Librem 5 Linux Smartphone’s Release Date Pushed Back To April 2019

In the open source hallways, Purism’s Librem 5 Linux smartphone has created a lot of buzz over the course of past one year. To keep the open source enthusiasts informed about the ongoing progress, the development team keeps posting regular updates on its blog.

In a recent development, the team has confirmed that Librem 5 isn’t going to be released in January 2019, which was the original release date.

“With the latest information at our disposal, we foresee a delay in production until April 2019,” according to the development team.

The reason behind his three-month delay is a silicon bug on the smartphone’s SoC that has been causing an extreme amount of battery drain. The drain is so severe that a fully charged Librem 5 is draining entirely in an hour.

To fix the issue, the team is working with NXP, the maker of the i.MX8 SoC being used by Purism.

However, the team plans to begin the shipping of devkits in October as they are meant to be used while being connected to a power outlet.

The post also mentions a couple of challenges they’ve faced during the process of making a non-Android smartphone. A significant challenge in the process is that most SoC vendors provide the modem and other components integrated with the SoC; the firmware and software to run these communication components are also mostly proprietary. So finding an open source alternative is a significant hurdle.

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Also Read: Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish WON’T Ship With Android Integration