It’s time! We can’t tell you how excited we are that we will start shipping the Librem 5 mass production version mid-to-late November! Right now we are finishing up our extensive quality control steps and fulfillment procedures so that we can start shipping the revolutionary Librem 5 phone.
This is all very exciting, but the main thing most people want to know is: when will I get mine ? In this post we will talk about all of the factors around Librem 5 mass production shipping and how we plan to get through the massive backlog of orders with demand increasing daily.
We have gotten criticism in the past for not sharing information because we erred on the side of being conservative when there was a chance (however slight) that information would change. We have decided since then to err on the side of “more information is better” and so we shared this post to explain our methodology for calculating shipping timelines for the different groups along with our current best estimates, barring some catastrophic issue.
If there is some catastrophic issue, then of course plans would change and we’d post an update. At the moment we are not expecting one and so far have been pleased with all of our testing with Evergreen (and we aren’t superstitious) so we feel good about our estimates.
Is there a clearer way to tell where “in line” we are?
I figure I’m some where in the 1 - 2 months range, which is a drop in the over 3 year wait thus far. My only concern is my current phone is starting to have charging issues and I’d rather not be without a phone.
Unfortunately no (if you aren’t in the first group). We have tried to describe the kinds of information we’ll need to give people more accurate estimates in the post, and when we think we’ll have that kind of information.
I ordered mine a bit later and I received an email in September 2019 asking which batch I would like to be in (on the 19th in my case - back then I could have chosen Aspen - Evergreen and went for Evergreen) - I guess that this is what they are referring to and that you received that mail as well ?
Every backer got an email asking about their preferred batch, but only the very early backers who would have qualified to get Birch, Chestnut, or Dogwood batches, but chose to wait until Evergreen, are the group we are referring to in the post.
If you are a very early backer you will get confirmation starting next week when we contact you to ask for updated shipping information.
Thanks for the clarification! It would be great, if you could let us know what ‘very early’ means in terms of order date - to avoid many from chewing their fingernails over the weekend
Did you get an email in respect of actually receiving “Birch, Chestnut, or Dogwood” but choose Evergreen instead? If “yes” then I would guess that you are a very early backer.
I think the bottom line is that there is mostly no way to know what batch you were qualified for and where you are in the queue. So patience is a virtue.
I preordered 2017-10-14 and was not offered an early batch.
At that time, less than 2500 orders had been placed.
I guess they might ship somewhere between 500 and 2000 this year. We’ll see
But that’s quite a low bar for 2020… 
