[blihp]

Is their claim about electronic components 'origin declaration'[1] credible or is it just marketing sleight-of-hand? Aren't they just buying the same components made in Taiwan/China/wherever from a U.S. distributor such as Digikey and then saying 'Made in U.S.A.' in the same way other manufacturers do? (which would seem to seriously undermine their 'secure' supply chain claim) I've been under the impression that we don't have fabs in the U.S. making anywhere near the variety of components needed for a complete modern smartphone. I don't ask to be pedantic, but rather if it would be more accurate to say 'assembled' rather than 'manufactured' in USA.

[1] https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

From your referenced page

> The Librem 5 USA will have a user-replaceable assembled in USA modem. The Gemalto modem chip itself is supplied from Germany, and we will be manufacturing our premium Gemalto M.2 modems in our USA facility.

[sct202]

I think he's referencing how some of the chips on the boards are unlikely to be US sourced given Librems low volumes, but seem to be consolidated as USA because they were soldered on a PCB in the US.

For example, from Librem's spec sheet at the bottom of that page lists 2 components from STMicroelectronics:

Accelerometer (LSM9DS1) Country of Origin is listed as Malta https://www.st.com/en/mems-and-sensors/lsm9ds1.html#sample-b...

GPS (TESEO LIV3) Country of Origin is listed as South Korea https://www.st.com/en/positioning/teseo-liv3f.html#sample-bu...

[wott]

> Aren't they just buying the same components made in Taiwan/China/wherever from a U.S. distributor such as Digikey and then saying 'Made in U.S.A.' in the same way other manufacturers do?

Considering how fuzzy their language has been on the subject + the fact that they never cleared it despite many people asking for clarification + their track record on "embellishing" reality, we can rather safely assume that what they call 'Electronics' is in fact a dumb PCB, and that most of the components are the same as on the regular version.

In fact, I am even highly suspicious when this post talks about "in-house", "our facility". They have basically never manufactured anything so far, they are not a hardware maker (not even designers, this is outsourced too), there is no sign that they have qualified personal for such operation, the facility they have been talking so far was in fact a warehouse with a bit of final assembly and a bit of warranty service (just last month they said they had no personal there qualified to even simply check or fix the laptops motherboard they get from China), and they have zero cash. This is not consistent with suddenly buying PCB making and assembly line tooling and operating it for a single small series of product. The only possibility is if they got some government contract or something like that.

With this company, you should never forget that the boss is a bullshit artist, and that you should take anything he says with a large grain of salt. It doesn't mean that their projects are complete vaporware, or that they never deliver, but there is great difference between what they claim, what they promise, what they drive people to believe on one side, and what they actually do and achieve on the other side. He says what people want to hear, and it doesn't matter much whether it reflects reality or not. For example, in late 2019 he said that they would produce 50,000 Librem 5 before the end of Q1 2020. Well, as of the end of Q2 2021, they will have produced less than 2,000 unit (IIRC). And of course just a few months before, they completely faked the release in September 2019.