Since last year in tracking Librem 5 had been said that this was scheduled to be released in the month of January 2019, as had been published by Purism in the middle of the previous year.
However an update was recently made on the progress of the project and there is something new since we will have to wait until the third quarter of the current year since there was a "small adjustment" of the date of shipment of the device to third parties who have already placed the order as specified by the company in a tweet.
Actually, the announced period of the third quarter of the current year is maintained with the second postponement of the launch of Librem 5.
Already two postponements after the official release date of January 2019.
What's going on?
El Librem 5 is built around the i.MX 8M system on a chip. According to the explanations of the company managers, It is this piece of the puzzle that has caused problems.
Nicole Faerber had given explanations on this subject.
The reason is there is a bug in the SoC causing extreme battery drain. If we were to deliver the phone with this error, the phone's battery would be empty in about an hour. This is not the first impression we want to make!
The deferrals are therefore the consequence of the search for alternatives together with NXP that delivers the system on a chip.
The company explains that it has analyzed in particular the i.MX 8M Mini (a more efficient alternative from an energy point of view, but less available in options), but that an update to the i.MX 8M software package from NXP (current February 2019) fixed battery drain and overheating issues.
Naturally, the company takes time to conduct additional hardware testing and build a large software ecosystem, hence the latest postponement.
The development kit (the circuit board with all the connectors) is available at a price of $ 399 while the smartphone itself is available upfront for $ 599.
General characteristics of Librem5
One The main areas of work in the Librem 5 platform is the adaptation of a decentralized and encrypted call protocol.
These developments are carried out in partnership with a company called Matrix. Librem 5 is also the promise of end-to-end encrypted SMS. Purism also announced that the smartphone would have preconfigured VPN services.
As well device source code is expected to be released after release to allow users to modify it whenever they want or to develop new services and applications for the smartphone.
Librem 5 will only run free and open source components from PureOS, its operating system derived from the well-known Debian distribution.
In this regard, it should be noted that the user interface to which users will be entitled to launch that is based on the GNOME Shell, but KDE has also announced a partnership with Purism, so it will also feature mobile plasma
The specifications of the development kits already allowed to have an idea of what the device will have inside it.
In its latest update, the company published a more or less exhaustive list of device specifications.
The characteristics that they revealed are the following:
- screen: 5.5 to 5.7 inches
- quad-core iMX8M processor
- Storage: 32GB eMMC internal memory
- Wireless: 802.11abgn 2.4 Ghz / 5GHz + Bluetooth 4
- Gemalto PLS8 3G / 4G Baseband Modem with Simple Simulator on Replaceable M.2 Board
- GPS receiver: TESEO LIF3 multiconstellations
- smart cards in 2FF format
- kill switches: 3 - WiFi, cell phone, microphone / cameras (all 3 will disable GPS)
- external storage: microSD storage extension
- 9-axis accelerometer IMU (gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer)
- front camera: to be determined
- rear camera: to be determined
- vibrator: yes
- USB C connector dedicated to charging, USB client function, USB host function, AC power
- Battery replaceable by user
- speakers: at least one
It seems then that Pine64's phone can get ahead of them.
It would not be bad if you made us comparisons