You also can’t store parts for any length of time before there are problems in production. and the supply problems are crazy and affect many parts in the supply chain. Especially with controllers, quotas are reduced or eliminated other customers are preferred…
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One way to become a preferred semiconductor customer is to pay for your product in advance, up-front when you place the order. Has Purism written a check to pre-order five or ten-thousand CPUs and placed that pre-paid order yet?
In a market of extreme shortages, customers typically order 5x or 10x what they really need, in hopes that the manufacturer will send everyone a partial order and will produce even more product to meet the greatly inflated, apparent demand. The truth is that in this environment, the manufacturer has no way of knowing how many of their un-pre-paid orders are real or what the demand really is. They know that ultimately, the real market demand will fall and when that happens, they don’t want to be sitting on mountains of product that they can’t sell and that they have to eventually write-off as a loss after ninety percent of their orders suddenly all cancel. The solution for the semiconductor company is to only ship product to those customers who pay in-full up-front. Most semiconductor customers are requiring pre-payments now as the customer’s only way to get the semiconductor products that they need. Everyone else can simply wait in line indefinitely until the pandemic is completely over and the market returns to normal. So has Purism pre-ordered their pre-paid CPUs yet? Or doesn’t Purism believe in paying in advance for product that they will receive later, as a lot of other companies are doing now and as all of us here have done? If Purism hasn’t already paid up-front for a large number of CPUs, then they’ve messed-up once again.
If you’re on the inside dos or dcz, ask Todd or whoever you have access to, this question. Tell them how this really works and let them know that we know incompetence when we see it. I’ve called it out before on this topic and am calling it out here again now. You don’t necessarily have to over-pay for the CPUs. You just need to pay the manufacturer directly and up-front now. After that, you’ll only need to over-pay until your larger pre-paid orders start coming in. The alternative is to over-pay and to remain under-supplied until world politics and all markets return to normal… if that ever even happens.
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Pretty sure this is exactly what’s happening.
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That must be why there are chips for sale on eBay.
I am selling on ebay centronics printer interface card with a the following Z-80 chips on it myself:
- Z-80 CPU
- Z-80 CTC (Counter Timer Channel)
- Z-80 DART (Dual Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter)
Even if Purism had bought a tons of chips before to build and deliver Librem 5 fast many people would still not be happy and complaining because the gnu system didn’t work well in Librem 5 yet and hardware failed issues(ERRATAs).
So I suspect that Purism took a ingeniously a better route based on the gnu system status for L5, and cleverly giving NXP time to fix Errata to SoC I-MX 8 including Linux mainline support then 2022 ready to buy chips to happy delivering…
Also all this delays happened because purism gave us a super new freescale s.o.c.
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You make it sound as if buying CPUs was easy. I was present during some of the initial CPU buying negotiations, and I can offer the insight that the manufacturer is not that interested to talk to someone offering to buy the numbers of CPU units we are talking about.
I don’t think the supply crush would change that for the advantage of the small buyer (although I haven’t followed that since it started).
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Thank you @dcz. I wish more commenters realized that we’re talking about an automotive supplier.
From NXP’s point of view, the volume Purism has ordered is likely little more than a rounding error.
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About the same here as I ordered my Librem 5 cell phone Thanksgiving of 2020 and STILL do Not know when I will receive it. I’ve received more emails from them asking about more investment money than I have about when I might actually receive my cell phone. Definitely seems like some major mistakes were made there on the Librem 5.
I’m thinking about getting one. Decided to join the community first. It will probably be several months before I pull the trigger because of the price. With what I’ve learned about the backlog now… would it be best to wait a while longer? Maybe until there is a faster turn around? What do you all recommend? I’m also looking at the Light phone, but I got really excited when I found Purism.
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The longer you wait to order, the longer it will take to receive it, as long as there are others ahead of you in the queue. 
But you have to be willing to endure the wait and ignore the FUD and rabid discontent on, e.g. Reddit.
I received my L5 in November 2020 (I was one of the early backers, so that’s a 3-year wait, but production is moving faster now), and I can tell you it was definitely worth it, even if it’s not perfect yet. I’ve seen dramatic improvement in the software since I got it. Just don’t expect an iPhone- or Android-like experience. (Or the privacy abuses.)
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Purisms intention is to get through the backlog this year. With some exceptions, all 2017 orders seem to have shipped, and that year had more orders than all the following combined (probably).
At the moment, it probably doesn’t matter much whether you order now or in 4-6 months, in terms of delivery date. It only matters in showing your support in their work.
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My recommendation is to make a list of the things you need to do with your phone, and then ask us how well the L5 does those things. Also keep in mind that Purism says that it will take 12 months to get the phone if you order today, and many of the current limitations like the lack of suspend will be solved by then. If you want the L5 sooner, you can buy it used–there are regular postings on this forum from people who want to sell their L5.
Also it helps to indicate how much you have used Linux and whether you like using the Linux command line.
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Plan on a three to four year wait for your Librem 5, regardless of whether you order it now or later. You might just as well get in line now if you’ve already made the decision to buy a Librem 5.
Apparently, Purism isn’t so experienced at large production runs. It looks like all of the phones will be made-up and tested by hand in small batches, regardless of what the supply chain does. I hope I am wrong about this. But it’s reasonable to base future expectations on past performance. If you plan on a four-year wait and Purism delivers in two years, then you can be pleasantly surprised.
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Correct me If I am wrong, but from where I am sitting I see a competitor making Pinephones and getting their chips for said phones. I think it goes something like this: Pro version has reached equivalency, not too far off on the product aim, a more respectable thickness, no years and years and years of waiting and anyone who looks at the price will be on the floor laughing. Purism’s customers are feeling the pain. In fact we are waiting remarkably patiently. Something has to start changing towards a favorable assessment or guess who is going to be dominant.
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Okay, I should be more precise: buying CPUs from NXP is not easy. When we started the project, those were pretty much the obvious choice.
As for equivalency, I might be wrong, but I’m not aware of Pine pushing millions of dollars into software development.
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Based on what @amarok explained above, some people do not need their already reserved place in Librem 5 purchase line. Therefore you might want to send private message to @JKO, and even search for another post of similar offer within this Forum. Please visit this thread and rethink about such offers as well:
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Sure
Do you know if Pinephone Pro or Pinephone has M.2 E socket too like Librem 5 does to prevent the obsolescence and to improve the gnu+linux experience?
Do you know that PP and PPP do not have real kill switches?
Do you know that PP and PPP it based on Librem 5 devkit Scheme?
To dcz, you are not aware of Pinephone pushing millions of dollars in to software development because they are almost assuredly not pushing millions of dollars in to software development. Why should they? Everything they need in the way of software comes free to them, courtesy of Purism. I didn’t pre-order a Librem 5 to help fund some crusade for Purism to be the only company doing software development. I want the hardware I paid for with whatever the latest version the software is at right now. To justify the non-delivery of product over a period of years by doing free software development to help Purism’s competitors, is a weak and even aggravating arguement. Every day that my hardware that I paid for is delayed now just aggravates my expectations. Stop the software development if necessary. Then do whatever it takes to reach shipping parity. After that, start working on the software again.
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Thank goodness I never did that then.
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Yes but we all are in some kind of the same boat. And without 2.300.000.000 Humans buy and use that device we are in a bad position. Right now Surveillance Capitalism create mouch more Money and Information through a whole single Humans life. And it may be the highest level of hardness for evolution to compete with. Because we are few, and we have no better power, just to know about source Code and Devices, or software behavior.
And with everything you say about Purism. You will have no other Option if you had inspect china Devices running with Linux and F a c b … o o k Code or some kind of a popular search Engine’s Linux/OSS Code. You know how this will end.
Like digging for minerals and kind of like slavery on human Workers in China/Taiwan facto… to produce Chips for low money? They will right know sleep there to avoid a Connection with Humans… to rule out a Infection with kinda popular Virus. It is not sure that this Minerals or Workers… have that kind of a Experience. But it could be more likely than we all like it. Because its some kind of the Price we all have to pay in Abstract high level Societies. If we are willing to pay for a Librem 5 USA that extra money, or to have Privacy and free Apps. The World would be a better place. But really - most Humans can not offer that extra charge, right know for Privacy, Sustainability and good Payed and health Insurance for workers.
But we can and have to work on a Solution in our daily Life, and with source Code we will contribute.
Rebecca Henderson wrote a good Book about that kind of future.
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