News regarding Librem5 on Chaos Communication Camp 2019

Are those screen shots of the PCB from the highest resolution video available? Everything is just blurry enough that I can’t read the writing on the chips. )-:

I can see a Micron chip next to the NXP i.MX 8M Quad, which I’m guessing is LPDDR4 DRAM, but searching for “Micron 8MB77” didn’t find anything. I can identify the STmicroelectronics Teseo LIF8 GNSS, but I can’t find the RedPine Signals RS9116 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth. I assume that the SMSC chip is for charging/discharging the battery.

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The Wifi/BT chip is currently on vacation, surfing the web on its M.2 board. :wink:

I wasn’t aware of this, but it seems we have two M.2 connectors, and Nicole confirms that at 17:00.

The Micron 8MB77 has the FBGA code D9VTN which translates to MT53B768M32D4NQ-062 WT:B - 3GB of RAM, close to the CPU.

On the back side, there’s the 32GB eMMC, 1705KAE THGBMHG8C2LBAIL

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According to gsmarena.com, there are quite a few feature phones that are thicker, but there is currently only 1 other smartphone with a large touch screen on the market that is 15mm and two that are thicker. They are all ruggedized phones:

  • Energizer Energy 400 LTE, 15mm, 4.0", 2500mAh
  • Yezz Epic T, 15.9mm, 5.5", 9000mAh
  • Sonim XP8, 18mm, 5.0", 4900mAh

Glad to hear that Purism is aiming for 10k of phones, which confirms what Caliga has been saying.

The one thing that surprised me from the talk is that there aren’t many companies that can fabricate complex boards like Purism has, because they had to cram so many components on the board. I feel like we are getting something really special with the Librem 5.

The Purism board isn’t nearly as tight as the PCB in the Galaxy S10+ and other smartphone flagships, but I’m guessing that the big companies have access to state-of-the-art board manufacturing.

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That second M.2 for the Wi-Fi is awesome. I wonder if Purism was contacted by a lot of people who want to play around with other frequencies. I’m hoping that someone will figure out how to make free drivers for 802.11ac/ad in the future.

Thanks for hunting down the chips. Too bad that it will be nearly impossible to change the RAM and SSD chips since they are BGA.

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I see one one M.2 M Key facing downward, so presumably it will hold the cellular modem on top of the battery.

What doesn’t make sense to me is that the second M.2 B Key is facing upward, so the M.2 card holding the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth will extend beyond the top of the phone.

Am I seeing this wrong?

EDIT: Yes, I was seeing it wrong. See romnasko’s image below.

Another detail in the video that surprised me is that Faerber mentioned that there will be a STM32L432KC, which is a 80MHz Cortex-M4 for reading the smart card and they want to create free firmware for it. I didn’t think that it would be necessary to have another processing core just to read a smart card. I would have expected that the cores in the SoC to be able to handle that, but apparently not.

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Most likely. The slot cannot possibly face towards the gold-black-jack. That would be a design fail.
funny-design-build-fail-picture-7
So, unintuitively it seems to face the other direction. Possibly, both M.2 cards are fixed by those two big screw spacer thingies. That would make sense to me.

In accordance with the reveal video PCB capture, it seems it’ll be

  • Display (USB-C front cam top-left, phone jack top-right, kill switches right (you gotta do 'em right…))
  • PCB bottom: i.MX8, 3GB RAM, slots: wifi/BT, baseband
  • PCB top: 32GB eMMC, slots: SIM, SD card, smart card
  • – open here –
  • back shell

It surprises me a bit that the CPU would emit heat towards the display. I had somehow assumed it would face towards the back. We’ll see. :sunglasses:

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Why do you think the cpu is on the side of the display?

Like I said. The linked reveal video very much indicates this. Also, I just noticed in the day 16 reveal video that the cavity in the top left of the PCB is most likely not for the USB-C, but rather the front facing camera (or even both cameras).

That would be logical too. That usb-C is playing hide-n-seek (maybe with that surfing wifi-board :wink: ). It has become more or less standard to have it centered on either end and since everything else follows that, it would be more convenient to have it so. My earlier placement to the hole was based on hope to have it as a some sort of separate changeable part.

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Actually, the video indicates (21:30) that the USB-C is centered on the bottom. Not being soldered onto the PCB should at least not make it harder to repair it. :wink:

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I’m not (yet) placing much on those pics (same as early designs). Note, that the stereoplug seems to be on the opposite side to the three switches in that (sides seem mirrored - other has volume or some other rocker type switch and smallet button). And no visible holes for cards.

Looking at the older day 16 “red overlay” pic, I agree with the front camera placement. Notice in that how the rectangles (kinda Tetris-block L-shapes) are positioned over the M.2s…

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Hey thanks @s206 for letting us know about that!

I don’t think anyone else has posted this yet, so…

I don’t know how final that casing design is but I do wish it was just a little more rounded on the sides to match the newer more rounded front design, but even still, it’s very nice! Can’t wait! :grin:

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No, that pic was not posted, but we were just talking about it :slight_smile:
Nicole mentioned that the dimensions might not be accurate.
As @JR-Fi says, the sides don’t match the rest of what we know. The kill switches should be on the right side to match with the phone jack. Also, here they seem to slide left-right, but the final switches seem to go up-down. So this is most likely not up to date.

I don’t think the cards are meant to be accessible directly. I’d assume we have to remove the back cover.

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Yeah I just noticed that. I posted before catching up on what others had said since I last looked. Rookie mistake. :wink:

Thanks for that. I was looking at the Moto g6, which is a little wider. It also looks like the Librem 5 will be thicker, probably because of the (user-replaceable) battery.

Great presentation. It makes me appreciate even more what they’re trying to accomplish, especially considering all the patents!

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I think it may be both cameras. Where else would the back camera be?

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Great to see that it’s coming on so well, great presentation too.

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I know we are just speculating but I think it would be a strange design decision to put the CPU on the inside next to the screen. If the picture is a bit out of date, perhaps they will have slots on the sides for the cards.

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I think that the SoC will be facing away from the display. Look at where the hardware kill switches are placed in the case image (posted by zero), so the board has to be turned around.

However, something is wrong with the case image, because the audio jack should be on the top-left side, and it is on the top-right side in the case image. The hardware kill switches and audio jack should be on the same side in the case image, so I don’t know if we can trust the case image.

I’m guessing that the M.2 card with the Wi-Fi/BT will have a flexible cable that plugs into M.2 B Key slot, so the M.2 card can be placed anywhere. Still, I wonder why they faced the M.2 slot upward.

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