Librem 5 Continues Working On Its Wayland Software Stack, Testing Vibration Motors, Chargers

Purism has published their latest progress report on the Librem 5 privacy-minded Linux-powered smartphone that they still hope to begin shipping next January.

The latest work by Purism and those involved on the Librem 5 include:

- Usability improvements to their "Phosh" phone shell that is running atop Wayland. There has been lock-screen improvements, arrow widgets were added to their library for swiping, and more.

- Lower down the stack with their plan to use the Etnaviv open-source graphics driver, they have added Weston simple DMA-BUF support, extended the NV12 format support, and more.

- Continued work on their GTK3-based "Calls" phone dialer application.

- Getting the virtual keyboard protocol added to the WLROOTS library.

- On the hardware front, they continue evaluating components like the WiFi module, vibration motors, and battery chargers. They are also still exploring what camera options for the Librem 5 smartphone.

- Continued work on community outreach.

Their latest report can be found on Puri.sm. Beyond the general concerns of their very ambitious plans to have this phone shipping now next January when their software stack and hardware plans are still in the early stages of development, sadly at this point it appears their 5.7-inch smartphone screen has a panel resolution of just 720 × 1440 and it will be interesting to see how good of cameras they will be able to utilize for the Librem 5 first-generation -- two of the factors important to many potential consumers. The state of the Etnaviv driver by January will also be iffy with at this stage it's only exposing OpenGL 2.x functionality and no Vulkan driver has been started yet (although talk of NIR support in their road towards SPIR-V). But long story short, it will be interesting to see how quickly things can be pulled together during the second half of the year.