It has been almost two years since Purism ended its Librem 5 crowdfunder, raising $2.1 million. Now the company has unveiled the final specifications for the device as well as an approximate launch date of Q3 2019. If you’re unfamiliar with the device, the Librem 5 runs PureOS, a fully free and open source operating system that is not based on Android or iOS.
The Librem 5 is an incredibly ambitious device, and while the specifications are decidedly low range at this point, it has a number of privacy-oriented features that no other smartphone has, such as the baseband separated form the processor in a black box, hardware toggles for all wireless communications and the camera/microphone, and much more.
I understand why the Librem 5 is priced the way it is but it’s just to much for me for a phone that isn’t ready to be a primary device at this point. The PinePhone is a more reasonable ask –> https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
Yeah, I feel the same way. It’s too much of an outlay for what is essentially a gamble on a new ecosystem. It’s a chicken and egg problem of getting the user base going to bring the price down, but that’s exactly why the duopoly exists.
Underphil,
The problem is that nearly all the profits exist in the first two platforms. The market is so terribly skewed that even wealthy companies with deep pockets struggle to survive in 3rd place. What we have is winner take all economics with very little opportunity at the bottom. Consolidation is so rampant that the so called “long tail” of the market is virtually dead. It’s easy to recognize the problem, but solving it requires policies that, so far, haven’t gained any momentum in influential circles in part because they’re the beneficiaries of such a skewed system.