Librem 5 smartphones released
The first batch of the open-source smartphones are heading off the production lines to excited customers.
after years of hard work, the Librem 5 smartphone is finally being sent to customers. It’s a smartphone built by Purism (https://puri.sm) from the ground up to support and run open-source software and with a focus on privacy and security. Running the completely open-source Pureos
(https://pureos.net), Librem 5 packs in some decent specs for $699 – see the full list at:
https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/.
Anyone who has pre-ordered the Librem 5 should receive an email about what shipping batch their order will be included in, along with a shipping date window. The team behind Librem 5 is rightly proud of reaching this important milestone, and anyone who has been patiently waiting for their order will hopefully soon have the smartphone in their hands.
“This is a big moment… Not just for us as a company, but for everyone concerned about issues of privacy, security, and user freedom,” said Todd Weaver, founder and CEO of Purism. “The Librem 5 represents years of work, building the software and hardware required to make this phone a reality.” See his blog post announcing the news at https://puri.sm/posts/firstlibrem-5-smartphones-are-shipping/. With mounting concern over what kind of data smartphone makers harvest and share from their users, the Librem 5 looks like it could be an excellent ethical alternative to Apple and Android smartphones, and uses both hardware (as much as is possible) and software that has been picked for its open-source nature.
With the handsets now shipping to users, we’ll hopefully find out soon if the Librem 5 successfully achieves its lofty goals.