Purism does not appear to have shipped any Librem 5 despite promise belofte
Almost a month after the announcement that the first Purism Librem 5 devices would be shipped, no one seems to have the smartphone yet. That’s according to posts in the Purism subreddit.
By the end of September, Purism said it had begun deliveries of the very first Librem 5 phones. In a shipping timeline, the company states that between September 24 and October 22, the entire first shipment of phones would leave the company. However, the Purism fan subreddit has no sign of a shipping confirmation, let alone a smartphone.
Purism itself does not provide any further clarification on its current status. The company has posted a photo gallery with all kinds of images of the phone in mid-October, including photos of the phone ‘in the wild’, but that turns out to be a device in the hands of the marketing head. In that post, it also claims that “shipping of the first batch has started”.
In an interview with Phoronix, former CTO Zlatan Todoric opens up about what was going on at Purism. He describes the workplace as ‘highly stressful’ and speaks of ‘a toxic atmosphere’. He also predicts that the Librem 5 will still have proprietary blobs when it actually launches, despite the promise that everything on the phone will be open source.
The Purism Librem 5 runs on PureOS, a fork of Linux distribution Debian. According to Purism, this operating system makes it possible to run desktop software on the smartphone. Furthermore, PureOS includes the Tor browser and privacy tools such as Privacy Badger. All communications are encrypted with Matrix end-to-end.
There are three switches on the housing to disable hardware: there is a switch to turn off WiFi and Bluetooth, the second switch closes the modem and the third switch turns off the cameras and microphone. When these three switches are all deployed to turn off this hardware, the compass and sensors for satellite navigation, proximity and ambient light will also be turned off. The Librem 5 is the company’s first smartphone, but Purism has released several laptops in recent years.