Purism's Librem 5, arguably the first modern privacy-oriented Linux smartphone, has just started shipping its early Aspen batch to their earliest users. This very early batch of Librem 5 devices is still almost prototype-grade, featuring the very first mechanical and hardware design, with hand-crafted switch caps, initial apps and basic power management.

Librem 5 running Terminal on phosh

The full list of batches is the following:

Aspen (24/09/2019 - 22/10/2019)

Initial mainboard. Individually milled case, loose fit, varying alignment, unfinished switch caps (hand crafted). Initial release of core apps: contacts, basic web browsing, early power management, software updates from the PureOS Store via the terminal.

Birch (29/10/2019 - 26/11/2019)

First revised mainboard design. Tighter fit, improved alignment. Improved setup, improved web browsing, improved power management.

Chestnut (03/12/2019 - 31/12/2019)

Improved capped switches. Final setup, improved web browsing, improved power management.

Dogwood (07/01/2020 - 31/03/2020)

More hardware refinements. Core apps improved, additional applications, refined graphical PureOS Store.

Evergreen (Q2 2020)

Molded case. Long term support release.

Fir (Q4 2020)

14nm next generation CPU. Version 2 mechanical design.

Current motherboard for the Librem 5, with clearly visible m.2 slots, modems, SoC and kill switches.

While this means that developers and reviewers will be able to get their hands on the Librem 5 almost immediately, the best choice for end users, if possible, might be to wait some more weeks to get a more mature and "finished" product.