Purism’s Librem 5 smartphone hits crowdfunding target

Purism has met its crowdfunding goal for its Librem 5 smartphone, with an emphasis on privacy and security. The organization was able to raise 1.5 million dollars, about 1.3 million euros. Purism wants to use the last two weeks to achieve stretch goals.

The organization writes that production of the phone can start sooner, now that the necessary money has been received earlier than planned. That means hardware production will begin as soon as possible and a devkit will be on the way, Purism said. The release is scheduled for January 2019. The software also has yet to be developed, which must be done in an open manner. As a result, developers must be able to actively contribute to the code and, according to the organization, it is not about ‘read-only open source’.

The smartphone runs on PureOS by default, but is also able to use other Linux distributions, for example. PureOS is developed by the Purism community and includes software such as the Tor browser, Privacy Badger and other privacy tools. Communication is provided with end-to-end encryption using Matrix. In September, it was announced that the Librem 5 will include support for KDE’s Plasma Mobile gui.

The phone itself has hardware switches with which the camera, microphone, baseband, WiFi and Bluetooth can be switched off if desired. The specs are so far based on a 5 “screen, 3GB lpddr3 memory and 32GB emmc storage. In addition, an i.MX 6 or 8 processor must be present in addition to a gpu from Vivante.

Preliminary design of the phone