Fairphone 6 and /E/OS | The EU’s Answer to Google-Free Smartphones?
Fairphone 6 and /E/OS | The EU’s Answer to Google-Free Smartphones?
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Remember that the "fair" in Fairphone is also about living wages, working conditions, etc.
So, whilst we're moaning about missing feature X or lower performance Y, someone's able to live better...
(Written on my FP3+)
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Please tell me where to buy one, serious question 🙏🏼
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Here you go (serious answer 🙂):
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/17121765976849-Shipping-Costs#shipping_countries
Read the bit at the bottom of that page if you're not in the main table
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Depends where you live. In Europe, from their website. They are still very small scale so not yet globally available.
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There are websites that can forward packages for you. IIRC I ordered my phone from vireo and they were able to ship to Canada, but when I needed spare parts I used a forwarding business and ordered straight from FP. Maybe forward2me or something like that.
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Let's just hope the EU steps in with Google trying to become an iPhone clone and making third party stores impossible without their bidding. Only then can we have a deGoogled phone past 2026
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I use a FP6 with /e/os as my daily driver and it works for everything I need, including banking. However I'm not sure it will handle the new government ID for the UK.
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Currently writing this on a fairphone 4.
I love the hardware aside from the camera, but that was a sacrifice I knew I was making going in to it.
My big complaint is the software. It has never really been fully stable. During the best patches things work most of the time, but there have also been some pretty bad bugs. Again, I knew the updates would be slower and bugs might take longer to fix due to a smaller Dev team but I didn't expect it to be this bad. It does feel like they just gave up on the 4 to work on the 5 and 6. At this point I'm 2 major android versions behind.
I love that when I broke the screen I was able to replace it in 5 minutes, and I want to be a big supporter of fairphone. I even went to the trouble of importing the phone and replacement parts to Canada.
I don't know if this is also an issue with custom ROMS but if this doesn't change I don't know that I'll get another when the time comes.
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How much of a camera downgrade is it in your opinion? The rest seems fine to me considering I still have a samsung galaxy s8. As long as I can download apks or an equivalent I would be fine I think.
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Compared to the flagships of the time it was pretty noticeable. When it was new it seemed like the camera was maybe 3 or 4 generations behind. You could probably find some comparisons for the new generation of fairphone and see what its like. It works for my use case because I bring out an actual camera for photography.
My current main gripe is android auto and bluetooth (separately) disconnect randomly when I'm in a vehicle. Usually comes back on its own but I have to refresh the screen. To give FP the benefit of the doubt it could be a problem with my aftermarket stereo, but its a decent brand.
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What would you get instead?
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No idea :/ I'm not in the market for a new phone so I haven't been paying attention to what's out there.
I'm hoping fairphone can/does get better at updating older devices before I need to get another phone so I can stick with them.
I have gotten security updates and occasional bugfixes but it does feel like they've done the bare minimum to fulfill their promise of supporting phones for a long time.
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If Fairphone doesn't faceplant by then, it'll be my next phone in a few years.
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inb4 headphone jack complaints
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Guilty ✋
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Even if I could use one in the US on my carrier (I can't), I'd probably not buy one because of the lack of headphone jack.
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/e has been critiqued a lot about security and being behind on adopting upstream patches. Again, that's security, not privacy, which for me is much more important on the device that wants to handle my personal information and banking.
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It's not behind regarding security updates compared to other vendor Android flavours.
https://community.e.foundation/t/e-os-and-security-updates/72384
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We need stuff like this to be common enough that people have to support it. My main concern in going this direction is that I'm unsure how things like banking apps respond to operating on a degoogled platform.
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Some banking apps work with /e/OS, some don't.
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All the banking apps I've tried and use regularly work perfectly on my FP6 with /e/OS.
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From the little I know, I would say that for now, barring a phone with similar qualities as Google Pixel + GrapheneOS, this would be the best choice.
If anyone knows better though, I'm all ears.
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GrapheneOS recently announced a working relationship with a top 10 Android OEM to officially support GrapheneOS builds, so that'll give another choice once the first release happens next year. Though it's been confirmed that it won't be FairPhone, speculation is pointing to Nothing, Motorola, or possibly OnePlus. I'm pretty excited about this because I quite like GrapheneOS but have had hardware issues with every single Pixel I've owned (2, 2XL, 3XL, 3a, 7 Pro)
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I've used this for half a year, and it's good enough to recommend to my technologically untalented parents (in their 70s), big reason being that it's available in Finnish.
Awkwardly I also have to recommend leaving an Android phone in a drawer for the few cases when an app requires Google Play Services and microG doesn't work. Any old clunker worth 20€ will do.
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If your Finnish... Do you know how it compares to SailfishOS (I guess the latter is more popular in Finland than elsewhere).
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I haven't tried it because I've been reading threads about phone Linuxes in daily use: not so easy or workable yet. It's the right choice long-term, so Europe should invest in the usability of Linux on phones. On the desktop, I quit Windows in 2007.
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I put e/os/ onto my old old Essential phone, which for some reason still has a community build that was being maintained (at least as of July)
Just wanted to see how smooth an experience it can be and whether or not it's even possible for me to fully de-google.
I must say I've learned a couple of things:
- Especially when you make use of the Murena cloud, get yourself an Murena ID and email, not using Google is incredibly easy. It's a smooth process so far, with my only sticking point being my password manager not always being able to autofill properly.
- Design Wise, the Essential phone is still roughly five times more eye-catching than most modern phones. Performance wise, of course not (though it holds its own pretty well to be fair). But from a looks perspective, that shiny cermic and titanium rectangle still catches more eyes than most others.
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I neeeeed a phone with a MicroSD slot. Finally, an alternative to the Pixel that I can jump to.
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I have run iodéOS on a Fairphone 4 for a couple years and it has been working pretty good
They need to regulate banking apps first, currently almost all banking apps rely on proprietary apple or google apis to work.
I cannot even use my banks website without an android or ios app that is needed for authorization. It does not work without play services on Android.
Honestly needing to rent (we don't own the code) software to use the basic functions in our banking systems is a serious problem
I’m curious about this - what do you mean by “renting” vs “owning” the software and how is it a problem? And would open source software or another solution meaningfully address that? I haven’t thought about it in this way before
Do you think they would regulate it in our favor or shut down the few apps that work without play services for being insecure?
Obviously they should regulate in a way that does promote free choice as far as FOSS goes. There is no technical reason to rely on third party apis, one could even argue that the banks are neglecting best security practices by doing so.
Do you think they would regulate it in our favor or shut down the few apps that work without play services for being insecure?