Purism’s crowdfunding campaign to create a pure Linux smartphone has reached its goal.
The security-conscious US-based Linux laptop vendor has raised the full $1.5 million target it sought. The money will be used to help fund the development and manufacture of a 5-inch privacy-focused smartphone, dubbed the ‘Librem 5’.
And all with two weeks left to spare!
“I believe digital rights should mirror physical rights, our Librem 5 phone will get humanity closer to that goal,” Purism’s CEO Todd Weaver states on the crowdfunding page states.
The Librem 5 will be the “world’s first ever IP-native mobile handset” and feature end-to-end encrypted decentralized communications via Matrix. The CPU will be separate from the baseband, and users will have hardware kill switches for camera, microphone, Wi-Fi and bluetooth, and cellular connectivity.
What Next?
Although Purism has reached its overall goal the campaign doesn’t end yet — anyone can continue to back the project until the campaign ends on October 22.
Purism will, I’m sure, already be thinking about how best to help its burgeoning development community flesh out the software needed for the device, and start to narrow down on the exact components that will power it.
The following rough technical outline gives us a good feel for the intended Librem 5 specs:
- 5-inch touchscreen
- i.MX6 or i.MX8 CPU (“very likely” to be i.MX8 based)
- Vivante GPU (Etnaviv free software accelerated driver)
- Multi-function port
- Separate mobile baseband
- 3GB LPDDR3 RAM
- 32GB eMMC storage
- MicroSD slot
- Front and rear cameras
- Courage jack (aka 3.5mm headphone)
The $599 handset hopes to slip in to backers pockets at the start of 2019.
Thanks Martijn