> We’re still working with our potential manufacturer of the development boards to review the schematic developed by the Librem 5 hardware engineers and make suggested changes.
Last update we had was that the boards would ship August 2018. I'm wondering if they're still aiming to ship them this month.
Since the beginning, they have been rather heavily underestimating delays and potential problems for each step on the hardware side.
In this case, if we consider that it is still the 1st half of August, so a lot of companies are closed or on reduced activity with reduced personnel; that after the schematic is finished, the PCB has to be drawn, the PCB has to be built (that's quick), the PCB has to be populated with chips (it can be quick... if everything is in order, otherwise add a small delay); that the first boards have to undergo some minimal amount of testing before the full run is produced and shipped to customers to ensure that at least its major parts are working kind of OK ; that there was no prototype board before this run (IIRC) ; that if this testing does not go well, major issues will have to be found and corrected before shipping, possibly implying ditching the existing PCBs, correcting the schematics, rerouting the corresponding PCB parts, and starting a new batch of boards... I bet there is very little hope they keep their promise.
And globally, considering that their reports are always 95% about software and 5% about hardware which seems to be more and more outsourced, we can say it is one more time the case of a bunch of software developers and software designers underestimating the amount of work (people, time, and the cost of iterations in hardware compared to software) and the amount of experience needed to produce the hardware side. As it has already happened many, many times in similar projects, with similar goals, with similar people involved.
Definitely share your opinion. Every picture of every piece of hardware they have shared thus far has been off the shelf consumer boards and screens. I was at least expecting a phone prototype main board at this point.
I expect them to ship some 'development boards' eventually, but my hopes for an actual phone are seriously diminished.
I don't say this to put them down, I hope they succeed, but I am 100% skeptical of any crowd funded hardware device.
They announced recently that they will be about a month late for the dev kit on their Matrix channel. Not surprising, and if they are only one month late I would consider them on time :)
Last update we had was that the boards would ship August 2018. I'm wondering if they're still aiming to ship them this month.