This is something I have actually been wondering about.
On July 5, 2021 I upgraded my regular L5 pre-order (made in December 2018) to L5 USA. At that point, the “Now Shipping! Place your order now, get in approximately 6 to 8 weeks!” statement had been there for several weeks already.
Now, almost 7 weeks later the status is still “Awaiting Shipment”.
Should I keep fingers crossed that it will change to “Shipped” within the next week? Or am I being too naive?
Naive would be overstating it. There’s nothing wrong being hopefull but preparing for extending those time-limits, as you obviously seem to be doing. This is not normal times and normal expectations should not be applied, unfortunately. This also is not a binary thing - delivery just takes longer (no verified reasons not to trust that).
If I don’t get my shipment notification within the next week, how could one expect me to consider it normal to keep the “6 to 8 weeks” bait statement on the product page? I agree though — it depends on what norm we are talking about. I can’t deny that BS has been the de-facto norm all around, and, if I am not getting my “In Stock” order within the promised (and still being promised) timeframe, then what I was naive about was to assume that Purism would be an exception not adopting that norm.
Maybe you can get the i.MX 8M Mini, but it is not a good replacement for the i.MX 8M Quad. The Quad has twice as much L2 cache and its RAM runs 100MHz faster than the Mini. The GC320 2D and GC NanoUltra 3D GPU in the Mini is frankly garbage and will provide very limited hardware acceleration. The GC7000Lite GPU in the Quad has 4 times more shaders than the GC NanoUltra 3D GPU in the Mini. The mini only provides USB 2.0, so the USB-C port will be 4 times slower than the USB 3.0 with the Quad. The Mini only has one video port for the internal screen and no support for HDMI and DisplayPort, so there there will be no video out and no convergence. The Quad supports using both of the cameras at the same time, whereas the Mini only supports one camera.
None of the i.MX 8 chips are energy efficient enough to be used in a phone and all the other i.MX 8M chips have disadvantages like the Mini compared to the Quad, and the Plus hasn’t been released yet, so there really wasn’t any option but to wait 6 months for NXP to produce the Quad.
The parts suppliers had the following inventory on April 2, 2021 for the i.MX 8M Quad (MIMX8MQ6DVAJZAB):
The normal price is $35.50, so it was possible to obtain 49 of the chips at double the normal price in early April. Based on that, I assume that Purism was able to buy up a couple hundred of the chips at elevated prices when it planned to start producing the Librem 5 USA, but it was impossible to obtain more. If Purism sent those chips to China, then it could produce a couple hundred more Librem 5’s, but so the people who preordered in Oct. 2017 would get their phones, but everyone else would still be in the same situation waiting for their phones. By the way, it appears that most of the people who preordered the Librem 5 USA are still waiting for their phones as well, and they are also complaining about the delays.
Purism just did that by raising the price $100 on the phone and raising $2.04 million in new investment in the company over the last month.
Unless you have performed a component by component check of that then you aren’t in a position to claim it (but then neither am I in a position to claim the opposite). However, as far as I am aware, they do have the same CPU - and getting CPUs is such a big problem that even Toyota can’t manage to do it (as already linked above).
As Amos points out, the CPU that you quote is not actually the right one.
If you continue looking at the link i sent it list all versions of the IMX8. The reason is as stated in my responses I wasnt sure which chip version. Thats why I sent a link to all versions including the quad version.
However, now my concerns and further research has uncovered a phone manufacturer in hong kong with strangely the exact same specs and exact same delivery time frame. This other manufacturer is also a linux phone.
Customers arent foolish and this is why communication is important.
I didnt provide links to mouser, digikey or any other chip providers nore do I care what or why they have or had stocks at any date or time. Simply put. I dont care about them. I dont use them as a supplier and I never mentioned them so bringing them up was pointless. I use Toradex and I offered any help in providing my contacts if that wasnt obvious in reading.
I doubt that either edition is being manufactured in Hong Kong.
Perhaps some manufacturer in HK has downloaded the schematics from the Purism web site and is selling their own edition of the Librem 5 (nothing to do with Purism of course). 
Perhaps… However why are the delivery times the same?
And Im also interested to see if Greendrake gets a Shipment notification this upcoming week? If he does not then everything Purism is stating regarding these phones and ship dates are questionable. Rightly so.
Either do or dont. Again, communication avoids all this. Everytime a delivery date or time is missed credibility is destroyed and confidence eroded.
As you didn’t provide a link to what you are referring to, it would be difficult for someone to speculate on that.
Another completely speculative option would be: intending to resell the actual Librem 5?
I can imagine a few customers in Hong Kong with a higher than average requirement for privacy and security. 
I still cn not get my order nor my money back. This is the shittest company ever.
NXP used to not have public data sheets for the Plus, but I can now download them. I see that SolidRun is now advertising several boards with the Plus, so it appears to now be in production. The Toradex web page says that its Plus boards are: “Currently low stock level. More coming soon. Please contact us for details.”
At any rate, redesigning the Librem 5 to use the Plus at this point would cause far more delays than waiting till October for the Quad. Purism would have to add another chip to the board to convert from HDMI to DisplayPort if it uses the Plus, and it is going to be a while before the Plus has mainline Linux support. People ordering the Librem 5 also aren’t going to be happy with the Plus’s weaker GPU and VPU and reduced cache, compared to the Quad.
A link would be nice. When I do a Google search for Linux phones from Hong Kong, I only find the PinePhone.
Yes, it was obvious, but Toradex isn’t a chip seller. It is a buyer just like Purism, and I assume that the only reason why it is able to sell boards now with the i.MX 8M Mini and i.MX 8M Plus is because it placed its orders 6 months in advance. I really doubt that a small company like Toradex has any special pull inside NXP, when the company is having to delay chip orders to major auto companies which are its bread-and-butter.