Librem 5 Development Boards Won't Be Shipping Now Until At Least August

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Librem 5 Development Boards Won't Be Shipping Now Until At Least August

Purism has offered a status update on their software/hardware efforts around the Librem 5 smart-phone they have been working on that is security-minded, open-source, and that they plan to begin shipping in January of 2019...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Librem-5-July-16-Update

[cybertraveler]

I'd love to see them hit their target, but I would be so surprised to see the finished product in January. I'd even be surprised if they shipped by January 2020. My guess is the first phones will be sent out in the second half of 2020.

[pracedru]

Epiphany doesn't support WebRTC yet :|
I hope they get that soon. I was hoping to port a html5 based game to the platform... Maybe i can install firefox then ...
Or maybe i can use websockets.

[Vistaus]

Epiphany doesn't support WebRTC yet :|
I hope they get that soon.

Doesn't look like it as the current git master (i.e. what will become Epiphany 3.30 in the fall), still doesn't have support for WebRTC.

[Guest]

As a full time developer, I think that If that was just a software project, like writing a new production ready mobile Wayland compositor, I'd say that they won't be able to keep the January 2019 deadline. When you think that they're also trying to developer hardware at the same time, I'd say even January 2020 is not realistic at this point.

[Serafean]

I still think they're idiots for not going with the half-finished plasma mobile, and instead half baking their own stuff...
The gnome stack was nowhere near ready for this usecase.

[johanb]

Huh, they actually seem to make progress faster than I had expected.

Still though I am quite sceptical about the January 2019 release unless they cut corners during QA, but I'm sure it will be released during 2019.

The x86 image under QEMU looks like fun to test out.

[starshipeleven]

I'd love to see them hit their target, but I would be so surprised to see the finished product in January. I'd even be surprised if they shipped by January 2020. My guess is the first phones will be sent out in the second half of 2020.

I would be surprised to see a decent product ship at all.

[starshipeleven]

As a full time developer, I think that If that was just a software project, like writing a new production ready mobile Wayland compositor, I'd say that they won't be able to keep the January 2019 deadline. When you think that they're also trying to developer hardware at the same time, I'd say even January 2020 is not realistic at this point.

well, hardware development and software development aren't done by the same people, at least

[L_A_G]

well, hardware development and software development aren't done by the same people, at least

Technically no, but they're not exactly isolated from each other either. Getting a mainline kernel to not only boot on a brand new i.MX8 board, but also run well and support most of the hardware features is going to take quite a lot of software developer time to get done. Getting a kernel to boot is one thing, getting to the point of having a device ready for everyday use is quite another.