17h ago

European phones?

After appx. 20 years in the apple eco-system I have decided to move on.

This will take time, i’m thinking 2-5 years.

My first order of business was a tablet. I couldn’t find a viable european tablet so went for a Samsung Tab S10 Ultra which has worked out great. It won me over from my pre-conception that android is somehow more budget, 2nd tier stuff. Its actually a very solid well-designed/built piece of kit in every way an equal to an iPad.

So i’m looking at Fairphone and Nothing right now for a new phone, i’m not in a hurry, I was supposed to upgrade my 14 Pro this autumn and i’m thinking that is still the time line.

Are there other european alternatives that I should be looking at?

Will air pods and apple watches still work in any sort of way with android? I will eventually replace them but both are still quite new.

Any advice from people who has already done this journey?

Pic ridiculous but related.

12 comments

Take a look at this list. SHIFT from Germany is somewhat comparable to Fairphone in terms of modularity, HMD from FInland has also recently introduced some modular design into their phones. Note that these phonse are not manufactured in Europe, I'm not sure if any smartphone is. Another option not listed on that Wikipedia page is Mudita, from Poland, which is in the process of launching its first minimalist e-ink smartphone the Kompakt.
- That's interesting, I live in the android world for a pretty long time now and am interested in tech in general but never heard of SHIFTphones before which is especially surprising since they seem to tick all my boxes.
  Do you have experience with them? They seem to have an active developer and custom rom community. How long is the official update support for their devices? This is the most important criteria for me these days. I am still running a pixel 4a in perfect condition which sadly does not get any updates anymore. I don't want this to happen again in the future if I can avoid it.
  Also, any idea how there can be custom roms for the SHIFT phone 8 even tho it's not even release yet?
  
  Currently typing on a Shiftphone 8, so maybe I can give some answers. First, the developers have stated that they will support the device with security patches at least until 2032. The Shiftphone is not officially released yet, that is correct, but they started sending out devices to early backers of their crowd funding. And being a rather small player, they still have a lot to do to fulfill all the preorders - they got way more preorders than they've expected. That's why there is already an active custom ROM community around this device. Now to my personal experience: I absolutely love the idea behind it and being able to just take the battery out of the phone is (sadly, regarding older days) a game changer. I have to admit: the software feels a little bit like it's still in beta. Of course, since Shift doesn't has an armada of software developers as for example Google or Apple has, it's harder for them to fine tune their drivers etc. Bluetooth has connection issues on my side, I mistype way more on my Shiftphone 8 touchscreen than I do on the Pixel 7a my wife uses and the programmable button on the left side of the device still has no settings menu to change its behavior. You see, the software is still under heavy development. But all that will get better as time goes on.
- My wife just bought the HMD/NOKIA G42 phone.
  It's a low end phone but still surprisingly good, and excellent battery life.
  One thing she really likes is the concept that allow you to repair it yourself if necessary.
  It's just about the opposite of an Apple phone in every way. 😋

Fairphone with eOS if you want to get away from Google even more. No google services but access to f-droid and the play store with anonymous accounts.
Or, get a second-hand phone and flash it with eOS or lineage OS.
Anti Commercial-AI license

get that Nazi poster outta here
- It was a soviet poster - there has been a lot of them, each showing people from different republics doing stuff together. Like people from occupied Baltic countries cared of people from Kazakhstan and everyone wanted to be together
  
  millions of people were sent to gulags because everyone wanted to join the Soviet Union, great revisionism

Motherland, surely? -a is a feminine ending.
- Patria can be translated to motherland, fatherland, or native land but the word for father in Latin is pater. So looking at the word, fatherland is not incorrect.
  Land in Latin is usually feminine unless it has to do with ownership.

Nothing Phone from the UK.
nothing.tech

Fairephone is European but they're made in china

12 comments