Purism's Librem 5 phone starts shipping – a fully open GNU / Linux phone

Purism, the maker of a range of notebook computers designed for Linux, now provides a smartphone designed for Linux. The company announced this week that the Librem 5 smartphone would now be shipped to the first contributors to the $ 699 publicly funded smartphone project.

The Librem 5 does not look like anything else on the market. Not only is it one of the only smartphones on Earth not to come with Android, a fork of Android or iOS. Purism's commitment to a 100% open software, without binary blobs, imposes severe restrictions on the hardware that it can use. The Android core could be open source, but it has always been designed for wide adoption, with provisions allowing manufacturers to include as much proprietary code as they wish. Purism's request to open everything means that most major component manufacturers were out of the question.

Perhaps because of limited material options, the internal construction of Librem 5 is absolutely wild. While today's smartphones are mostly just a motherboard incorporating all the components, the Librem 5 actually has a pair of M.2 slots that host standard LTE and Wi-Fi standard cards for connectivity, like what you would find in an old laptop. The M.2 takes seem huge over the small phone motherboard, but you can probably replace or upgrade the cards if you wish.

The Librem 5 data sheet contains information about unknown companies, who are the only ones who want to share their code for an open source smartphone. Everything is powered by a SoC NXP: a Quad i.MX 8M 1.5 GHz. This chip is composed of four Cortex A53 cores built on a 28 nm process. If you are looking for an equivalent of Qualcomm, you will have to scroll down to the bottom of Qualcomm's product list to find the Qualcomm 215 (not even the Snapdragon brand) 215, a Cortex A53 chip quad-core at 1.3 GHz also built a process of 28 nm.

In other words, almost all the phones you buy today will have a more powerful and energy-efficient processor than the Librem 5: even the $ 160 Android phones now ship eight-core SoCs based on more energy efficient manufacturing processes. This $ 700 price that Purism asks for (more than a OnePlus 7 Pro!) Is the price you pay for a niche smartphone with none of the economies of scale you get with normal smartphone components.

The I.MX 8M is not a SoC intended to live in a smartphone. NXP's "target applications" for i.MX 8 list only the "Automotive" and "Industrial" uses. And of course, the SoC shown in the images of Purism is much larger than the usual smartphone packaging – it seems like it would be something that would be more comfortable on a laptop motherboard.

The absence of considerations on smartphones also means that there are not as many features built into the SoC as usual, resulting in all of the following additional parts. Cellular connectivity is provided by the separate M.2 LTE card, listed on the Purism website as a "Gemalto PLS8 3G / 4G Modem" (prototype images, however, show a BroadMobi BM818). In fact, Purism could not find an open provider for the cellular modem. The best he could do was to isolate it from the rest of the system in an M.2 location.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth require another separate Redpine Signal card, which supports 802.11 frequencies from 2.4GHz / 5GHz and Bluetooth 4. GPS is also a separate chip – the Teseo LIV3F GNSS – which is soldered to the motherboard. On normal smartphones, flash storage is mounted above the SoC in a "package on package" configuration.

But that will not work with the industrial-grade SoC of Librem 5. So this is another chip that has to find a place on the motherboard. The plethora of extra chips and laptop type parts does not bode well for a good energy consumption of the device. The size of this phone is not clear either. Purism does not list the dimensions.

At 3500mAh, the battery is small. But it is at least "replaceable by the user". It's hard to know if "user-replaceable" means "with a screwdriver" or simply jumping from behind for an exchange at mid-day, but Purism points out that the battery is "not soldered" "and" easy to repair "sounds more like the screwdriver option. . Other features include a 5.7-inch 1440 × 720 (282 PPI) IPS LCD, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of eMMC storage, a 13MP rear camera and an 8MP front camera. There is of course a 3.5mm headphone jack, a MicroSD port and a USB-C port. The sound comes from the earpiece and it seems to be the only speaker on the phone. Other standard smartphones, such as a vibration motor and a 9-axis accelerometer, were successful.

The Librem 5 will not offer you equipment at the cutting edge of technology at a great price. This is not the goal, however. The fact is that you buy a Linux phone, with privacy and open source at the forefront of design. Hardware override switches for the camera, microphone, Wi-Fi / Bluetooth connections, and baseband are located on the side of the phone, ensuring that no I / O will turn on unless you want. The operating system is the Free Software Foundation approved by PureOS, a Linux distribution which, in this case, has been reworked with a mobile user interface. Purism says that it will provide updates for the "lifespan" of the device, which would be a stark contrast to the two years of updates that you get with an Android phone.

PureOS is a Linux distribution based on Debian and Librem 5, you will be able to switch between mobile versions of Gnome and KDE environments. If PureOS interests you, the Purism YouTube page is worth choosing. Dozens of short videos show that, yes, this phone really works under Linux. These same videos show the developer kit running tasks such as the APT package manager via a terminal, a desktop version of Solitaire, Emacs, the Gnome Disk Utility, DOSBox, Apache Web Server, and so on. If it works on your desktop Linux computer, it will probably work on the Librem 5, albeit with a non-touch user interface. The Librem 5 can even be connected to a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse and you can run all these Linux applications with the usual input tools.

For this first version of the phone, Purism admits that it still has a lot to do in terms of basic functionality for smartphones. The website states "On the first delivery of the Librem 5 in 2019, it will offer the essentials: phone functionality, email, messaging, voice, camera, [and] navigation. The set of features will expand after delivery and over time to a larger number of free software applications. Your user experience will improve as we progressively add the frequently requested applications and features (such as calendar, notes, calculator, PDF viewer, etc.) while keeping in the background. spirit the performances. "

The oddest thing about launching Librem 5 is that the units will come out in "iterative" batches with various adjustment and finishing issues. The first outgoing batch now calls "Aspen" and will have a "loose fit", a "variable alignment" and "uncompleted switch switches". The batch "Birch" should be delivered at the end of October with a revision of the table, a "tighter fit" and a "better alignment". December's "Chestnut" version will add hooded switches, while January's "Dogwood" will see unspecified "refinements". "Evergreen", scheduled for the second quarter of 2020, sounds like the final version of this phone. This will be the first version with a "molded case" manufactured in series. All other models will have an "individually milled case". A "Fir" batch is already planned for the fourth quarter of 2020, which includes a "new generation 14nm processor" and a "mechanical design: version 2" upgraded.

Pre-order customers will be able to choose how they want to spend their $ 700: spend it now and get a beta version of the hardware, or wait for a more refined version. It's a strange way to act, but it's life in the wild west that involves building a smartphone outside of the normal smartphone building ecosystem.

Selling a smartphone is a dead end, and we have seen dozens of businesses try and fail over the years. Purism did not just survive long enough to ship a product; he survived in probably the most difficult way possible, by building a non-Android phone with the request that all hardware components use an open code. To do this so far is an incredible achievement.

Listing image of Purism