Originally Posted by Feathers McGraw

When did it stop being such a chode? Looks much better now, they must have done some "redesign"

Edit: also, that comparison chart says that pureos "Separates CPU from Cellular Baseband" whereas iOS and Android don't... but that's a hardware feature?!

Originally Posted by MartinK

Well, it can mean a lot of things. AFAIK most current smarpthones have an application CPU where the "normal" OS lives (Sailfish OS/Android/iOS/etc.) and a baseband with its own CPU that runs some totally proprietary RTOS no one really knows much about and which handles all the communication with the cellular network (calling, SMS, data, etc.).

These these CPUs generally communicate with some sort of IPC - for example if the user uses the phone app to start a call, the application CPU tells the baseband CPU to initiate it.

How tightly coupled these two CPUs are can make quite a difference, as you can generally tell what the application CPU is running while the baseband CPU is basically running an unauditable binary blob sitting on an always online wireless connection. IIRC in some cases it even starts first during boot and/or can manipulate content of the main memory without the application CPU knowing about it. Fun and games!

For that reason the Neo 900 project went the way of having a separate baseband module that communicates with the application CPU via clearly defined and easily to audit channel & which can be robustly disabled (by turning it's power supply off).

So it could be the Librem Phone projects wants to do the same thing as Neo 900 (fully separate baseband module). Or they just rephrase the status quo (individual application/baseband CPUs with unclear separation) in a positive way - and I would not discount that given that the whole project seems to be a bit marketing heavy and fact light.

Unlike some other smartphones do, Neo900 won't share system RAM with the modem and system CPU will always have full control over the microphone signal sent to the modem. You can think of it as a USB dongle connected to the PC, with you in full control over the drivers, with a virtual LED to show any modem activity

Originally Posted by wicket

I wouldn't advertise it as a feature at all. Separating the modem from the SoC doesn't guarantee anything. They claim that the Librem 5 is the phone that "focuses on security by design and privacy protection by default" but in reality the Neo900, with its sandboxed modem design, would be by far the better option in this category. There's so much to like about the Librem 5 but their false claims are annoying and don't inspire me with any confidence that they are competent enough to deliver.

Originally Posted by wicket

They claim that the Librem 5 is the phone that "focuses on security by design and privacy protection by default" but in reality the Neo900, with its sandboxed modem design, would be by far the better option in this category.

Originally Posted by Venemo

I think the Librem 5 will employ the same idea as the Neo900

Originally Posted by Zeta

Do you have details on the librem5 implementation to back those claims ?
I didn't find much on this, except that the iMx6/8 doesn't exist with integrated baseband, so it will by design be separated. I don't think the memory bus of the iMx6/8 can be shared (in the idea that there are 2 chips reading/writing on the same RAM), so it would need its own memory. At this point, we are close to the Neo900 design, and the attack surface reduced a lot compared to standard phones.
The remaining things not clear is if they went with a hardware way to monitor and power down the baseband, and how the audio input is connected to it ?

Originally Posted by wicket

The baseband is a big proprietary black box. We have no idea what goes on inside of it. If privacy was my top concern, I'd feel much safer with a device that has a sandboxed baseband than one that doesn't.