I always wondered why Purism seemed quite secretive around the status of Librem 5 HW. And it still continues, with the Librem 5's supposed shipping a month ago - I was interested in people's experiences so I regularly check youtube's newest videos. Noone has Librem 5 yet, if I judge by that. Yet if they were actually shipping people would have phones for three weeks already.<p>Seems like they've bitten off quite a chunk of really hard work, that they can't finish by themselves, which this article confirms.<p>It would be nice if they opened up a little about issues they're having. All they're doing by hiding things is helping spread rumors. For example this one:<p><a href="https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/latest-phoronix-articles/1133747-an-interview-with-zlatan-todoric-open-source-developer-former-purism-cto?p=1133868#post1133868" rel="nofollow">https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/latest-phoron...</a><p>It doesn't help, that the rumors seem plausible. From the disassembly video, it was clear that the SoC has no cooling whatsoever, outside of the thermal connection to the mainboard. Power management is always an issue with mobile devices, so that doesn't surprise me either.
I'm a bit "ehhh" on someone publishing an interview to trash one of the very small handful of companies trying to upend the Android nightmare. There's a lot of value in multiple manufacturers working together to support this fledgling ecosystem of a true Linux phone.<p>Though without an assurance I can get it to work on my carrier, I'm hesitant to drop Librem 5 level money on my first true Linux phone... meanwhile, the PinePhone sits comfortably in "buy as a second phone for now" territory, and I'm anxiously waiting to hit the buy button on that one.
> <i>The phone</i> […] <i>will have proprietary blobs</i><p>That statement is hard to reconcile with the fact that the phone is allegedly compliant with, and is being submitted for, RYF certification¹, which it would never qualify for if the phone has binary blobs.<p>1. “<i>And we are compliant with, and submitting for, the “Respects Your Freedom” certification from the Free Software Foundation.</i>” — <a href="https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-shipping-announcement/" rel="nofollow">https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-shipping-announcement/</a>
> Cloudflare (which was blocking Tor and users were rightly unhappy with this because saying you're a privacy oriented company and blocking Tor access was just not right)<p><i>Huge</i> loss of credibility right there.<p>Me-as-CEO: We're shipping "only dozen or couple of hundred orders per month" and hemorraging money. We must prioritize.<p>CTO: Well you currently have no backups whatsoever.<p>Me-as-CEO: That certainly sounds like a priority. What do you propose?<p>CTO: Let's move away from one of the largest CDN in the U.S. to accommodate a potential Tor userbase<p>Me-as-CEO: Well, it's been great working with you.