SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., September 5, 2019 — Purism begins its iterative shipping schedule for the much anticipated Librem 5 phone running PureOS.

The Librem 5 phone is built from the ground up to respect the privacy, security, and freedoms of society. It is a revolutionary approach to solving the issues that people face today around data exploitation — putting people in control of their own digital lives.

Due to the high volume, growing demand for the Librem 5, and in the interest of openness and transparency, Purism is publishing its full, detailed, iterative shipping schedule. This expands on the existing commitment to start shipping in Q3 by defining specific batches, their features, and their corresponding ship dates.

Most companies keep their release and product plans secret right up until mass production launch, so they can avoid publicizing any setbacks or delays; but we have decided to bring our community and customers along with us for the Librem 5 journey, and have been transparent about our progress from the beginning. This means you have been able to celebrate along with us as we have reached milestones like shipping our devkit in 2018, the NXP CPU silicon issues we had to overcome, placing our first call in early 2019, sending our first SMS. You have been able to track our software progress directly from our public code repositories and watch live updates to libhandy, Phosh, Chatty, and the rest of our software. And we are compliant with, and submitting for, the “Respects Your Freedom” certification from the Free Software Foundation.

The iteration schedule starts in September, 2019, and the Librem 5 will be shipping in batches with incrementing code names. Each iteration improves upon the prior in a rapid rolling release throughout the entire first version of the phone, including the public plans for the second revision of the phone for context.

Every iteration includes updates to hardware, mechanical design, and software. We will be contacting each customer to confirm their shipping address, which modem and power supply they would like, and to confirm which shipping batch they are currently scheduled to receive — and to give them an opportunity to select a later batch than they are scheduled for, should they prefer to wait for a later iteration. As slots in a particular early batch free up, we will open it up for others in a later batch to join in, according to the date of the order.

If you haven‘t yet placed your order (or want to place an additional order) — the sooner you order, the earlier the shipping batch you will be added into.

Batch Aspen

Hardware: Initial board, all hardware components included.

Mechanical Design: Individually milled case, loose fit, varying alignment, unfinished switch caps (hand crafted).

Software: Initial release of core Apps, manage contacts, basic web browsing, early power management, software updates from the PureOS Store via the terminal.

Certifications: FCC and CE for Radios

Shipping window: September 24th – October 22nd (internal batch)

Batch Birch

Hardware: Next run of board, all hardware included.

Mechanical Design: Aspen + tighter fit, improved alignment.

Software: Aspen + improved setup, improved web browsing, improved power management.

Certifications: FCC and CE for Radios

Shipping window: October 29th – November 26th (delivered on time)

Batch Chestnut

Hardware: All hardware included.

Mechanical Design: Birch + capped switches.

Software: Birch + final setup, improved web browsing, improved power management.

Certifications: FCC and CE for Radios

Shipping window: December 3rd – December 31st (delivered on time)

Batch Dogwood

Hardware: All hardware included.

Mechanical Design: Chestnut + refinements.

Software: Chestnut + core apps improved, additional applications, refined graphical PureOS Store.

Certifications: FCC and CE for Radios

Shipping window: January 7th – March 31st (delayed due to Coronavirus outbreak)

Expected shipping window: End of April 2020

Batch Evergreen

Hardware: All hardware included.

Mechanical Design: Molded case.

Software: Long term support release

Certifications: FCC and CE

Shipping window: Q2 2020 (delayed due to Coronavirus outbreak)

Expected shipping start: Mid August

Batch Fir

Hardware: 14nm Next Generation CPU

Mechanical Design: Version 2

Software: Long term support release

Certifications: FCC and CE

Shipping window: Q4 2020 (delayed due to Coronavirus outbreak)

Expected shipping to be updated.

Thank you to all the supporters who continue to share the Purism story with the world — this is a long-term movement around creating a digital society that respects people. Purism started in 2014 and has been growing triple digits year-over-year. The Librem 5 project started in 2017 with early bird backers rapidly funding the 60 day campaign that blew past the $2.5m mark. The Librem 5 devkit was released in December 2018. Software inventions and releases have been ongoing for a few years. Now we begin the iterative production releases of the Librem 5 phone, which our entire team is very excited to share.

About Purism

Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation devoted to bringing security, privacy, software freedom, and digital independence to everyone’s personal computing experience. With operations based in San Francisco, California, and around the world, Purism manufactures premium-quality laptops and phones, creating beautiful and powerful devices meant to protect users’ digital lives without requiring a compromise on ease of use. Purism designs and assembles its hardware by carefully selecting internationally sourced components to be privacy-respecting and fully Free-Software-compliant. Security and privacy-centric features come built-in with every product Purism makes, making security and privacy the simpler, logical choice for individuals and businesses.

Media Contact

Marie Williams, Coderella / Purism +1 415-689-4029 pr@puri.sm

See also the Purism press room for additional tools and announcements