Purism Shares Latest Librem 5 Phone Hardware Plans, Software Progress

Purism has shared another routine status update on their software and hardware efforts around the Librem 5 smartphone efforts.

As covered recently, they have continued work on their calls and messaging apps improvements to their Phosh Wayland shell, virtual keyboard work, security research, and more.

From the kernel perspective, they now have Ethernet working for their developer kit as well as the secondary SD card port but not yet SDIO. They say there is still a long road ahead on the graphics front especially but also the bring-up in the other hardware.

They shared their latest planned hardware specifications albeit it is still tentative and subject to change as they have yet to finalize on their hardware manufacturer:

SoM: EmCraft’s i.MX 8M System-On-Module
Display: an LCD display that is 5.7″ at 720×1440 pixels
Modem: SIMCom 7100A (USA version/bands) or SIMCom 7100E (EU version/bands) – depends on where you live
WiFi+BT module: Redpine RS9116 M.2 module. It supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands for WiFi, no 802.11AC
Camera sensor: the CMOS image sensor chip is the Omnivision OV5640

The i.MX8M comes in as planned. Coming in as a disappointment though is the 5.7-inch display having a resolution of just 720x1440 pixels. Additionally, no 802.11ac WiFi support.

So far they still seem to be trying for a January 2019 launch of the Librem 5 but it's looking increasingly less likely given their kernel bring-up stage, the developer kits not having yet shipped, etc. More details on the current state can be found via this blog post.