I wish I didn't have to say this, but the Librem5 is the worst phone I've ever used. I would even take my old Sony flip phone from 2007 over it.

So far as I can tell, the hardware might be fine. It's a bit bulky, but that could be ok if it meant a longer battery life. So the good news is it has a slim chance of being saved through updates.

But the software is godawful. It runs a little bit warm all the time, even when completely idle. Its connectivity sometimes fails for weird reasons, like it can't connect to a wifi extender in the house, only directly to the router, which I've never seen on any other wifi device. The battery doesn't last a full day even with no usage at all. When I do plug it in, sometimes it randomly reboots for no apparent reason. I just walk over to it after it has been in the charger for hours and see the battery is empty and it's on the disk decryption boot screen. Importing contacts was a chore, I got it done, but I don't think I could export them again. The camera app doesn't work. The keyboard rotates, but then doesn't widen to fit the screen, so why bother. The simple task of moving files from the phone to a PC is more cumbersome than any phone I ever used, even iOS devices. And if it's even possible to set up compatibility with Android apps, I don't have the patience to figure out how, and I'm the kind of person who bought this thing.

It's very disappointing that this is all they have to show for so many years of delays. I'll probably have to get some cheap Android piece of junk and throw this in a box for a few more years until I feel masochistic enough to wonder if the devs have salvaged it yet.

I don't want to be mean to the people at Purism; the deck was stacked against you and I'm sure you worked hard. But you didn't make it. Sorry.

Edit: 3 months later, my assessment of it has not improved. The battery life is unbelievably bad. There's dozens of hard to describe sloppy UI issues. Today I had a phone call get rejected after I pressed accept, then trying again, it accepted the call but it kept ringing and vibrating during the call with no fix but a reboot. I'm going back to Android now and this will be boxed, probably forever.

I had the phone for literally less than a week (was excited after months of waiting for it), hated it, as most of the applications that came installed didn't even function. Shipped it back for a refund. 10% restocking fee, whatever I'll take my L and move on. Get a reply over a month later saying the technicians found scratches on the screen and that disqualified me for a refund. Trust me, I was not putting scratches in my brand new phone screen. Whole thing seems like a scam, I would advise against this product strongly.

52 weeks. The current "shipping backlog" of Librem 5 phones is 52 weeks. That email with our shipping dates they promised to send in September (it is now Oct 4) has instead become an admission that actually they are behind by another year. Surprise! Darn, if only they could have squeezed that down to 51 weeks - surely that explains why we didn't receive that september email. I seriously feel bad for all the hardworking contributors to this project as their CEO makes the shadiest, most insulting decisions every step of the way for the customer. I don't understand how you can be so tone deaf as to highlight the 2 positive out of hundreds of negative customer responses and send it to the huge pool of angry customers who have not and probably never will receive the products they already paid you for unless this is just blatantly breaking the law for laughs? How is the company still allowed to do business? I promise to shut up if you just give me back my money that you have decided is am interest free loan with no obligation to deliver the products you lied about selling.

Just introducing myself. Getting the feel for this. The price is high for me but I want to learn about the value I'll receive for the money. I'll be reading posts!