Once my Galaxy S10 gives up on life which is hopefully not too soon I’ll get a Fairphone too.
I am thinking of getting a Fairphone when the time comes to replace my phone. What are the options for operating systems? I currently have a good quality inexpensive Chinese made phone with Android. I would prefer to use an operating system that has nothing to do with Google or Apple
I like it. And I’d like it more if they’d offer an incremental backup system that works over WiFi. That would be the mother of reparability. Just lost your phone? No problem, get a new one and get your backup with all stuff working right away (e.g. apps from government, banking, etc.)
I have a FP5, and love it. Yes, of course I wish it had a headphone jack.
Dual sim for my two countries I use it for, plus no sim tool needed to change hardware sim is a nice little plus.
Replaceable battery is dank. It’s small and light enough to toss in a small bag if I’m going somewhere and I honestly basically never think about my battery life now.
All the rest of the hardware is pretty good. Not amazing, you can get more for the money, but also it feels good to have some morality in it. And I don’t want to break it bir the peace of mind that if I do it’s an easy repair, fantastic.
I hated the Fairphone case though. Terrible POS. I got a random internet one and it’s much better.
Does someone have experience with a de-googled Android phone (graphene, /e/, …) for professional use in IT? I need a ton of authenticator apps (Microsoft Authenticator, Oracle Authenticator,…), various VPN apps and privacy-invading ‘security’ apps. Does such stuff typically work without play services and with a custom rom?
In the past I used a custom rom on my private phone and already there it was a bit of hassle to get the banking app running. I’d assume it to be worse with these professional spyware apps. Am I right?
Authenticators work fine for me, banking works fine, I’ve had a VPN working. Have had some issues with whatsapp backup because it only wanted to backup to google drive. But after circumventing that, no other issues. This is on e/os
Every thing you said works perfectly fine on my calyxOS FP5. Haven’t tried Oracle Authenticator
On grapheneos you can setup a separate user profile and install Google services there. Note that fairphone is not supported by GrapheneOS
If the OS is not 100% degoogled, it can be running microg for example, this should work as a replacement for Google services
I really wanted one but it’s hardware isn’t supported by grapheneOS. I wish these two companies would partner up, that would be the best of both worlds.
Might not be the same, but they do partner with Murino to offer an /e/os degoogled alternative.
You mean Murena?
That’s cool. At least its degoogled. GOS’s security is a must for me though, after using it I don’t ever want to go without. But I’m glad fairPhone is offering alternatives.
GOS’s security is very cool, but my threat model does not justify buying more disposable tech just for that.
To be fair, it does have a big security emphasis. I don’t know enough about either /E/OS or GOS to know how they compard but /E/OS does some cool things like sandboxing apps etc for security.
Take a look at this comparison.
It’s a useful comparison, but biased. The fact that it gives “all green” to the GrapheneOS choice of using actual Google Play though sandboxed, while MicroG is all red… Is hard to defend. So you have to actually read the whole thing instead of just looking at the colors.
Also, it’s somewhat outdated.
The /e/OS I’m writing from now has an alternarive network location provider, built in UnifiedPush support, and it passes Basic Integrity, at least since December last year.
GraphineOS hasnt been a company since they split off from copperheados and rebreanded to GraphineOS, they have no budget to maintain more phones. In addition Fairphone has a long history of severe security problems, using publically available keys for verified boot, having a broken implementation of verified boot, delaying critical security updates, not providing all promised updates, and not having the hardware security features that GraphineOS demands. Heres the thing, GraphineOS is the most secure mobile OS because they dont compromise on security. Putting GraphineOS on the fairphone would require watering it down so much that it wouldn’t truly be GraphineOS anymore.
I get the reason gOS only supports the pixel, its the most secure hardware. Would never want them to water down their security for anything. I would very much like fairPhone to meet or exceed gOS security demands. That way they could be paired together to achieve a true completely degoogled secure phone.
There is no way for them to do that, GOS requires a security chip with a standard only Google meets atm. For Fairphone to meet GOS requirements not only would they need to improve their security but they would need to build several custom chips (that are not cheap nor easy to design).
I am writing right now from my degoogled Fairphone 4 running /e/OS.
I would buy again in a heartbeat.
It’s definitely not the most bang for your bucks. But it’s good enough for any use, it already outlived my last 3 phones, and it shows no sign of giving up (even when I was using the Google infested OS a few months back).
I’d recommend it.
I’m writing from F4 as well. The longer I own it, the more I’m impressed. Fixability has saved me replacing the phone twice now (I dropped it on the screen, and got cement in the usb charger).
If you’re just considering spec, its fairly pricey, but the repairability easily makes up for it. Have a pair of their bluetooth headphones too which I love.
Question for OP: how did you find installing /e/OS? I have android still but am thinking about trying to install.
I use Arch and am fairly familiar with a terminal.
Avoid their Easy Installer, it just doesn’t work. And pay a lot of attention to the anti downgrade feature of the Bootloader. It’s described in their guide for the FP4.
Outside of that, just follow the guide, it was pretty straightforward.
It was honestly way more work to backup everything I had on the phone…
Does everything work on /e/OS? Like banking and etc expected uses for daily use.
tl;dr it works really great for me, but there is no complete guarantee for the future, if that’s not acceptable stay away.
So far, yes, at least for me. Telegram, WhatsApp, Netflix, banking, you name it. I have apps from three different banks, and they are perfect. Even the itsme app of the belgian government works a-ok. But there is no guarantee that this will always be the case.
Notably Revolut has embraced enthusiastically the new Play Integrity system, and does not work at all on any third party ROM since late autumn. I was not a customer, but it has pissed many people off.
It is not impossible that this might happen with more banks in the future.
The App of my German mutuality didn’t work at the beginning (refused to log me in due to “issues with my device”) but after a later update now works fine. Who know how long that will be.
Some Google things you simply loose, such as Google Pay, I also have had very mixed success with Chromecast.
Android Auto works, but refuses to use any other navigation app than GMaps and Waze. I tried installing Mapy, HereWeGo, Organic, Magic Earth… But it doesn’t work. I half understand the reason, but I haven’t figured out a solution yet.
I also couldn’t get Slay the Spire to work, I guess it depends on some Google Play Games feature. That’s probably for the better, I already spend too much time playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon, which is an open source roguelike available on F-Droid. Highly recommend.
People should never trust Apple
They slowed down their iPhones on purpose to encourage people to buy new ones.
I agree that nobody should trust any corpo, including Apple, but there’s nuance to that story that never gets mentioned in these discussions.
Apple used to slow down devices whose batteries were starting to fail, in order to reduce the likelihood that your device suddenly turns off before the battery reads as empty. Simply put, if the battery couldn’t guarantee a certain power output down until empty, they’d throttle the CPU.
The notably scummy part here is that they didn’t tell users, and it wasn’t an option you could change. To make up for it, they had a cheap battery replacement program for several years and informed users about the issue, and I believe it’s optional now?
This was also several years before other manufacturers started offering OS support timelines comparable to Apple’s. Apple still let you update a 6 year old iPhone when others were doing 3 years for flagships. Fairphone of course was an exception.
You should still get a Fairphone if it meets your actual needs or a Pixel if you need GrapheneOS, but if you’re a non technical user who actually can make the most of a flagship, I’d recommend an iPhone over Samsung (just as expensive as Apple and these are the guys who put ads in TV UI nowadays) or Google (questionable stability with the Tensor chips in some iterations) at least. 5 years ago I’d recommend OnePlus, but those days are over. The stock ROM is now ass. I keep my old 7 pro around to play Real Racing 3 and with a custom rom I’m like 3 android versions beyond OEM support and it’s actually super smooth. But I won’t recommend it to a non techy user.
PS: I’m an Apple user, but not a diehard fan boy. I make comments explaining or defending them often because I feel Apple gets way more flak than their competitors who are usually equally scummy.
Yup. I had an iPhone 6S that was affected by this. When the battery was starting to get older, things like opening the camera would sometimes just cause the phone to die. I got the battery replaced for free, but flipping it to throttle instead of randomly shut itself down was an improvement, and likely extended the usable lives of the affected phones, not artificially shorten them. It shouldn’t have been done secretly but it wasn’t a conspiracy to sell more iPhones.
It shouldn’t have been done secretly but it wasn’t a conspiracy to sell more iPhones
If they weren’t trying to sell more phones they’d have given you a notification with instructions to replace the battery and designed it in a way that a person with no special skills could do so instead of just crippling the device.
I mean, yeah, I said they should’ve told people, that was a bad decision on their part. I’m just saying if it was a conspiracy to sell more iPhones, it was a dumb one, because the net effect was to make the phone more usable. It wasn’t crippled, certainly not more than “this thing just shuts down when the camera is opened sometimes.”
Additional note: they also did it with some Macbooks and I can tell you it had nothing to do with battery AGE. Machines that shower either a faulty or significantly worn battery would be slow. Apple considered 80% of nominal capacity to be the limit where a battery should be replaced under warranty on those, but the slowdowns started at like 50 or 60 percent if I recall correctly. By faulty I mean devices where the system scan in AST legally said “internal fault” or something. I used to refurb Macbooks.
It was noticeable in the 2012 macbook air because that model, a weird unicorn year with components that differed from both the 2010-2011 and 2013-2017 models, would significantly slow down with a bad battery even when it was connected to AC power. Literally removing the battery made it usable again. In other model years it was never really noticeable.
Interesting, my girlfriend’s friend bought a FP4 because she wanted an eco-friendlyish phone that would last a long time and she says it has been the worst phone of her life with tons of bugs, super slow specifically over 4G, mediocre camera, android auto works badly, etc…
(She uses android, not /e/ or calyx)
I want so hard to believe, but there are just as many reports of it being very bug ridden as positive reviews, so it is difficult, since the negative ones always seem to be detailed and specific.
I would also consider a pixel for graphene, but no SD card and 128GB or 256GB internal memory only is a deal breaker. My SD card + flash in my current phone is already at 245GB
I am honestly willing to have patience and cut some slack to someone that I feel is working with me, whereas I have zero patience for companies who tries to bullshit me all the time.
To put it differently, I prefer to put in some effort to use my tech, then to put in effort to defend myself from my tech. So that’s my bias.
Commenting more in detail.
There have been bugs that have come and gone. Once, two years ago, they screwed up real bad and for a month the phone would randomly reboot a couple times a week. That sucked, until it got fixes. Otherwise it seemed just fine. The occasional issue was no worse than the Huawei I had two phones ago, and people seemed to think those were fine.
The camera was truly awful, but now after an update it’s also OK. Not amazing, not wowing anybody, but just fine. My wife’s Pixel 8a in the meantime keeps screwing up the color balance of the pictures so not all that shines is gold.
When I had the stock rom I used Android Auto on several cars, and all of them have been fine, but it’s only been Volkswagens (and Skoda, Seat etc.) and one Opel, my sample is biased. With /e/OS (which I have since January) I’m actually very happy that Android Auto works at all, so far I only tried in my car.
I have 256GB of flash and that seems plenty. I honestly have no idea how anyone fills that up, but if it ever happens I can indeed add a SD card. Also it’s dual SIM which, for somebody who moved around Europe a bit, is very very handy.
I replaced the stock apps with better ones from fdroid and a friend’s car just doesn’t seem to like Android Auto from any phone, so maybe the bugs aren’t with the phone?
I don’t use Android Auto either (because it’s 99.9% Google), but I know my car (Merc A220) just sometimes won’t connect to my Fairphone over bluetooth… and it’s definitely the car. Literally pull over, get out of the car, lock it… unlock it, get back in and bluetooth connects again. Not touched the phone… ffs
Ah that sucks! What kind of issues did she have?
I’m obviously one person, so not a good sample, but I’ve had F4 with stock android for about 3 uears and haven’t seen any bugs yet, even with android auto.
As to the camera, I’d agree it’s “fine” but if you ignore the repairability and ethical supply chain angle, you can definitely get a much better camera for the same price range.
Yeah, I have a FP3+…
I’m actually feeling guilty about considering a FP5 because my current phone works absolutely fine, had recent updates and I have a good spare battery ready to swap out on long days… so… I’ll probably stay with this one even though I want the new one
For how long did you had the FP3+? How much did it costs?
I currently have the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro and bought it for 250€. Ofcourse I’m awear that it’s a Chinese phone but I bought it when I didn’t know any better. This year it will be 5 or 6 years old but still works for the daily needs and I like to use things till the break or aren’t really useable anymore.
So I’m curious how much yours had cost and for how long you used it. Also some other questions:
- How much do you use the phone?
- How long does one charged battery lasts?
If you don’t feel comfortable with sharing information don’t answer the question but I would be interested as I maybe want my next phone to be a Fairphone too.
I’m bought a secondhand-good as new FP3 thirteen months ago and have been using it since, first running DivestOS and now running /e/OS. It only cost me 100 €. I can squeeze almost two days of battery if I the only thing i do is check messages and e-mail with all non-essential services disabled. Otherwise, with regular usage scrolling Lemmy, browsing news websites, checking messages & e-mails and watching the occasional video my battery will last for around a day
Um, not sure. I wasn’t an early adopter, so 4+ years?
And… I think it was ~€400 + usual taxes and delivery, so, say €450 in total?
It’s basically in use everyday, although I don’t spend that much time on calls, but with (my own enabled) GPS trackers and sensors enabled for Home Automation and generally letting the family know where I am, I’ll easily get a day out of the battery…
If I’m travelling I’m using the phone a lot more so the spare battery would probably be needed (in a 18 hour work day)
I’ve also bought a replacement bottom module as the USB port has become a little loose from charging… not replaced it yet (to get the most out of it), but will do soon.
So, yeah, the best bits are: instant battery replacement / recharging (it’s great walking past all the other phone users tethered to their wall chargers) and longevity with replacment parts that I can change myself. (And still getting updates)
I run CalyxOS on my FP4 which also works great.
How is the camera?
Reposting what I said below:
They’re OK. They used to suck ass on a cosmic level, until a firmware update made it actually just fine.
Noone is going to be amazed, but they’re fine.
My wife has a Pixel 8 with stock firmware which is supposed to be oh-so-great as a camera…
But the whatever built in AI Google put in that thing keeps messing with the colours worse than a Netflix show. So half the times I end up prefering the pictures I take.
According to Fairphone the cameras in the FP5 are actually much better, but I have yet to see an FP5 in the wild so…
(taken on FP5)
Looks good until you zoom in a little
This pic has 12.6 MP, it’s not the maximum resolution of the FP5 camera (50 MP).
2nd, it’s dawn. The camera has to increase either the ISO number (sensitivity) making it coarser, or increase the exposure risking blurr.But this is the comparison though. Some phones are so much better at this
Dresden always looks nice no matter the phone. ;)
Nice pic! For me, it is often motives that move that are tricky to shoot
How’s the cameras? My Samsung cameras are absolutely incredible and I’ve finally managed to leave my olympus camera at home and it’s incredibly useful to have something that can relatively compare
They’re OK. They used to suck ass on a cosmic level, until a firmware update made it actually just fine.
Noone is going to be amazed, but they’re fine.
My wife has a Pixel 8 with stock firmware which is supposed to be oh-so-great as a camera…
But the whatever built in AI Google put in that thing keeps messing with the colours worse than a Netflix show. So half the times I end up prefering the pictures I take.
According to Fairphone the cameras in the FP5 are actually much better, but I have yet to see an FP5 in the wild so…
I personally use a Pixel 9 with GraphineOS, I would love to use a fairphone however they desperately need to get themselves together and improve security significantly.
I can’t tell you the details but for some good reasons, GrapheneOS don’t support Fairphone hardware. They somehow fuck things up in the security domain.
Using public keys for verification and beinh severly late on security updates, yeah not good
Is that security update thing an issue for GrapheneOS though? It is supposed to replace the Fairphone Android, no? Then again, I’m not familiar with the weirdness of the Android an embedded ecosystem.
I was referring to Fairphones stock android build, GraphineOS is extremely secure. Thats why GraphineOS doesn’t support Fairphone. Specifically there are advanced low level security issues on the Fairphone that cannot be fixed with an OS.
How so?
Do you mean the company?
The phones are getting updates years after other phones support stops…
Edit… just saw your other post.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_5_(fairphone-fp5)
Audio
Status : Broken No driver for the audio codec yet. No internal speaker or microphone is currently working. You can get all sounds via Bluetooth or USB peripherals.
That’s a shame :(
If you want a de-googled fairphone they sell and support a version with /e/os preinstalled
But that’s only the case for postmarketOS, and not the stock OS, right?
yeah just postmarketOS.
Someones working on porting SailfishOS: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-os-for-fairphones-devices/21516/76
The Fairphone 4 is fully supported by Ubuntu touch though (and Fairphone5 is in the works) : https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/fp4/
I would assume so, Its probably only broken when using a linux distro like postmarket and not the stock android it comes with.
I hoped this was a linux phone where all the features just worked but sadly not.
Audio works fine with /e/OS, probably also with their stock Android.
e/OS is also android based, the allure for me of something like postmarket that its just normal linux but in your pocket.
I know, I just wanted to confirm that (Bluetooth) audio works fine using Android and it’s just the Linux driver that lacks functionality.
My key feature is a headphone jack. I’m really bummed to hear the FP5 has none.
Apart from the excellent repairability, this would feel like a downgrade from my S21 Ultra. Love the concept though.
Fairphone is benefiting from the economies of scales!
Econony of scales, you say… (vividly imagining a crocodile in a top hat)
I ended up drawing my vision of economy of scale
Except they’re Dutch so they’re all drinking Heineken.
(Dutch craft beer is really great, the big names like Amstel and Heineken are piss)
I’m going to keep using my Pixel 5 and old OnePlus 7 pro with Crdroid.
You know, sustainability. Use what you have, right?
I’m tempted to get one, but I’m also tempted to wait until a fairphone 6 is released…
If your current phone works, please wait. That’s the spirit behind fairphone
