Estimate your Librem 5 shipping

It has the CE mark.

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Although I always want to be compliant with FCC rules, I don’t think I want to do anything to slow the process of receiving my L5. Here in the US, the FCC seems to be very dis-concerned with enforcement and seems to always have been dis-interested in enforcement. Unless you go on police or other government frequencies with malicious words and taunting them to try to catch you, they generally don’t enforce most communications laws when it comes to individual users, including those who use ‘intentional RF radiator’ divices.

With that said, if the customs enforcement people in some country or the US postal service here in the US confiscates a non certified Librem 5, who would pay for that? Purism or the buyer?

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Yeah I definitely agree with what you’ve said here.

I guess the questions that need asking is would customs even bother taking a glance at the device? Would they also be looking for a proper CE cert? If it didn’t have a CE cert, can the argument be made that it is a developer (non-consumer market) phone? I don’t have the answers to these. Living in the US, I would guess they wouldn’t even look at it/for it. Also, I would assume the buyer takes the hit to the wallet.

I just want to note that if one looks at raw numbers then it’s clear that the first three months there was a churn with 1k a month, but after that (after the campaign was finished) it took a year to make another 1k.
What that means is - if (it’s just a number from the thin air) it takes 6 months to fulfill campaign orders - it should take 1-2 months to cover next year (Nov’17-Nov’18). Now I don’t know whether 2019 now shipping campaign brought expected results (another thousands of orders) but presumably by the end of the 2021 all the backlog might be processed.

God I hope not. I am hopeful production will ramp up rapidly by February and backlog cleared by June. I placed my order Nov 2020 before the shipping announcement.

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Well, yes, that’s my hope as well (and I vaguely remember something like that mentioned in official shipment announcement). But my thin air is utterly pessimistic.

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Perhaps in customs or when passing through the US Postal service, the Librem 5 without an FCC certification will look like so much of a professional finished product, that it won’t be noticed anymore than any Samsung or LG product would be scrutenized. No one even checks the illegal non-compliant Citizen’s band radios (having hundreds of channels and FM modes, high power, etc…) that come through customs daily now. Unless something is leaking a toxic liquid, I think they just pass everything through.

if there is a problem DHL notifies you if you chose them to mediate for you @ customs but you first have to pay for it to get through if i’m not mistaken …

or you represent YOURSELF @ the customs which comes out your pocket just the same but it might take a bit longer to process …

i wouldn’t worry about it too much especially since the modem is removable (not hot-swapable so that could be something to mention to purism if you want it shipped with the m2 module separately)

I assume that everyone here already knows this, but let me mention if just in case. Linear projection based on past production has zero predictive power. An electronic assembler in China can churn out 10k Librem 5’s in almost no time, and it doesn’t take much time in the Carlsbad Fullfillment Center to box up the Librem 5’s and put on shipping labels. Even if Purism is putting in the cellular modems in Carlsbad and attaching the antennas, that shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes per device.

The most economical way for Purism to produce 10k phones is to produce them in one large production batch, so either Purism decided that it needs the flexibility to fix its design in case something arises and/or Purism doesn’t have the funds on hand to order a 10k production batch, so it is waiting for more orders to be able to pay for more production.

Given the fact that the phone isn’t yet FCC-certified and Purism says that it is not yet compliant with CE, it makes sense for Purism to purposely limit the first Evergreen batch to a very small number and send them out slowly so their support team has the time to deal with any issues that arise and to get them resolved before Purism really starts mass production in January

Purism easily could have waited another 6 months before shipping Evergreen, but I speculate that Purism decided that it had to start shipping the phone before the end of this year, because 3.3 years of waiting has stretched the patience of many customers and Purism is under the gun to start repaying the disgruntled customers who cancelled their orders. Also there are a lot of customers like me who want the Librem 5 even if its software isn’t ready to replace my current phone.

Purism has made it clear that mass production starts in January, so the question is why did Purism decide to start shipping on Nov 18, 2020. I speculate that Purism decided to start to ship Evergreen in Nov. in order to generate a rush of new orders in order to pay for manufacturing and repaying canceled orders. The Xmas season is the best time to start shipping Evergreen if the goal is to generate new orders.

I could be entirely wrong in my speculation, because Purism started hiring more developers before Evergreen started shipping. Maybe Purism got a loan or maybe it raised some more venture capital, so lack of funds may not be an issue.

I am almost certain that Purism is now getting more orders for the Librem 5, based on the comments that I have seen online, so that makes it likely that people will get their phones sooner, rather than later. I’m seeing new people here and on r/Purism and Mrwhosetheboss’s video has gotten 3.1 million views so far. I saw comments on Gardiner Bryant’s videos from people saying that they ordered after learning about the Librem 5 from Mrwhosetheboss’s video.

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Don’t underestimate it. There’s also the flashing (of two chips probably?), and QC testing, including the wifi/date problem. Also, packaging, labeling… Could easily be 15 minutes, if not more. I’d be curious to know by how much they’d speed up the process in the first weeks.

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Purism was able to ship out 300 DevKits very quickly (within a week?).

If Purism is doing JIT manufacturing, everything should come from the factory with recent software and firmware. I assume that Purism has to do some quality control checks for each phone, but even if it is 15 minutes per phone, that doesn’t explain why people ordering today aren’t expecting to get their phones till Q2 of 2021.

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In any case, we’ll all get more info in the January shipping update, which is right around the corner. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Is the 2019-07-06 already shipped phone a Librem 5 USA edition?

One guy who did a review ordered it 19 September 2018.
He was scheduled for Dogwood.
He received the Evergreen Librem 5 in the middle of November 2020.

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Interesting! Is there an explanation why he was jumping queue so heavily?

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If the order date is really September 2018 and is already served, then the queue is not served in FIFO order. Would be nice to have an explanation, why.

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Maybe because he creates review videos?

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I suspect that he made a mistake and the date he ordered was 19 September 2017, and not 19 September 2018. He also also said that he paid $500 for the phone, whereas he paid $599, so he didn’t get a lot of the details right.

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@jonsger Did you already enter this one here in your list?

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Ich bin, leider, nicht Deutsch. That said, I might end up living there one day so you raise a valid point.

I sent another e-mail asking to wait until the CE certification is done - I don’t really need my L5 right now, waiting a little longer would give them a chance to hammer out any hardware bugs that get found and there’s not that much advantage in me getting mine immediately because I rarely ever use my current phone for any kind of communication and as such I’d be a terrible beta tester.

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