Purism Shows Off First Shots Of The Librem 5 Smartphone's PCB

The Librem 5 smartphone is still advertised as shipping in Q3'2019 though it looks next to impossible with just one month left in the quarter. Purism CTO Nicole Faerber presented at CCC's Camp 2019 and the phone wasn't demoed but pictures of the Librem 5 PCB were on display.

With not even having any hardware on display for this CCC event even as a static display but just pictures in a slide deck of the PCB design, it's a further let-down for this Linux smartphone that's already been delayed and is currently said to be shipping this quarter.

Here are the PCB pictures of the Librem 5 smartphone per their presentation, not their earlier developer kit:


The M.2 slot will be used for a cellular card, their modem is still bound to using binary blobs but punted off to a separate physical card. Though this M.2 slot design will likely make for a bulkier/thicker phone than most of today's smartphones.

The actual Librem 5 smartphone wasn't shown, but this was the rendering displayed as for what they "will do." Given the current state of the software and the finalized design not even being shown off yet, I'll be quite surprised if this 720x1440 / 3GB / quad-core / 32GB eMMC / 802.11n phone manages to ship in 2019.

The $699 pre-orders for the Librem 5 are still reporting "shipping starts in Q3 2019" as of today. The Camp 2019 presentation can be viewed at ccc.de.