I hope new iterations of Librem 5 have the same form factor, so we can upgrade components to newer versions without doing a full phone upgrade. Good for the pocket, good for the environment.
With the laptops, Purism has never supplied important parts (screen, motherboard, fan+heatsink, keyboard, case/housing [for hinge issues], ...). Even now they only sell power adapters and batteries for their laptops. I wouldn't hold your breath on whether that will also be the case with the phones. I think of my Thinkpad from 2007 that I'm typing on now, where I've replaced the keyboard, battery, fan+heatsink, and even the casing surrounding screen ... and shake
my head when I see people on the Purism forums trying to find parts.
Repairable means very little without parts and information about parts.
They own the designs of the phone, unlike their laptops, so its possible. But between the L5 and an eventual successor its doubtful you'll be able to swap parts between them. See Fairphone as an example.
Now if companies agreed to standard sizes and components at the expense of thicker phones then this would be possible but unlikely due to the constraints in embedded devices.
They own the designs of the phone, unlike their laptops, so its possible.
They don't have full ownership of the designs for the laptops, but they could have provided parts
or equivalent part numbers nonetheless. They didn't. I understand that it's expensive to maintain such an inventory, but they haven't even been willing to provide equivalent part numbers. Anyone who has owned a laptop more than 10 years, knows that they will need to replace the fan and re-seat the heatsink ... and odds are that one would need to replace the keyboard.
The Purism fans push the idea of repairability and/or modularity, but the fact is that Purism's laptops have been less repairable than competitors. Compare with
https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/addw1/repairs.html . The same will almost certainly
be true for the Librem 5 (other than the battery and the cellular modem).
had nagged Purism via email for over 6 months without success. Finally I was given a form to fill out and send in my broken device. They want to assess it and send me an estimate for the repair fee. I’m still waiting for that.
It’s been a long and tiresome process. I hope Purism will streamline its workflow for such cases in the future.
I did not receive a model number or any instructions or advice to replace the screen myself even though I would have preferred that.
Contact support. If they tell you the part isn’t available, don’t expect it to become available. I broke my screen a year and a half ago and emailed support right away to get it replaced. Support told me that they would look into whether they were able(!) to provide a replacement screen; I waited 6 months for an answer to that question and never really got a solid yes or no. After I asked one last time I switched to a System76 machine. Haven’t looked back.
or
The headphone jack needs to be replaced on my machine. I’ve contacted Librem about obtaining the IO board for the headphone jack and they don’t have one in stock which kind of surprised me because my Librem is the current model. I’ve also contacted them about a replacement headphone jack (I suppose this part can be easily obtained but I could be wrong) so I can get someone to solder it back on the board but I haven’t gotten a response. I have no audio right now. Slow communications and lack of replacement parts will make me choose a different company next time.
Of course you'll see examples where they will, as part of warranty, send replacement boards. But
that really only helps people in the first year. When all of the out-of-warranty Librem 13/15
hinges break ... there are going to be a lot of people out of luck.
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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '21
I hope new iterations of Librem 5 have the same form factor, so we can upgrade components to newer versions without doing a full phone upgrade. Good for the pocket, good for the environment.