The Librem 5 is designed for longevity with software updates for life, but part of longevity is also being able to repair a device outside of warranty. We plan to stock replacement parts in our shop in case you need to replace your modem, camera, or even the main PCB.

Disassembling your Librem 5 may risk damaging it. Any damage from disassembly is not covered in your warranty. If your Librem 5 is under warranty, please contact support first before you attempt this process.

As outlined in the above video, this blog will go over the steps to take apart the Librem 5. You’ll need a screwdriver; the included sim card tool and something like a pick or spudger.

Make sure to power down PureOS.

Pull off the back cover.

Remove the battery.

Remove 3 screws holding the modem cover. These are shorter than the rest of the screws, so keep them separate.

Remove the sim card tray.

If you have a smart card installed, remove it now.

Disconnect the antennas and remove the modems.

Remove 8 screws holding the back frame on.

There are friction clips around the outside; a guitar pick slid around the outside edge will free these.

Carefully pull the antenna cables from the plastic frame. Pulling too hard will disconnect them from the PCB.

Remove the 2 screws holding down the center frame.

Unplug the main camera and remove the screw hidden by FPC.

The Center frame can be pried out now. There are 2 friction clips at the top left and right of the frame. Use a spudger if you have one.

Remove PCB screws. The 3 at the top connect the antennas, so do not forget to put them back on reassembly.

Liftoff the microphone cover; otherwise, it will fall off, and you may lose it.

Gently pull the HKS alignment up and out.

Remove the 3 HKS switches.

Unplug the Power/Volume FPC.

When removing the PCB be careful of the spring clip against the frame. That is part of the GNSS antenna, so you will not have GPS if it breaks off.

Lift the PCB out until you can see the Display and USB-C FPC cables.

There is a cover over the proximity sensor that is easy to lose; put it in a safe place. If you re-assemble without this cover, the proximity sensor triggers automatically, and it will need to be disabled.

Carefully disconnect the USB C and Display FPC cables.

After unplugging the last two FPC cables, you can altogether remove the Librem 5 PCB.

Putting the Librem 5 back together is just a matter of doing the steps in reverse. If the thermal paste looks good, you can begin by reattaching the PCB to the FPC cables and adding back the proximity sensor cover.

While most people would never need to take their phone apart, and many phones make it almost impossible, if you (or a technician) ever do need to repair a Librem 5 down the road, the Librem 5 has you covered. It is a phone designed for longevity with a battery, modem and WiFi card that are easily user-replaceable and with the remaining components also replaceable with a bit more effort.

The post Disassemble Librem 5 appeared first on Purism .

I talked at length in my article Investing in Real Convergence about my decades-long wish to have a single computer I could carry with me that had all of my files, ran all of my favorite programs, and that I could use as a mobile computer, laptop, or desktop. This past week I have finally realized that dream.

I put away my personal Librem 13v1 and tested out whether I could replace it with a Librem 5, USB-C hub, and Nexdock 2 laptop dock. I also spent a couple hours most work days trying it out for work as well (including writing this article from the Librem 5). In this article I will talk about my setup, experiences and impressions from the past week.

The Setup

First let’s talk about the hardware involved.

Librem 5 docked to a Nexdock 2 using a Baseus USB-C hub, running Tootle, Lollypop, and Firefox

The first thing that is necessary for this setup besides the Librem 5 itself is a laptop dock. From the outside, a laptop dock looks just like a regular laptop, but it is really only a shell with a display, keyboard, mouse, internal battery, and a few ports on the side. A laptop dock has no CPU, RAM, storage or networking of its own and instead is designed to act like an all-in-one monitor, keyboard and mouse that you can connect to a phone. The phone then extends onto the display and you can run your phone’s applications on the larger screen and take advantage of the physical keyboard and mouse while the dock charges your phone.

Because the Librem 5 is designed to have Real Convergence , it runs the same PureOS applications as Librem laptops. All of its applications were simply adapted to work well on the smaller display. This means when you connect the Librem 5 to a laptop dock or monitor, you don’t just get phone apps blown up two times their size, you get the same desktop PureOS applications as on Librem laptops.

On laptop docks like the recent Nexdock Touch, you can connect the Librem 5 directly to the dock with a USB-C cable. In the case of the older Nexdock 2, the support isn’t completed yet so I used the foolproof method they provide for other computers like Raspberry Pis–a HDMI port and USB-C port–only in my case I connected them to a Baseus-branded USB-C hub that is well-supported by the Librem 5.

This hub provided the extra benefit that it kept the Librem 5 upright, which was particularly important to me since I actually use my laptop on my lap. To make this work with the dock I simply attached the underside of the hub to the underside of the laptop dock with a small metal bar and some removable 3M tape like you’d use to mount pictures to a wall.

Using Convergence Mode

To use the Librem 5 like a laptop, I just dock it into the USB hub and press the power button on the laptop dock. The Librem 5 detects the keyboard, mouse and display and automatically enters “convergence mode” which extends the desktop to the new display and changes the windows so that they have close buttons on them and aren’t automatically maximized, so they can be more easily moved between desktops.

Once in convergence mode you can drag applications over to the larger screen with a mouse, however there are also already a number of useful key bindings using the “Super” key (the key between the left Fn and Alt keys) that make convergence mode very keyboard friendly:

• Super + (Left|Right): Tile the focused window to the left or right side of the active screen
• Super + Shift + (Left|Right): Move the focused window to the left or right display
• Super + (Up|Down): Maximize or unmaximize the focused window
• Super + a: Open the App Launcher, where you can type in the name of the application to launch, or select it with arrow keys
• Super + s: Open the App Switcher (similar to hitting the bottom section of the touchscreen on the phone). This allows you to switch between running applications using the arrow keys

While in convergence mode, the dock is keeping the phone charged. I found the Nexdock 2 could run for about two to three hours of steady use unplugged while powering its own display, the hub, and charging the Librem 5. It lasted longer if I closed the display when I wasn’t using it. Since the laptop dock is powered via its own USB-C port you could extend this time with a large battery bank if you didn’t have access to an outlet. Since I normally use my laptop from the same place every day, I tend to leave it plugged in anyway.

When I’m done using the Librem 5 like a laptop, I just remove it from the hub and it automatically leaves convergence mode. All of the running applications move back to the phone screen and resize and maximize to fit. The laptop dock automatically powers itself down.

My Experience

I don’t do video editing or other heavy tasks on my laptop and for the most part my needs are pretty simple: web browsing, chatting, email, writing, listening to audio and watching video. In many ways even before this experiment my Librem 5 had already replaced my personal laptop. It had already become the primary computer I used for podcasts and videos (using gPodder and VLC), as well as for social media and light web browsing. That said, I still found myself opening my laptop in the past whenever I needed to type more than a few sentences in chat, an email, or a document. I also found it a bit more convenient to do heavier web browsing (like when researching something across multiple tabs) on a larger display.

Given my relatively simple use case for my personal laptop, I had high hopes that the Librem 5 could replace it and the Librem 5 didn’t disappoint . In fact, what I found was that the addition of a laptop dock made the functions I had already moved over to the Librem 5 even more useful. With a large screen, I could more easily multitask, such as chat in one window while a video was playing in VLC tiled to the side of the large screen. The addition of a physical keyboard also made chat, email, and overall writing much more convenient.

I found that I preferred the multi-monitor setup that convergence mode defaults to and use both screens at the same time. I leave certain applications like my social media applications or gPodder on the phone screen. Then terminals, email, web browsers, chat applications, and video playback would be on the laptop screen with windows tiled either to the left or right-hand side.

Since the phone is close to my left hand, I found I use the phone touch screen to interact with applications there instead of the mouse. It’s convenient to reach over and scroll through new social media posts on the phone screen instead of moving the mouse over. The fact that the Nexdock touchpad defaults to multi-finger scroll that moves in the opposite direction of the Librem 13 touchpad took a lot of getting used to.

I tend to be keyboard-centric on my regular laptop and this is no different on this setup. I made heavy use of the existing keybindings along with alt-tab to switch between and manage windows. After a short amount of time I got used to hitting Super-a, typing the name of an application, and hitting Enter, then hitting Super-Shift-Right or Left depending on which screen I wanted it on. I find the keyboard to have good tactile feedback and while it’s no Model M keyboard (but sigh , what is?) it’s pleasant to type on and better than some island keyboards I’ve tried.

My Impressions

The Librem 5 can definitely replace my personal laptop and I’ve already transferred any remaining files from my laptop over to it, powered down my laptop, and put it away. My laptop has a faster CPU and more RAM, so I expected when I used the Librem 5 like a laptop I might more readily see any performance differences it might have compared to using it like a phone.

I have to say, though, that this Librem 5 surprised me in how well in performs, in particular how well it works when multi-tasking between applications. Web browsing works surprisingly well, and although I do typically keep Firefox in “mobile mode” so I get lighter weight websites designed for a mobile browser, I actually prefer that mode on the larger screen as it often results in cleaner, simpler web pages.

While it’s still early days for phosh acting as a full desktop shell, it already works quite well in that mode. While it’s not as full featured as the default GNOME shell on the desktop, many of the basic important features are already there (since they are already there when in phone mode) and work as you might expect on the larger screen. As more of us use the Librem 5 in convergence mode now, we are seeing rapid advances for the desktop use case.

My hacky USB hub mount works surprisingly well and is strong enough to hold up the weight of the phone while the laptop dock is on my lap, but I also make a point not to put too much extra pressure on it, just in case. While I’ve seen other mounting options that attach a phone to the screen, I find I like having the phone’s touchscreen within a closer reach.

One area that’s a bit less convenient is the extra step of having to dock the Librem 5, open the laptop dock lid, and power it on to switch to “laptop mode” compared to just opening the lid of a suspended laptop. It’s a minor inconvenience though, since I just use the Librem 5 in “phone mode” for quick tasks anyway–if I’m breaking out the laptop it’s for a longer session. For people who would use the phone in “desktop mode” connected to a monitor and keyboard/mouse, it wouldn’t be any less convenient than docking their laptop into a docking station.

Using the Librem 5 for Work

Something that surprised me even more was how well the Librem 5 performed to replace my work laptop. My work use case is a bit more complicated than my personal one, mostly due to the security requirements. Otherwise for the most part my primary work tasks involve email, chat, and web-based tools, along with some writing and light development work from time to time.

I should note that my work laptop is a Librem 13v4 with twice the RAM of my personal laptop because I make heavy use of Qubes and its compartmentation features on my work laptop to provide me extra security. I separate chat, web browsing, email, and other functions into separate VMs that can’t directly talk to each other. I also make heavy use of disposable VMs whenever I have to open a potentially risky document or website. Because of those extra compartmentation features Qubes provides, I don’t know that the Librem 5 could replace my work laptop, yet, but wow is it close .

Now that the OpenPGP smart card reader is supported , I copied my Purism GPG subkeys over to a new smart card and migrated my email settings over to the Librem 5 along with my password manager database for work. I also set up a new compartmentalized web browser with its own profile and settings that I used only for work.

Email works just like it did on my work laptop. Web browsing and web tools also work reasonably well. Chat is probably the main area that, today at least, still needs a bit of work to replace my work laptop, due to the fact that Matrix with e2ee support is still under heavy development. I’m actually trying out an experimental branch of Chatty that contains support for encrypted Matrix chat, but it’s not quite ready to replace a traditional client.

My conclusion for work is that the Librem 5 as it is today would at least be able to replace the need to take my work laptop with me when traveling. Fully replacing my work laptop would probably need to wait until we make further advancements in flatpak sandboxing using bubblewrap, so I have some of the protections I’ve gotten used to in Qubes that give me extra peace of mind.

Welcome to the Future

Using a phone that has real convergence like the Librem 5 is a complete game changer. It feels like I’m getting a sneak preview into the future of personal computing. In many ways it’s hard to explain what it’s like, you kind of have to see it yourself to understand why this is so groundbreaking. Having all of the same desktop applications and all of my files with me in my pocket, and having those same running applications morph to a larger screen automatically, changes how you think about phones and their potential.

Calling the Librem 5 a phone doesn’t do it service. It’s really a mobile computer, a desktop in your pocket. Using it like a laptop or desktop computer really opens your eyes to all of the possibilities, and underscores to me all of the things I’ve been missing with other phones.

The post My First Week of Librem 5 Convergence appeared first on Purism .

When you find yourself low on power, it’s helpful to know how long it takes to charge your device. This video will go over the expected charge time of the Librem 5.

As shown in the video, you can get to 80% in about 2 hours and 12 minutes and 100% in just over 4 hours.

A full charge takes about 4 hours and gives you a run time of about 13 hours with the screen and wifi off but data-enabled over 4G. This mobile configuration is the perfect mode to put your phone in a while you’re out and about. You’ll still get phone calls, texts, and your general-purpose computer is available at a moment’s notice.

If you’re in a hurry, just over 2 hours of charging can get you to 80% yielding around 10.5 hours runtime while configured for mobile.

For now, charging is capped at 1.6 amps. Enabling faster and higher amperage charging is being worked on now that mass-production batteries can handle more current; once completed, you can expect your Librem 5 to charge even faster.

The post Charging the Librem 5 appeared first on Purism .

Following up on our report for Linux 5.9 and 5.10 , this summarizes the progress on mainline support for the Librem 5 phone and its development kit during the 5.11 development cycle.

Librem 5 and Devkit updates

In order to maintain support for the devkit and the phone, we continuously update the mainline default configuration:

• arm64: defconfig: Enable more Librem 5 hardware

Power management

The mainline solution to dynamically scale internal bus frequencies relies on the interconnect (and devfreq) framework. We found a small piece that has been missing for imx8mq:

• interconnect: imx8mq: Use icc_sync_state

Librem 5 LCD panel

The display panel driver saw some minor updates:

• dt-binding: display: Require two resets on mantix panel
• drm/panel: mantix: Fix panel reset
• drm/panel: mantix: Don’t dereference NULL mode

Librem 5 fuel gauge

With the experience with using the phone for the last couple of months, we could improve the battery fuel gauge driver a bit:

• power: supply: max17042_battery: Export charge termination current property
• power: supply: max17042_battery: Take r_sns value into account in charge_counter
• power: supply: max17042_battery: Improve accuracy of current_now and current_avg readings
• power: supply: max17042_battery: Fix current_avg,now hiding with no current sense
• power: supply: bq25890: Use the correct range for IILIM register

Librem 5 USB Type-C and PD controller

Our work to make sure we can properly charge the phone and use its Type-C feature like Displayport resulted in the following additions during this development period:

• usb: typec: tps6598x: Export some power supply properties
• usb: typec: tps6598x: Select USB_ROLE_SWITCH and REGMAP_I2C

Other additions and fixes

Equally important are the changes to a regulator device that allow one to turn off the GPU regulator, to the mxsfb display driver and to the etnaviv GPU driver. Read the commit messages for more details.

• regulator: bd718x7: Add enable times
• drm: mxsfb: Silence -EPROBE_DEFER while waiting for bridge
• drm/etnaviv: Add lockdep annotations for context lock

Code review

During these rounds, we contributed 6 Reviewed-by: or Tested-by: tags to patches by other authors. We would also like to thank everybody who reviewed our patches and helped us support the hardware in mainline Linux.

Sources

Have a look at our Linux tree to see what is currently being worked on and tested (or help if you feel like joining the fun).

The post Purism and Linux 5.11 appeared first on Purism .

Access to the smart card reader on the Librem 5 is something we at Purism have been looking forward to for a long time. That day is finally here; those who have their Librem 5 can follow this guide to set up access to the smart card. Orders shipping soon will come with the card reader already setup.

If you need to set up your smart card reader, these are the steps to enable it:

sudo apt install stm32flash git

Download the scripts:

git clone https://source.puri.sm/angus.ainslie/ttxs-firmware

Change working directory to our newly downloaded folder.

cd ttxs-firmware

Upgrade the smart card reader firmware:

./scripts/stm_reflash.sh

And set up the smart card:

./scripts/smartcard_setup.sh

A more detailed version of these steps can be found here . OpenPGP cards are available for purchase in our shop .

The post OpenPGP in Your Pocket appeared first on Purism .

We have gotten feedback from a number of Librem 5 customers that they would appreciate more frequent email updates about the status of the Librem 5 project. We are a big believer in “opt-in” for services, but while we have tended to err on the side of not spamming people, and instead allow people a number of opt-in options to get news (as we document in this post ), we’ve decided to turn the dial one tick toward more frequent email updates for people who only want Librem 5 news and don’t want to subscribe to our newsletter. This will take the form of a monthly email sent to any pre-orders who have not yet received their phone that recaps the news from the previous month.

Shipping Estimates

January has been a very busy month on the Librem 5 front. Each week we continue to ship out more Librem 5s to backers and we now have a good sense of the average number of phones we can ship out each week. This is important because that feeds back into our “Just In Time” manufacturing approach that ensures we always make slightly more Librem 5s than we can ship in a time period. Shipping more means making more, and it turns out we have been able to ship more than we initially predicted. We are also scaling the team up even further not just to address the order backlog, but also the steadily increasing demand we see for Librem 5s each day, so future manufacturing runs will be much larger and we will be able to process through orders more quickly.

With these shipping throughput numbers in hand, we had hoped in January to be able to predict when every pre-order would ship and calculate when we will hit shipping parity–that date when all pre-orders are fulfilled and a new order is shipped within our standard 10-business-day time frame. Due to a number of factors we explain in this longer blog post , including a potential CPU supply chain issue, we could only generate shipping estimates for some pre-orders.

The good news is that we were able to calculate shipping estimates for almost everyone who was part of the initial crowdfunding campaign (which accounts for a large number of orders) and have sent emails out to all pending orders with order dates up to October 20, 2017 with the very last of those orders estimated to be shipped in May. Orders after that date will need to wait a bit longer for estimates until we have ensured we have secured CPU supply to fulfill them.

As we secure CPUs and feel confident in shipping estimates we will send further shipping updates out, and given the higher density of orders during the crowdfunding campaign compared to afterward, we expect new shipping estimates to get much further into the order backlog in terms of pre-order date.

Librem 5 Blog Posts

We have created a video and blog post series for the Librem 5 called “App Showcase.” Each article and video in this series aims to highlight a single app that is currently available in the Librem 5 PureOS Store. So if you are curious to see how apps run on the Librem 5 and how to use them, check out the following App Showcase videos we published in January:

• Weather
• Sound Recorder
• Dictionary
• WhatIP

In addition to the App Showcase series, we also published a blog post and video to document how to reflash the Librem 5 , and published articles on our kernel work in the 5.8 series as well as the 5.9 and 5.10 series .

What’s Next

In February we will continue to ship out more Librem 5s each week, and hope at some point within the month to also calculate and send more shipping estimates. We have also recently gotten the OpenPGP smart card reader working and are finishing up work so that it can be enabled by default on future shipments. For existing customers we are also finishing up a video and article on how to enable and use the smart card reader on existing Librem 5 phones. We are also working on an update to our past battery life articles that will document the current state of power improvements on the Librem 5.

The post Librem 5 News Summary: January 2021 appeared first on Purism .

If you need to find something on your network, get your IP easily, or test your system’s ports WhatIP has you covered.

While the Librem 5 can act as a phone in the above video it was acting more like a server. The host Librem 5 was running Dictionary services , an SSH server , Apache2 web services , Server Lab Inventory , and Samba . Because PureOS relies on the solid core of Debian , I was able to copy-paste from Debian howto tutorials with little to no changes.

With great power comes great responsibility

It’s important to follow proper setup procedures when hosting anything on your persons. As you move around wifi networks, so do your services. Just like hosting in the cloud, you have to take responsibility to properly set up and update your software. Strong passwords are a must in case you want to attach to an untrusted network like a coffee shop or airport.

Summary

From finding your local printer’s IP, all the way to verifying self-hosted services are properly running, WhatIP has you covered.

The post App Showcase: WhatIP appeared first on Purism .

Reflashing the Librem 5 is the best way to remove your personal data and put the phone back into factory defaults.

Warning, this procedure will completely erase everything on the device! Make a backup beforehand!

The Librem 5 gets reflashed from a separate 64-bit x86 computer running PureOS (or booted from the live PureOS disk).

Reflashing from that computer is as simple as installing the needed packages:

sudo apt install git python3-jenkins python3-tqdm uuu

Downloading the flashing scripts:

git clone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/librem5-devkit-tools.git

And flashing the phone for Evergreen (mass-produced version)

cd librem5-devkit-tools
sudo ./scripts/librem5-flash-image

Detailed directions including how to flash the older Dogwood/Chestnut/Birch versions can be found here ; while the above procedure is demonstrated in this video:

If you’re not running PureOS or a recent version of Debian or Ubuntu, you may need to alter the install step for your distribution. If all else fails, you can build a live USB of PureOS , boot it, and flash the Librem 5 from there.

The post Reflashing the Librem 5 appeared first on Purism .

Among the easily installable and ad-free apps within the PureOS store is Dictionary. This is a simple tool that lets you search through numerous online or local dictionaries and translation sources.

After install, the defaults are perfectly suitable for most users to look up data online:

Offline search:

For those that want to become invisible; you can air gap your Librem 5 from all networks while still using self-hosted services like translation. To install locally hosted dictionary services run the following commands:

sudo apt install dictd 

sudo apt install dict-gcide 

sudo systemctl start dictd

sudo systemctl enable dictd

If you’d like a few extra dictionaries to look up data in:

sudo apt install dict-freedict-eng-*

You’ll also want to point the Dictionary app at your new service:

Becoming a Server:

Not only can the Librem 5 locally host and use Dictionary services, but it can share the service with your network. To do this, edit /etc/dictd/dictd.conf to accept non-local connections.

Lookup what you need to, and keep your data in your control.

The post App Spotlight: Dictionary appeared first on Purism .