14 DAY TRIAL // Purism is keeping us up-to-date with the development of their upcoming Librem 5 privacy and security-focused Linux-powered smartphone, which should hit the streets in January 2019.
The development teams behind the Librem 5 phone have no time for a summer vacation as they're working day and night to bring you that Linux phone you've dreamed for so long. In a recent report, Purism said that Librem 5 would look beautiful, and that's mostly because of the new icon theme created by their design team specifically for the forthcoming GNOME 3.30 desktop environment.
"The Librem 5 will look beautiful but that doesn’t come without effort. Lately, our design team has been hard at work on a new icon style for GNOME 3.30 that will be used by the phone. They have also been working on expanding the mockups for the cellular settings panel with more advanced features as well as more detailed work on the shell," said Heather Ellsworth, Head of documentation at Purism.
GNOME 3.30 is currently in beta testing, but it will be released to the masses early next month on September 5, 2018. Apart from the new icon style that Purism is gonna use for the user interface of their Librem 5 Linux phone, the GNOME 3.30 desktop environment will bring lots of other new features and improvements. As expected, Purism wants to use the latest GNOME 3.30 release for Librem 5.
The GNOME-based UI of the Librem 5 smartphone will work on top of the next-generation Wayland display server as there won't be support for X11 apps. Powered by Purism's Debian-based PureOS Linux operating system, the Librem 5 Linux phone will initially ship with a basic set of apps for making phone calls, texting, and browsing the Web.
Librem 5 development boards are coming soon
While Purism is still working with their potential manufacturer of the development boards on the schematics, many things are already set in stone and those who ordered them will soon get a kit containing EmCraft’s i.MX 8M System-On-Module (SoM), a 5.7-inch LCD display supporting 720x1440 pixels resolution, as well as SIMCom 7100A or SIMCom 7100E modems for US and EU bands.
Additionally, the Librem 5 development board kit will contain a Redpine RS9116 M.2 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module that supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands for Wi-Fi, but not 802.11ac, and an Omnivision OV5640 CMOS image sensor chip for the camera. The kits, which are expected to ship soon, will help application developers create apps for the Librem 5 ecosystem.