Purism Talks Up The Librem 5 Smartphone Boot Speed, Price Increase Coming

Purism is still promoting their Librem 5 Linux smartphone as coming next quarter despite not seeing any production design yet and the software stack being incomplete. While the software is still under development, they are at least promoting it as booting faster than Android.

A brief blog post was put out today by Purism showing their Librem 5 development kit booting next to an HTC One Android smartphone. The Librem 5 smartphone did in fact boot much faster than the Android devices, but keeping in mind that's just one metric to care about for smartphones and most users rebooting their phones maybe once a week. The HTC One is already an aging Android device and no longer a flagship Google phone by any means, but the specs are at least more similar to the vintage comparable to the Librem 5.

Work on the Librem 5 applications remains a work-in-progress along with their basic Etnaviv OpenGL driver so far as well as not having any Vulkan driver, power management / battery life being much more important, among other areas still in favor of Android when it comes to daily usability. The post does note that the Librem 5 smartphone is scheduled to begin shipping in Q3'2019.

They also note that the Librem 5 smartphone pricing will go up at the end of July compared to the current $649 USD retail price. The new retail price wasn't shared, but unfortunately would have to raise pricing as they've reportedly burned through much of their original funding and according to sources already took on a few million dollars in outside funding. The phone specifications remain at 5.5~5.7-inch HD display, i.MX8M Quad CPU, 32GB eMMC storage, 802.11abgn WiFi + Bluetooth, 3G/4G modem, microSD storage, and the RAM/camera/battery parts have yet to be finalized.

Those wanting to look at the current Librem 5 boot speed can do so via the Purism blog.