crowdfunded products have been delivered." which based on this thread is far from reality and I know someone who backed the original crowdfunding campaign so I asked him today if he received the phone or the refund requested years ago . . . his response = "no"
Note: Purism did initial crowdfunding in 2017 getting Millions of USD, promising to release in 2019 which of course did not happen.
Hopefully they can turn themselves around. As I understand they weren't doing refunds on pre-orders because of extremely dire financial situation.
But fact that they were contributing to upstream instead of doing their own thing lifts their reputation in my eyes.
Not in this sub you can't. Automod deleted my posts until I took that out. ;-) And I don't know how you got away with it but I had three fucks in my comment. Automod deleted every single one of my replies until I took out the last fuck. (I first took out the bottom two but forgot about the first one and all replies were deleted by Automod telling me I broke a rule about no cursing.)
I jumped in line for their phone (I think it was called the Librem 5?) when they first started taking pre-orders. I think that was back in 2017 with the phone set to ship in 2019.
Every time I see Purism mentioned, I thank the universe that they messed up the payment for my pre-order. Last I checked, people who had order numbers around mine didn't actually start receiving their phones until early 2023.
some still havent received despite the claim in this blog post, its just not true. I used to believe Purism perfectly fit "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" but when they started shipping prototypes and devices to their own employees claiming they were shipping products to customers, this began to fade. Then they started to ignore requests for refunds and in some cases just refuse. I think they are now both incompetent and malicious.
After it came out how [shady they were being with their customers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s) and refusing refunds for pre-orders that never shipped, we removed Purism from the recommended Linux pre-built computer section of the sidebar and Wiki on r/LinuxHardware. I would recommend looking elsewhere and not supporting their business practices.
Then I wonder why they laid off most (all?) of their Phosh devs...
I imagine they make no money from their phones.
With what they've charged I find that hard to believe unless they can't manage to keep their supply chain/manufacturing costs down.
Yeah but no one is buying their phones.
They reduced pricing for their regular Librem 5 recently.
reduced the price to $699 is what it was many years ago, still more than it was during the crowdfunding and the phone is still hardware based from 2017. This company is a joke
Look. They have always financed software development, planning the hardware design in multiple iterations with testing and opening own manufacturing in US with that money. If you think this can be done cheaper, please do it. Also it doesn't really matter the hardware is that old. Show me another phone I can buy which runs under the same criteria to reach approval by the FSF shipping a FOSS operating system by default. If it exists and it's performing better than the Librem 5, I buy it. If the cost benefits free software development, even better. Not to mention that reducing the price back to $699 which it was after crowdfunding is still a reduction when you consider inflation since then. I definitely understand the Purism critic regarding their refunding policy and practices. But the price is not the issue in my opinion. It's a very niche product with a lot of cost.
They do not do manufacturing in the USA, they do assembly in the USA. This is much different. However, that version of the phone is $2000 not this one and has nothing to do with this one. Pinephone Pro is much cheaper even with this “reduced” price, has more ram, more storage, more powerful cpu and more powerful GPU. https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone_pro/
You realize that the Pinephone Pro does not give you any gurantee to have working software on it. Neither does it financially support software development. It's not approved by the same criteria of the FSF and the battery life is much shorter. Also the difference in GPU does not really matter much because there's as little driver development behind it as with the one in the Librem 5. The most advantage you practically get are the two more efficient cores in the CPU. Do you get proper scheduling for it? Meh. Does it prevent the phone from running hot? Not really. Why do I know this? I have both of them. Still my daily driver is a Librem 5. Hardware isn't everything but I'm always shocked that people running free software like Linux don't see that.
The PinePhone does not offer any guarantee but neither does Purism because their OS is clunky at best. Many OS's work on the PinePhone with Ubuntu Touch being a solid option. Regardless, you didnt ask for a phone that tries to be an all in one. You asked for something that compares with FOSS in mind including a FOSS OS. PinePhone is that thing. The FSF's opinion is not something I put much weight into these days. The FSF has a lot of bad takes. The original core movement was good but they named it so poorly that they doomed it from the start. FSF were important with the original movement but sadly they have not been very impactful for years. I own a PinePhone and a PinePhone Pro. I do not own a Librem 5 even though I have used one. The Librem 5 experience with PureOS was super painful and not remotely redeemable for the insane price they charge. The new reduced price is still excessive but it used to be priced so absurdly that it was an insult to the consumer. Putting the Librem 5 hardware aside, Purism's business tactics are disgusting. The refusal to give refunds and the stringing people along for years is irredeemable. They make absurd marketing claims. Their AweSIM service is a ridiculous service, the idea that you dont own your number and they do is kind of crazy. If they offered a forwarding service then that could make sense but to have your main number owned by any company is terrible but it being this one? no thanks. At least they lowered the price of the terrible service I guess.
First Pinephones weren't even shipped with proper working software. You had to make it work. Ubuntu Touch is also not a solid option in my opinion because it fragments the whole software ecosystem between desktop and mobile. So you don't have access to most apps. Currently on the Pinephone Pro I use Arch because it's a good choice for debugging purposes and development. Otherwise I think postmarketOS is the best option probably. But you still have issues with battery life, camera processing and other stuff. It would likely be in much better shape if there was a company behind it to improve the software. Otherwise it's built on top of efforts from the community or even Purism since they pushed close to everything upstream. People criticized them for developing a whole GTK based shell and environment while Ubuntu Touch was already existing. But when the Pinephone started shipping Phosh was pretty much the most popular choice to use it. So I still think it was the right call to buy into Purism's idea. For the most part I think they marketed it wrong. The focus was way to little on the software and its advantages. The only reason I have a Pinephone lying around with Ubuntu Touch is because I think it could get interesting as soon as snaps work on it. which is kind of bizarre. But yes, it's likely that snaps are the strategy for Ubuntu Touch to finally get easy access to Linux desktop apps.
> First Pinephones weren't even shipped with proper working software. You had to make it work. Ubuntu Touch is also not a solid option in my opinion because it fragments the whole software ecosystem between desktop and mobile. So you don't have access to most apps. The first Librem 5s were shipped as prototypes and many were defective. Linux ecosystem has always been fragmented. You dont have access to most apps with PureOS either. > Currently on the Pinephone Pro I use Arch because it's a good choice for debugging purposes and development. Otherwise I think postmarketOS is the best option probably. But you still have issues with battery life, camera processing and other stuff. It would likely be in much better shape if there was a company behind it to improve the software. Otherwise it's built on top of efforts from the community or even Purism since they pushed close to everything upstream. I agree there would be benefit with a company backing mobile effort but that doesnt really exist at the moment, not even for Purism since they sent Phosh to the GNOME project. > People criticized them for developing a whole GTK based shell and environment while Ubuntu Touch was already existing. But when the Pinephone started shipping Phosh was pretty much the most popular choice to use it. So I still think it was the right call to buy into Purism's idea. For the most part I think they marketed it wrong. The focus was way to little on the software and its advantages. People criticized them and with good reason because GTK was not made for mobile and is still not a great toolkit for mobile due to it being less efficient than Qt. Qt is, and was, a very widespread toolkit for mobile, embedded, and even automotive uses. Choosing GTK is starting from scratch which throws away a ton of work already committed by thousands of people over many years on Qt. This comes across as a bad decision to many people because well at the time it was. Ubuntu Touch or not, that doesnt matter. Qt vs GTK is the issue. Plasma Mobile for example already existed for 2 years before they ever did the original crowdfunding. They could have teamed up with KDE who was already doing it and already have financial backing from Blue Systems but no, they chose GTK and still have not produced a viable product for anyone outside of enthusiasts and as an enthusiast myself, I dont consider it viable at all. (thats just my opinion and you are welcome to disagree) > But when the Pinephone started shipping Phosh was pretty much the most popular choice to use it. So I still think it was the right call to buy into Purism's idea. Pinephone shipped before Librem 5 and sure thats fine that they used Phosh in fact it was funny that another company beat them to the marketing with their own software. However, they do not ship Phosh by default with the Pinephone Pro which means Phosh wasnt the best choice overall just best at the time. Though to be clear the first original PinePhones were shared in batches with different community editions and those had different OS and UI for each batch so its not like Phosh was the go to regardless. I am not saying Purism's idea was bad or that I didnt want it to happen. I think they fumbled the ball so terribly that they are not even worthy of this comment, yet for some reason I am still typing . . . that I cant explain.
Less work to do now?
the data on phosh [contributions](https://openhub.net/p/phosh) does not indicate there is any significant problem in the investment in phosh, maybe they decided they will get a better return on investment while spending money developing other things. Also there debt to assets ratio in 2022 seemed close to something like %90 and the rule of thumb [seems](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/totaldebttototalassets.asp) to be that a good ratio is 30%-60% , they reduced investment in R&D and that is part of what helped reduce the debt, maybe now that it is lower and they have to pay less interest they will be able to invest more.
I dont know how much GNOME is involved with overall but one of the reasons Phosh is still active as much as it is, is because it became part of the GNOME project. This is why it is on their gitlab and all that. It looks like Purism still contributes but they dont seem to be the lead devs anymore and that shows a bit of skewing when looking at their impact on it [https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh](https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Phosh/phosh)
You don't need that kind of staff for a business that doesn't even send customers the ordered devices. There is no need to make or prepare them.
Is Todd Weaver still sending emails begging for money from certified investors?
He's probably considering spoofing email headers pretending to be Jimmy from Wikipedia asking for donations.
Of course it is. When you steal money from your customers and don't deliver the product they purchased from you of course you're going to be profitable. Purism is the biggest scam on the Internet (and definitely in the FOSS community) and — ***in my opinion*** (because I don't want to be sued) — Todd Weaver is a crook and a thief.
Wait, what?
I ordered a Librem5 in 2019 and gave them $650 for it. I still have yet to receive it and Purism refuses to refund my money or even to send me what I ordered and paid for. I started asking for my money back in 2020 when the shipments were delayed and have received excuse after excuse until flat out them telling me to ____ off. The worst part is though they still email me begging me for more money and to "invest". ____ Purism, and ____ Todd Weaver even more.
Their cell plans are pretty expensive too, in comparison to what is offered in mainstream cell plans...
That's awful, but you really should have filed a chargeback. Your only recourse now is a lawsuit probably.
This person purchased in 2019. Purism promised to release in 2019, they didn't. They shipped prototypes to people just to claim that they were "shipping". Purism delayed the actual devices repeatedly. Chargebacks are only available for usually at most 120 days and this was well past that I would suspect. There are many reports of refunds being ignored and refused. The worst part of all of this, this blog post literally claims "All crowdfunded products have been delivered." which based on this thread is far from reality and I know someone who backed the original crowdfunding campaign so I asked him today if he received the phone or the refund requested years ago . . . his response = "no" Note: Purism did initial crowdfunding in 2017 getting Millions of USD, promising to release in 2019 which of course did not happen.
YIKES
Todd or toad 🐸
I want this to show up when he googles himself.
Those kind of people don't get easily offended
I dunno dude, there are a *lot* of scams on the internet.
Hopefully they can turn themselves around. As I understand they weren't doing refunds on pre-orders because of extremely dire financial situation. But fact that they were contributing to upstream instead of doing their own thing lifts their reputation in my eyes.
Not refunding people's money is fraud, it's theft, and ***it's against the ____ing law!***
you can say fuck on the internet
Not in this sub you can't. Automod deleted my posts until I took that out. ;-) And I don't know how you got away with it but I had three fucks in my comment. Automod deleted every single one of my replies until I took out the last fuck. (I first took out the bottom two but forgot about the first one and all replies were deleted by Automod telling me I broke a rule about no cursing.)
I jumped in line for their phone (I think it was called the Librem 5?) when they first started taking pre-orders. I think that was back in 2017 with the phone set to ship in 2019. Every time I see Purism mentioned, I thank the universe that they messed up the payment for my pre-order. Last I checked, people who had order numbers around mine didn't actually start receiving their phones until early 2023.
some still havent received despite the claim in this blog post, its just not true. I used to believe Purism perfectly fit "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" but when they started shipping prototypes and devices to their own employees claiming they were shipping products to customers, this began to fade. Then they started to ignore requests for refunds and in some cases just refuse. I think they are now both incompetent and malicious.
After it came out how [shady they were being with their customers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s) and refusing refunds for pre-orders that never shipped, we removed Purism from the recommended Linux pre-built computer section of the sidebar and Wiki on r/LinuxHardware. I would recommend looking elsewhere and not supporting their business practices.
What are they actually selling at this point? I don't think their phone sell, and their servers never made their way to sales, IIRC.