Purism Now Shipping Librem 5 Linux-Based Smartphone Development Kit

Flagship smartphones have now reached, and in some cases gone over, the $1,000 mark — which is expensive no matter how you look at it. After a year or less, those phones become obsolete, surpassed with the latest hardware, and if we’re lucky, we will retain support for them for another year before updates become scarce. There’s also the security concern of being hacked and tracked through the myriad of apps that grab your personal information that they claim is for ‘analytics.’

San Francisco-based freedom-focused computer manufacturer Purism is banking on putting complete control into your hands, both hardware and software, with the Librem 5 smartphone, which they tout as being “the only smartphone you can truly own.”

The current specs for the Librem 5 include an NXP i.MX 8M quad-core Cortex-A53 processor (3Gb of LPDDR4 RAM, 16Gb of eMMC Flash, additional storage unknown), a 5.7-inch LCD touchscreen display (18:9 720 X 1440), micro SD slot, mini HDMI, microphone/speaker/3.5mm jack, and a USB-C port. Network connectivity entails M.2 low-power Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, a SIM7100E cellular base-band card (3G/4G networks plus SIM card slot), and an Ethernet port for data transfer and debugging.

The smartphone also sports support for GNSS/GPS, along with a host of sensors — -a 9-axis inertial IMU sensor, ambient light sensor, and proximity sensor. Power is supplied via USB-C or 18650 Li-poly rechargeable battery through the Librem 5 Dev Kit carrier board. The smartphone rolls with PureOS, a free and open-source GNU/Linux system based on Debian’s Testing repository.

Purism is currently offering the Librem 5 in kit form for developers looking to provide feedback to the Purism engineering team, and the community at large before the end product is shipped in April of next year. Early-bird pre-orders are available now through January 7 for $599, and $699 after that date.