Purism's Librem 5 Smartphone Crosses $200k In Funding

In two weeks now Purism has managed to raise over $200,000 USD towards their dream of building a privacy/free-software-minded smartphone running their own custom Linux-based software stack. But they remain a long ways to go from their $1.5 MM goal.

They have 46 days left in their campaign and crossed the $200k milestone today but their pacing has slowed down. It was just about three days after the campaign's launch they hit the $100k milestone while it took another two days until hitting $150k and then another one week in going from $150k to $200k.

Like most crowdfunding campaigns, most of the money comes in during the beginning and then at the very end of the campaigns. With the Librem 5 even if they are able to jump to raising $100k per week, which is rather unrealistic given current figures, they will still end up hundreds of thousands of dollars short of their $1.5 million goal at the end of this period. If they do manage to hit their goal in the time necessary, it will be interesting to see how they plan to come up with the phone's hardware and software in a usable manner and to the standards advertised in just about one year considering the past efforts by Canonical/Ubuntu, Firefox OS, Jolla Sailfish, OpenMoko, etc.

The $201,397 as of writing has come in part from 15 people ordering the $299 developer kits, 300 ordering the $599 smartphone, two ordering the $1399 package that includes a phone and a non-specified 24-inch monitor, and six backing at $1699 for the Librem 5 phone with an unspecified 30-inch monitor. Those interested in learning more about this campaign can visit Puri.sm.