Comparing Linux Phones: Librem 5 and Pinephone 

It’s actually really sad to see how little excitement the tech community is giving hardware kill switches.

This is exactly the kind of breakdown between these products that people really need to see. Thank you Rob.

Your channel is so underrated, you are great man, thank you

i am poor, so obviously Pinephone from my side.

Rob, that was an excellent review. Keep up the great work, sir.

I've been looking for a phone like this that's not Android/iPhone...and you hit it right on the nail. Thanks!!

Rob thank you so much for covering this stuff. I work on Linux at work and this excites me.

Apple profit: Cost of device $200-300 The rest is profit. Keeping iDiots on the yearly upgrade treadmill - Priceless.

Lot of info, watched all the way through 3 times and still overwhelmed. Thank you for all your hard work. Gods blessings.

I'm so excited for GNU/Linux phones. I wish Canonical would have kept going with the Ubuntu phone. Then we'd have another cool option. No, I was never a fan of Unity Desktop or Touch, but a little variety never killed anything. I'm looking forward to abandoning Google's piss poor excuse for a modified Linux platform.

An awesome comparison review! I would say the best of what I"ve seen!

Wow my man gave out details on the specs and everything. You have my Sub...like yo style brotha!

Amazing video Rob, thank you! I'm a little heartbroken that no one else in the tech sphere (even other FOSS enthusiasts) aren't as excited as I am to see these projects succeed. I'm happy to see many are making videos like this though, spreading the info and talking about why this is such an important event!

Great content; of which is very appreciative knowledge wise, e.z. to follow, & your mic. skills are impeccable, lol... you rock ! T.Y.

I was missing a Linux phone which is worth buying for a long time. Now, it is only a question of time until I buy a Pinephone. And it is only a question of time, until I don t use my Android phone anymore. Great review from a great reviewer.

I think that the primary objective of the two organisations is different. Purism wanted to make a privacy-focused phone and have used Linux to get there. Pine64 wanted to make a Linux phone for the community to play with. It's a hobby device and the price reflect that. Pine64 also has a smartwatch coming out soon~ish for $20! They make laptops that sell for $200. They are not in it for massive profit, these are for the community.

This sort of info is needed for the public to start finally use the RIGHT toys. Thank you Rob for this!

Dude, thanks for posting.

Thanks for going into such a deep dive on this.

I think the Librem5 is more expensive because of economies of scale. They used parts that are lower run because they didn't compromise at all on the FOSS. Whereas the PinePhone has some proprietary binaries because they chose the parts that other major phone companies were using. It's also chunkier for the sake of FOSS. For example the radio on the Librem5 goes into a good old m2 slot like a laptop.

This is a terrific review and gave me a better understanding of phone security as well as recent linux phone advancements. Thanks for putting this together!

Look forward to more content on these phones, especially the Librem 5.

Very good rundown, thanks

Your videos are excellent RB and so many of us are thankful for your service and superb knowledge.

Great content mate, keep fighting the good fight

Ni Hao Rob , nice channel subbed !!! Stay blessed

THANK YOU FOR A GREAT COMPARISON!

You were detailed and structured and fillled in some if the gaps and gave insightful comments, such as mentioning security vulnerabilities like, Man in the middle, sim card jacking, sting ray, wifi triangulation etc. You mention the practical implications aswell. Keep going. Thank you.

Mr. Braxman, I genuinely than you, for introducing me to "LBRY"

i enjoy your videos like a sunday sermon. My best new year wishes to you and happy Linux-ing to everybody.

What network will the Librem 5 work on?

Have my eyes on the Librem5 since the very beginning, signed up for their news letter. Cat wait to get my hands on one. It is very pricy though.

Thank you for your talented review. It's really impressive

I can't believe there isn't insane amounts of popular demand for privacy minded phones they really can't even seem to make them fast enough for such a small group of tech heads. Until then I'll just have to carry around my literal brick; at least I know it's not spying on me and if a situation gets really sticky I can just chuck it in the direction danger is coming from.

Thanks. Great video!

11:51 "pinephone is compatible with samsung j7 3500mAh battery" , can you give an example of these batteries ? maybe post a URL to an image for me to see it and try by my self to find it in amazon or ebay? Thank you!

Hi Rob, very instructive video! which you recommend for storing safely crypto, such as monero?

Great video! People everywhere really need to take privacy issues very seriously. Please continue the work and bring2022 updates to these privacy technologies.

Whats the diffrwence with the blackphone2 and the librum5, wich one is better? Wich one should i buy? Correct me if im wrong because i havent seen all your videos, but i cant find u explaining and talking qbout the stealthphones, i would love to hear your comments on those phones, and yeah also qbout the stealth sim cards

this shouldn't be a competition, it should be a collaboration. i really hope for a compatible or even joined app store. dir linux to be a force to be reckoned with at some point compatibility should be as high as possible. hopefully we can avoid the degree of fragmentation we have in the desktop side at least until there are a several phones established with linux

Thanks for the great video, and thanks for everybody who are interested in privacy and security, special thanks to those who keep talking why these are the cornerstone of any free society, and how to best protect these rights.

I must sound like a broken record, but thanks again for all your time and effort in your videos and products. I really need a "Brax" tattoo :)

does the PinePhone work, Out Of The Box ? or are there an OS to be installed, the pine site was down for maint last I looked and cant see much, Looks like it does have an OS installed but you can install other flavors

The best video on these phones thank you for doing this

Pinpoint accuracy in the overview of each and good historical value of where the code came from.

Finally a reason for ditching my Samsung S8.

you're super on it. Love the video.

I'll be adding postmarket OS repos onto the Librem 5

So privacy wise is the Librum 5 better than a de-googled phone?

I understand the importance of hardware kill switches and the work Purism is doing, but the price ratio between the Pinephone and the Librem 5...ouch. It's not big enough of an upgrade in terms of specs to justify the $700 price tag. Don't get me wrong I really want a Librem 5, but they're not making it easy. For that price they really should be offering a bit more in terms of hardware specs.

@Rob the Coretex M4 is an MCU which has real-time processing capabilities (important for talking directly to hardware) and it's very low-power but still runs ARM binaries. So it is used as a platform control chip with duties like hardware bring-up, power management, gathering data from sensors, halting the big cores during sleep, handling and/or steering the interrupts from things like the touch, buttons, and radio controllers, waking the big cores and powering on the display when a call comes in or you raise the phone etc, and the spare cycles can be used for wake word detection if you're into that and it's in the power budget. The Pinephone will also have an MCU for platform control, but probably a much less capable one since they didn't advertise it.

Amazing breakdown! Thank you so much! I think this video secured my decision to switch from Apple to Librem 5

Rob, are there any other distros suitable for mobile besides Ubuntu?

I should be getting the 2nd run of the librem 5 soon.

I'm just happy that the Librem 5 is actually shipping. It's been delayed for a loooong time. I'm debating getting it but I know that battery life and other convenience factors make it less attractive but boy it is nice to have more control over my own device.

Great video thanks

Wow! I subscribed because of the excellent info on privacy and getting away from big tech entirely. I am NOT a techie, but i catch quite a bit of what you are saying. But I have a question about non-technical folks being able to make the move to Linux everything. How steep is the learning curve for non-techies to adopt not only OS, but to phones, etc. ? Are there adequate apps and programs to lose all MS and Google junk?

Thoughts on the XDA pro1 x?

Have you done a review on the Pinephone Pro yet?

I live in Australia, where can I buy the "Linux Librem 5 phone"? Will it work here?

When my Kai OS flip-phone dies in a couple years, I'll be getting a Linux phone. The Librem is a bit rich for my blood though.

I'm very excited about the idea of a Librem 5, and I hope it develops into a more finalized product. Of course that involves people buying their current product, like you did. That's great! They need the support. But it's a bit hard from the point of view of someone with a Snapdragon 835 phone to justify spending MORE than what my SD835 phone cost me on a phone with performance several times smaller. I want the privacy and security of the Linux OS and the cleverly arranged hardware, but I'm turned off by the performance / dollar of the L5. I hope that someday it gets easier to do these things. In the meantime, i've been considering the option of perhaps using an LTE receiver to enable internet for my linux laptop, since that's a device I consider more secure than any Android/Iphone, and simply turning off the LTE receiver when I'm not using it. But i need to think about this more.

Nice overview. I review ARM SBC's and would love to review these. I never used a smart-phone and don't want one. My SBC's do all my computer tasks. From desktop pc with NanoPi M4V2, video editing wit Odroid N2, laptop with the Khadas VIM3. Small handheld with Raspberry Pi2b and Odroid C2. But these phones now look like something I'd want to use. Can't afford them, so don't think I'll get them. But you never know. Thank you or the good info. Greetins.

Purism had better develop a fantastic debian for phones! 2K USD for the US edition? That's an Apple iPhone 13!

hello, mr. rob can either phone be tracked or traced?

2019, Librem 5 $700.- 2022, Librem 5 $1299.- but waitinglist 1 year?! 2022, Librem 5 $2000.- made in USA... Salling today the SAME Libre 5 as 2019 (tech is changing so fast, so this is almost vintage?), and if you as a company still cant fix your problems with delivery the device for the alreay paid for costomers, plus the software stil not running 100% smoothly after 3 years. I personal still should consider to buy because I think they had a great concept, Corona also play a role, and if we want more privacy matter from they or other companys we need to support them for show our back-up to they. BUT, it was not our fault economy shut down, and the intern problems from Librem company... By Raise almost double the price to $1299.- what no one shall buy knowing 1 year for deliver. By Raise almost triple the price to $2000.- Gives me a verry bad taste and walked away to even think about buying a screenprotector from them USA made company... (iPhones made in China, half the world use them..) (next year is 4 x $700,- price?)

Thank you seriously considering giving up my tracker (iphone)... and moving towards linux phones.

Outstanding overview.

Your analogy is patently incorrect. Both iOS and Android have a file system. Access to those file systems are just very restricted, more so on iOS than Android. Nevertheless, to say neither of these operating systems have a file system is just wrong.

Do either of these phones support 5G and / or Wifi 6 ?

Rob what do you think about Tough Mobile 2, GSMK Cryptophone 500 and Blackberry passport? In terms of security I mean, so we dont get track by google

Could either off these phones run Raspberry Pi apps (such as Valve Steam link) just by adding the repo as a PPA, or would those packages be way too optimized for the Pi's specific CPU to run generically on these phones? I think the lacking app ecosystems would be alleviated if they could do that.

The Pinephone seems a better idea, at lower price it will be more interesting in emerging markets. Plus I'm not too inclined for thinkering on a phone which is too expensive

Can you do a video on the ClearUnited phones? Do they do what they say?

I would think some of these companies would be paid to fail. How about some links to these 2 phones? Would be interested in a Librem5. 100% agree the transmission of data is the issue.

been waiting for a working linux phone since i was born.. come on 2020

you can use nfs or smbd on android for file transfers. that's what i use. i have written a guide on it as well.

Regardless of all the privacy issues Google has destroyed everything that made me like Android. Drive Sync, Inbox, AMP pages (I HATE Amp pages), Assistant installed by default, attempting to kill Adblock.....

The Librem 5 will probably have fast charging, because it has the chips for it. The NXP i.MX 8M Quad processor in the Librem 5 supports outputting a 4K display over HDMI and DisplayPort, whereas the Allwinner A64 in the PinePhone is limited to 1080p displays, but HDMI requires a binary blob, so the Librem 5 will probably have to add a DSI -> DisplayPort Alt Mode adapter chip, so we don't know if we will get 4k video output. The Allwinner A64 is limited to 3GB RAM and a 5MP camera, whereas the i.MX 8M can use up to 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM and its CSI interface can deal with a lot more camera/video input. The hardware kill switches in the PinePhone will be DIP switches which can only be accessed by pealing off the plastic back, so not designed for daily use. The PinePhone will have a 6 Pogo pins for adding mods to the back of the phone, so someone might make a mod to add good hardware kill switches. The Librem 5 is 15 mm thick, compared to 9.2 mm thick in the PinePhone. We are paying for 2.5 years of development with the Librem 5 and a free hardware license, whereas we are only paying for 1 year of development and non-free schematics with the PinePhone. The Librem 5 will have two extra Cortex-M4 cores. One will be used during bootup to load the proprietary code to train the DDR PHY. The other will be used to run the smart card reader. For more details, see: forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-phones/6827

What's with the random N near the beginning of the video? 0:40

Thanks for the details Rob. I'm really disappointed that the hardware switches to disable sensors/antennas won't be readily accessible on the PinePhone. That might be a showstopper for me.

That sounds good. I'm concerned about security, but don't know much about cellphones. Do I need a new number? Is there a certain provider that I need? Lots of questions.

Awesome Video

what do you think of the Fairphone 3?

If Google is the front end of NSA, then this is a very promising future 🙏 Love the music @ end of video thanks ❤️

Can we have a "Note" linux phone? Or can Samsung Note (and other brands) have an option of having linux installed instead of android?

Pine phone all the way $150 vs $800 for almost the same specs is a no brainer

What Linux distro runs fastest on PinePhone BETA? Arch BareBone? postmarketOS Phosh? Nemo Mobile or..............?

1:35 iOS does have a File System. It's called Apple File System (APFL). What you mean is a File Browser.

Thank you Rob, for your great review, I really appreciate it. You say in the review, the batteries of the Pinephone are standard batteries which can be replaced by bigger ones. I found that the Pinephone batteries ars samsung j7 batteries. Unfortunately, I could not find bigger samsung j7 batteries than the standard j7 batteries. Are there any bigger samsung j7 batteries?

I'm sure your a busy person yet I'd like to hear your thoughts on the differences between the Librem 5 and their slightly upgraded Liberty phone. I believe there are less issues with part outsourcing (similar to the Librem 5 USA) and the CPU and storage is a bit better, however for the extra cost it's hard for me to justify being that I'm on a limited budget. That said it sure is compelling and I do love the work and support behind it along with its functionality and construction.

Would be nice to have a real Linux based distro on a handset that has real privacy built in from the ground up and be able to tinker with.

Thank you ROB .I am hoping the Gemini phone will soon ? Come out without android . but I am only hope full. All the best

Surely selling a mass market phone to bring the numbers to the platform is more important

So I have a question if I wanted to buy a phone that is all about privacy like Linux or something I wanna spend 1,000 or less what would be the best?

Thank You

can i get linux on a galaxy S9?

Which device do you use personally, Rob, as a Linux Phone? You mentioned to use an alternative device in your video, but you did not say which device it is.

also, they are not using the reference designs of other phones, this is to be able to include the sec features, also, the phone is modular and that has to be take into consideration, since all that costs money, lot of money to develop it

This guy is AWESOME.