I want GrapheneOS more than repairability, personally. I hope the Fairphone + GrapheneOS combination is possible some day…
Fairphone is the sort of phone for people who think LineageOS with an unlocked bootloader is secure made by a company who has sincerely promised to make things better but hasn’t substantially improved security (especially in how often they push security patches). Grapheneos is not a brand name you can just apply to give a phone more reputation, its an OS that represents the highest standard of security.
The Graphene devs explicitly only support Pixels. Sticking with Graphene means continuing to give Google the profits from your hardware.
/e/OS is not bad as an alternative. The system wide ad and tracker blocking is nice.
/e/OS is not bad as an alternative. The system wide ad and tracker blocking is nice.
I switched to e/os on a couple of motorolas that supported it and it’s great so far.
The comparisons to GrapheneOS are fair to some degree, but also not. Graphene is meant to be privacy and security hardened, whereas e/OS, while it is more secure than regular android, is more concerned with privacy hardening. The biggest misconception people have seems to be thinking that privacy and security are the same thing; and while that is true on the surface level, security (a la GrapheneOS) goes much deeper.
So while my phone may not be as “hack resistant” as a GrapheneOS, it’s degoogled and very protective of tracking, which is what I’m primarily concerned with. So I’m happy.
I just wish I could afford a fairphone in Canada.
This is a big issue that the fairphone doesn’t have its dtb open yet. It’s not easy to build ROM for it. Despite their core claim of sustainability, without addressing the blobs, it remains just a tad more convenient for green minded people. We need a full Fairphone.
And besides that, fairphone is just greenwashing when it comes to repairability, good luck finding parts for previous generations.
That demonstrably false by just going to the store…
I don’t know why people keep saying that.
I think it is because 90% of company sustainability is simply greenwashing.
Fairphone also had the whole “fairbuds” thing where they released tws earbuds (and then removed the headphone jack) and supported them for under 2 years before throwing them away and they are completely non-repairable, then acted like they didn’t exist.
The new fairbuds are 10x better though, but I have heard the sound on both of their headphones is mediocre at best.
my mum bought a fairphone 3 about 5 years ago and is extremely happy with it, so far she’s gone through one usb-c port and one battery. it looks and feels exactly like a normal phone but it pops open with just 4 screws. helping her fix it has taught me that phone manufacturers could make repairable phones easily and they all just choose not to
I used to run a small electronics repair business and you are 1 billion percent correct. Slowly watching things over the years become unrepairable was just such an obvious business decision for profit over customer satisfaction. There is absolutely no reason to make those changes unless you have a profit driven motive. So so so many electronics used to be like the fairphone your mom has. Pop it open, take out what’s broke, replace it with some OEM or 3rd party part you bought for like 2 dollars and you’re all set. It’s so frustrating nowadays with how purposefully difficult manufacturers make any repairability. Can’t even change a damn battery in your phone now! lol
If it supported GrapheneOS I would be using one too.
The choice of only supporting Pixels comes from GrapheneOS’s side, not Fairphone. Fairphone got some great ROMs support, and even have an official partnership with one of them (e/OS).
Yes but also no, the fairphone doesn’t meet the extensive list of requirements required to maintain the goal of GrapheneOS - List of requirements for devices
I love Fairphones, but GrapheneOS developers are very clear on why they son’t support phones other than Pixels. If other phones complied with those requirements, they would support them. I really hoped the OEM they’re working with to support from another brand would be Fairphone, but the most educated guess I’ve seen is Motorola
GrapheneOS developers are quite dickish about what they are willing to implement and how they treat their users. They work under the assumption that GrapheneOS is for people afraid of being hacked (like actively targeted by state level actors) and refuse to add anything that in their view compromises security. So for example they refuse to add pattern unlock because they think it’s less secure than PIN which is silly because I can just use ‘0000’ PIN which is as insecure as any pattern. It’s the same with supporting other phones. Personally I’m not worried about police trying to hack my phone, I just want deGoogled system with tracker protection. GrapheneOS devs don’t care. It’s all or nothing with them. I would recommend iode over Graphene to anyone not as paranoid as the devs.
They can be dickish about several things, but they will implement whatever they want, it’s their project LOL! They actually develop a mobile operating system for people afraid of being hacked, and with the utmost security in mind.
The thing with pattern unlock is that it is inherently less secure than the other options, despite the fact that you can use one of the other options in bad ways (like the ‘0000’ PIN). Expecting them to change this is using the lowest common denominator possible, which is against their philosophy.
You do have other options if you want to deGoogle, like LineageOS, that supports a much wider range of devices (altough the extent of deGoogling can be limited). It’s good we have one ROM (among others) with paranoid devs - we have more options
I’m running e/os on my FP6 and it’s a great de googled alternative!
/e/ os is not degoogled
How is it not degoogled?
Calls home to Google constantly ootb https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Where does it say that specifically? The table is not mobile friendly.
According to e/os themselves, it is degoogled…
Where does it say that specifically?
See the row labeled “degoogling”
According to e/os themselves, it is degoogled…
Sorry but they are liars. The only truly degoogled android OSs are GrapheneOS and the experimental mobile linux ones.
I really wish these alternative OSs were more truthful in how they portray themselves. They might not be terrible options for certain people and they might have good intentions but the dishonesty really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. There are so many who are misled.
I’m using GrapheneOS on a Pixel 7a which I bought just to flash it. Google Android just ran on it for the obligatory update before the flashing. It’s just very secure and that’s what I like about it. I’m not so sure about /e/ even though it’s being supported by semi prominent people here in DACH.
For me any concerns about e/os are overshadowed by buying one of the most sustainable and “ethical” phones there are currently available, and not supporting google.
Buying a Pixel isn’t automatically supporting Google. You can get them secondhand.
You’re indirectly helping Google though. If the second hand market is better for Pixels than other devices because of Graphene, then people are more willing to buy Pixels, so Google sells more of them.
The secondhand market for GrapheneOS users is a fraction of a fraction of Google’s overall Pixel sales. Saying you’re supporting Google by using GrapheneOS is a stretch even by the loosest definition and only serves to detract from literally the best OS you can use for privacy and security.
Besides, I don’t think we should have a black and white mentality here. Yes, we shouldn’t use privacy-invasive Google software, but if they make an ethical software/hardware, why shouldn’t we support it? It’s actually a nice way to tell Google that there’re ways to make money by making ethical products, like the Pixel phones.
So long as it’s affordable. I’m not paying more than £250 for a mobile phone, even that’s on the high end of what I can justify for a phone.
I’m stuck using Chinese brands if I want a good, affordable phone, but they have so many intentional software issues.
Nothing’s perfect, but if I could get a better phone that doesn’t lock down stuff (it’s my phone after all, I’m in charge of my own life), and if it were at an affordable price point - unlike these crazies that think £1000 is a reasonable price for a phone (!!!), I’d jump on it <3
I’ve been running a Fairphone 6 for about 6 months now and it’s by far the buggiest phone I’ve ever used. I’d love to keep using it until the security updates stop but it’s already such a miserable experience already I can’t imagine how bad it’ll be in a few years time.
Seriously? Like what did you put on it? I love mine. I basically removed MicroG and kept the basic ecosystem. Got Fdroid. Replaced voice recorder, calendar, call app with Fossify. Put an RSS feed on with Lemmy app, Peer tube, Searchix, and Tuta. Absolutely zero issues. You need to disable the MicroG call home though. Can you reset to factory and just use trusted apps?
If you’re miserable, then something is wrong.
I don’t have MicroG I’m just using the stock ROM with Play Services. I too replaced most the default apps with foss options with Fossify being a big chunk of them. It’s not the apps that are the issue, it’s the Fairphone software.
Since my original comment I’ve already bought a second hand Galaxy S25 Edge as I haven’t tried Samsung since the Galaxy S3. Not exactly the privacy focused experience I’d ideally like but the Fairphone is becoming unusable after only 3 months. There’s no way I’d be using it in 7 years.
I have had mine 3 months. Never going back. Samsung has a partnership with Google. They take all your data and.call home a lot. Start monitoring through NextDNS and start blocking the domains and you’ll see. I’d just reset.or reinstall and try again. Something sounds off.
I’ve already tried a reset and the issues persist. I’ve just lost faith with Fairphone. I took a photo yesterday, the preview in the camera app shows a photo has been taken. If i click the preview I get a “failed to load media” warning and if I open the gallery app or file manager the photo is nowhere to be seen. This simply isn’t good enough. They’ve been well known for buggy software all over the internet so I’m not entirely surprised.
If you get to where you want to sell it, let me know. I just might be interested if it’s on a good day.
The situation won’t improve until some big company goes full “IBM PC” thing with open AT, ISA, VESA, etc tier standards for phones.
This phone is better just because you can open the case. Spare parts are still provided by a single company. Not a big step ahead.
Better than nothing though…
Better than Nothing though.
It all boils down to drivers, if those are not open source (and they usually are not), then phone upgradability depends on them
Yes and no, Fairphone has actually managed to reverse engineer some of the drivers for its old phones to provide android upgrades years after the component manufacturers have dropped support. The Fairphone 2, for instance, received a little over 7 years of support and 4 major version upgrades, skipping one on the way. For the Fairphone 5, they’ve promised 10 years of software support, and judging by their track record, I believe them. They also open source as much as they can and even give instructions on how to build the OS yourself.
Of course, open source drivers would be better, but that doesn’t exist at the moment, unfortunately. At this point, Fairphone is one of the companies that comes closest (with Shiftphone being a close rival).
Fairphone has actually managed to reverse engineer some of the drivers
Isn’t that illegal?
Has anyone tried loading KDE Plasma Mobile onto one of these?
The Fairphone team has tried to help with mainline Linux support: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairphone-fp6)
Is plasma mobile any good?
I haven’t had a chance to try it, myself, but the developments on their site looks promising. I’ve heard it’s pretty functional, but it’s lacking in battery optimization, and compatible devices.
